Software development in general should be a team sport, not an individual sport. This is explicitly called out in our agile principles. Most of us work as part of teams at work, whether or not we work in an agile manner, so we are all used to the structure of being organized into teams. Yet just because we are part of a team structure, that doesn’t mean we work together as a truly collaborative team.

Think about how you work. Are you mostly concerned with your individual tasks, or are you focused on your team’s goals and commitments? In your team’s daily stand up meeting, are you dialed in only on your own updates, or are you actively listening to your teammates looking for opportunities where you can offer help and assistance? How much time do you spend talking as a team about how “we” are going to close the team’s user stories, or even more importantly, achieve our team’s goals?

While working individually has some advantages such as not having to deal with anyone else, worry about anyone else’s availability, or pay any communication and coordination costs, there must be a reason most people work in teams.

There is an African proverb that says, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” In essence, while you may initially go faster working by yourself, there is a limitation to how far you can go working by yourself. Working by yourself, you are limited to your own skills and capabilities and can never achieve more than that. You are also limited by bandwidth and a dearth of perspective (only your own).

By working as part of a team, you benefit from the intelligence, skills, perspective, and bandwidth of your teammates. In fact, when working as a team, you will often find that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Now to achieve the full effect of teamwork, the team has to learn how to work together, be flexible in how they each contribute to the team based on the current need, and have a shared goal they are trying to achieve. Scrum events like sprint planning, daily scrum, sprint reviews, and team retrospectives are geared toward setting goals as a team, adapting the plan daily as a team, celebrating and sharing as a team, and finding ways to work even better as a team.

There is also something special about being part of a team. Think about a time when you were part of a team where everyone not only enjoyed working with each other, but where everyone was consistently performing better because of their teammates. That’s the goal - to work as a team where everyone is at the top of their game and the team is able to conquer any challenge.

One last thought on being part of a team. Bo Schembechler, a legendary football coach at the University of Michigan (Go Blue!) and a master at motivating his teams, once gave a quite famous pep talk centered on “The Team, The Team, The Team”. Amongst the key statements in the talk:

• “No man (person) is more important than the team, no coach is more important than the team. The team, the team, the team!”

• “Everything you do, you take into consideration the effect that it has on my team.”

• “We are going to play together as a team. We are going to believe in each other. We are not going to criticize each other. We are not going to talk about each other. We are going to encourage each other!”

Perhaps something to think about and discuss at your next retrospective - how can we work more effectively as teammates so that the team has the biggest positive impact possible on each other, our customers, and our shared goals?

The team, the team, the team!