Topic

Agile Team Members Allocation Levels

Response

For an Agile Team to reach and then sustain a steady productivity level, which is one of the Agile Principles, individual members need to invest a suitable amount of time from sprint to sprint. Whilst variations in the time individual commit is accommodated during the sprint planning ceremony, high performing Agile Teams typically see individual members invest between 40 to 60 percent of their time on a single Agile led project.

By limited the number of teams dramatically reduces the context switching an individual faces and allows the team to deliver small focused units of value, for example a Feature much earlier to traditional methods. This gives the impression Agile ways of working is faster, when in fact it’s a question of prioritisation.

Having a consistent and a steady Agile team improves the accuracy of the team’s forecasted Feature roadmap and has a positive impact on the teams maturity. We typically see highly engaged Agile teams mature through the Tucker Team model (forming, storming, norming to performing) within 3 to 4 months. Less engagement simply lengthen this journey, increasing the time the organisation sees any material benefit from the Agile Team’s output.

Agile Team Allocation Guidelines

For an Agile Team to be successful they must be allocated the right expertise at the right time. High performing Agile teams are those that quickly reach a stable level of engagement. This ensures they are focused, committed and quickly develop a greater sense of ownership because they are engaged in the entire life cycle. To ensure individuals commit the right amount of their time to an Agile team, it is highly recommended the organisation defines a clear and concise set of guidelines, which it applies during the initial forming of the Agile team (i.e. resource allocation) and is aligned with the organisation’s time record management system.

It is Monetical’s recommendations all core members of the Agile Team, for example, the Product Owner, Scrum Master and a number of subject matter experts, are assigned to no more than 2 individual Agile Teams as core team members. For example, a minimum of 40% of their time to a single team. The remaining 20% is available to provide on demand expertise to other projects or activities, for example, day to day operational or support activities.

Analyse Agile Team Allocation Variation

To know whether context switching is impacting an Agile team’s productivity, Monetical recommend individual Scrum Masters retain a record of the Agile Team’s Say / Do. At the beginning of each Sprint, the Scrum Master captures the commitment each core team member has made to the following few sprints. For example, 20, 40, 60%. Where fluctuations greater than 15%/20% occur, the Scrum Master should take action to understand why and develop a corrective measures plan that will promote a more stable and higher levels of commitment.

Discover more

Additional information, including working examples and templates are available in the Monetical knowledge base.