8 Characteristics of High Performing Agile Teams

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In times of change and uncertainty (and if we're being honest, most of the rest of the time too), a high performing team is the most reliable source of innovative ideas. But it's neither the organizational culture nor individual performance that dictates success. It's the teams those individuals are part of.

Clear, Shared Purpose

• Teams need a clear rationale for why they've come together

• When there's a clear purpose for a team, they can evaluate requests, projects, and ideas against that purpose

• Ideally teams in general, and marketing teams in particular, should form around customer-centric goals

• Provide value to customers early and often

A Few Clear KPIs

• Closely tied to the team's shared, customer-centric purpose is their focus on a few core KPIs (key performance indicators).

• These metrics indicate whether or not the team is effectively working toward their goal.

• They allow the team to further refine their selected activities.

Owners of the 'How'

• For teams to provide amazing solutions to thorny problems, they need a high degree of autonomy around the how - otherwise known as the how.

• Overly prescriptive demands strip teams of their motivation and make them feel disconnected from the work they do.

As Cross-Functional as Possible

• A cross-functional team contains all the necessary skills for completing their work

• Increases productivity while reducing their waiting time

• Pure cross-functionality is often a challenge, particularly in marketing where you have a large number of subject matter experts who need to contribute only occasionally

• It's therefore important that we evaluate the skills needed for each team to reach their established KPIs and try to staff for those capabilities

Relatively Small

• High performing teams need to be fairly small

• Ideally between four and 10 people

• Smaller teams get more done and innovate more often

• The bigger the team gets, the more time will be spent communicating and navigating internal relationships

• lightweight tools like a scaled daily standup, also known as a scrum of scrums, can allow for rapid connection between these small teams

One Clear Point of Contact

• When teams do need to interact with one another, and when internal stakeholders need to bring them requests, there should be one person to talk to

• This person should be the buffer between the team and its stakeholders

• For fully functioning Agile teams, the team lead will be responsible for maintaining their backlog

Aligned to Bigger Goals

• There should be a clear throughline from daily activities the team spends their time on and larger goals

• Project management tools are useful in this regard

• By keeping these connections (or lack thereof) clear in a workflow management tool, you can develop a clear picture of what percentage of the team's time is spent on particular goals

Psychological Safety

• Team members need to feel safe speaking their minds, even if that means fundamentally disagreeing with leaders or fellow team members

• Google discovered that the presence of psychological safety was the most stable predictor of team success

• You can't just show up one day and declare psychological safety now exists, it's built over the long term by consistent, repeated actions

High Performing Teams: Tough, But Worth It

• Once you have them, you have an inexhaustible engine for problem solving and innovation

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