Of Pigs and Chickens and Groups and Teams

Pigs and Chickens

One of the things that I talk about in my Introduction to Agile Methods course is the importance for the project manager of identifying the pigs and chickens in your meetings. The idea is that you tell the difference between a pig and a chicken the way that you tell them apart in an English breakfast: :the pig has got it's bacon on the line - the chicken is just involved.There are lot of reasons why people who don't directly have their "bacon" on the line might want to get involved in your project and turn up to some of your meetings. Here are some that I can think of.

1. They've heard your project is really cool and so they want to be associated with it.
2. They've heard your project is really cool and so they want to stop it.
3. They've heard your project is really cool - so they want to steal your people, or the project.
4. They're worried that the project is going badly, and they think they can save it by having lots of senior people who aren't quite sure what the project is about turning up to meetings.
5. They want to show how important they are by derailing your project.
6. They want to know what's going on.

Reasons 1-5 need to be stopped by the project manager. Reason 6, might, sometimes be OK, but probably won't be, because, although idea is that senior people can drop into meetings to "Just Observe" the truth of that matter is the people are going to end up seeking their opinion on what font the submit button should be in, or they're going to blurt out their opinion and that's going to be that - until the next meeting which consist of only committed team members, which will probably decide that Century Gothic isn't the best font after all.

Project delivery - not a vegetarian affair.

Groups and teams

As if that weren't bad enough, there's the difference between groups and teams. Now I think about it, it seems obvious, but it was drawn to my attention by Dave Dawes. Any bunch of people (including an collection or pigs and chickens) can be a group. But in order to be a team a group has to go through a bunch of messy and - seemingly unproductive - processes. Bruce Tuckman refers to these stages as "forming", "storming" and "norming". After which follows, finally, "performing". A team also needs a permanence to its membership and a common goal which a group doesn't necessarily have. If your meetings are chicken-infested, there's a very good chance that they are getting in the way of the important forming, norming and storming tasks that the team has to do before it gets round to any performing. If you're the project manager, and you don't make it your job to ensure that meetings are filled with pigs that are turning from group into a team, you shouldn't be surprised if they don't perform at all.For further information, contact Mark@agilelab.co.uk (07736 807 604)