{"id":9771,"date":"2021-10-11T07:09:17","date_gmt":"2021-10-11T12:09:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/?p=9771"},"modified":"2021-11-24T10:50:30","modified_gmt":"2021-11-24T15:50:30","slug":"10-best-practices-for-small-agile-teams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/10-best-practices-for-small-agile-teams\/","title":{"rendered":"10 Best Practices for Small, Agile Teams"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-9777\" src=\"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Stock-Image-1-10-Best-Practices-for-Agile-teams-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Stock-Image-1-10-Best-Practices-for-Agile-teams-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Stock-Image-1-10-Best-Practices-for-Agile-teams-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Stock-Image-1-10-Best-Practices-for-Agile-teams-1024x683.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>Profitability is at the core of successful businesses.\u00a0 Many markets do not allow as much top-line revenue increase as the companies would like. \u00a0Therefore, organizations have to focus on improving the bottom-line.<\/p>\n<p>Boosting the bottom-line entails raising Productivity.\u00a0 Productivity enhancement can be achieved by eliminating redundancies and improving processes that change the company.\u00a0 <a href=\"https:\/\/flevy.com\/browse\/stream\/process-improvement\">Process Improvement<\/a> also means less people needed to accomplish the same tasks.<\/p>\n<p>Change projects\u2014as is the case with most other projects\u2014almost always run over budget and over time, especially when new technology comes into the mix.\u00a0 Causes for failures in <a href=\"https:\/\/flevy.com\/browse\/stream\/change-management\">Change Management<\/a> are many and one of them is heavy and bureaucratic teams.<\/p>\n<p>Raising Productivity in teams designated for change projects is well-nigh impossible.\u00a0\u00a0 A solution to this is <a href=\"https:\/\/flevy.com\/business-toolkit\/building-effective-teams\">Building Effective Teams<\/a> by keeping teams small\u2014a remedy that has shown its effectiveness time and again.<\/p>\n<p>Smaller teams tend to communicate effectively, decide quickly, do course corrections more easily, work faster, and innovate more.<\/p>\n<p>Large organizations have the tendency of deploying large teams because as the planning process goes on, the scope gets bigger and bigger.\u00a0 This practice is defeating in itself because sight of the goal is lost in the bureaucratic rigmarole.<\/p>\n<p>For projects to be executed swiftly and successfully the following 10 best practices for smaller, more Agile teams are very effective:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Break Down Problems<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Eliminate Indispensable Roles<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Adopt One-step Decisions<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Foster Trust<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Share Information Freely &amp; Informally<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Increase Visibility &amp; Accountability<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Minimize Conference Calls<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Track Less<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Increase Cross-team Collaboration<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Adopt Technology Faster &amp; Effectively<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/flevy.com\/browse\/flevypro\/10-best-practices-for-small-agile-teams-5897\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-9775\" src=\"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Slide-Deck-Image-0-Best-Practices-for-Agile-Teams.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"962\" height=\"722\" srcset=\"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Slide-Deck-Image-0-Best-Practices-for-Agile-Teams.png 962w, https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Slide-Deck-Image-0-Best-Practices-for-Agile-Teams-300x225.png 300w, https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Slide-Deck-Image-0-Best-Practices-for-Agile-Teams-768x576.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 962px) 100vw, 962px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong>Let us delve a little deeper into some of the best practices.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Break Down Problems<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Dividing the project into distinct problems or separating business capabilities into converged organizational units makes it easier for smaller teams to deliver.<\/p>\n<p>Assorting sizable, complex problems into discrete, attainable pieces and teaching members to develop a <a href=\"https:\/\/flevy.com\/browse\/flevypro\/problem-solving-mindsets-5560\">Problem Solving Mindset<\/a> enables small teams to take them on easily and over deliver on them.<\/p>\n<p>An alternate to making teams smaller without compromising on the structure of the organization is to separate business capabilities into focused organizational units.<strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<h2><strong>Eliminate Indispensable Roles<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Making sure that individuals with a certain type of skill or key people are not scarce in the organization lest they get pulled by different teams at the same time.<strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Essential people are wanted by all teams, consequentially their time gets split into such small chunks that no task gets done properly.\u00a0 Operational risk becomes prodigious when dependent on a single person.<\/p>\n<p>It is vital to work away from such scenarios in a team.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Adopt One-step Decisions<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Bureaucratic way of decision-making in large teams should be avoided by identifying types of decisions and the decision-making authorities, at the outset.<strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<h2><strong>Foster Trust<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Trust speeds up progress, augments quality, and diminishes execution risk.\u00a0 Trust has to be built up by conscious effort.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Share Information Freely &amp; Informally<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>One of the ways for effective <a href=\"https:\/\/flevy.com\/business-toolkit\/team-management\">Team Management<\/a> is to keep communication swift and the only way of doing this is to keep it informal.<\/p>\n<p>Interested in learning more about these <a href=\"https:\/\/flevy.com\/browse\/flevypro\/10-best-practices-for-small-agile-teams-5897\">best practices for Small, Agile Teams<\/a>?\u00a0 You\u00a0can download\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/flevy.com\/browse\/flevypro\/10-best-practices-for-small-agile-teams-5897\">an editable PowerPoint on <strong>10 Best Practices for Small, Agile Teams<\/strong> here\u00a0<\/a>on the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/flevy.com\/browse\">Flevy documents marketplace<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h2>Do You Find Value in This Framework?<\/h2>\n<p>You can download in-depth presentations on this and hundreds of similar business frameworks from the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/flevy.com\/pro\/library\">FlevyPro Library<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/flevy.com\/pro\">FlevyPro<\/a>\u00a0is trusted and utilized by 1000s of management consultants and corporate executives. Here\u2019s what some have to say:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cMy FlevyPro subscription provides me with the most popular frameworks and decks in demand in today\u2019s market.\u00a0 They not only augment my existing consulting and coaching offerings and delivery, but also keep me abreast of the latest trends, inspire new products and service offerings for my practice, and educate me in a fraction of the time and money of other solutions.\u00a0 I strongly recommend FlevyPro to any consultant serious about success.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u2013 Bill Branson, Founder at Strategic Business Architects<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cAs a niche strategic consulting firm, Flevy and FlevyPro frameworks and documents are an on-going reference to help us structure our findings and recommendations to our clients as well as improve their clarity, strength, and visual power.\u00a0 For us, it is an invaluable resource to increase our impact and value.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u2013 David Coloma, Consulting Area Manager at Cynertia Consulting<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cFlevyPro has been a brilliant resource for me, as an independent growth consultant, to access a vast knowledge bank of presentations to support my work with clients.\u00a0 In terms of RoI, the value I received from the very first presentation I downloaded paid for my subscription many times over!\u00a0 The quality of the decks available allows me to punch way above my weight \u2013 it\u2019s like having the resources of a Big 4 consultancy at your fingertips at a microscopic fraction of the overhead.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u2013 Roderick Cameron, Founding Partner at SGFE Ltd<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Profitability is at the core of successful businesses.\u00a0 Many markets do not allow as much top-line revenue increase as the companies would like. \u00a0Therefore, organizations have to focus on improving the bottom-line. Boosting the bottom-line entails raising Productivity.\u00a0 Productivity enhancement can be achieved by eliminating redundancies and improving processes that change the company.\u00a0 Process Improvement&hellip;&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/10-best-practices-for-small-agile-teams\/\" rel=\"bookmark\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">10 Best Practices for Small, Agile Teams<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":110,"featured_media":9777,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[408,85],"tags":[2701,1039,2703,228,2477,32,22,2702,2704],"class_list":["post-9771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-management-leadership","category-organization","tag-agile-teams","tag-best-practices","tag-building-effective-teams","tag-change-management","tag-problem-solving-mindset","tag-process-improvement","tag-productivity","tag-profitability","tag-small-teams"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/110"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9771"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9786,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9771\/revisions\/9786"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}