Good Teams, Bad Outcomes with Martina Ziegenfuss and Jim Elvidge

So I'm going to come back to the AI thing in a little bit because I do want to ask about how that landscape has changed.

You say they have lots of money to invest.

I would say they have lots of money.

They're hurling at AI, maybe not in the, in the most intelligent way all the time, but, When it comes to teams, so I'm going to say this right now, I'm working with three teams.

And for the first time in 30 years, I have three teams of people who all want to work together, who are fighting to learn this stuff and have support from management.

And I've even been set up in a separate workspace where they're all co-located.

And I can't believe this has finally happened because I've never had that before.

Did you do that, Dave? Yeah.

No, I got brought in.

I was like set up before I even got there.

And it's amazing.

I'm like, wow, this is why everybody liked this so much.

But I met the, at the cusp of three really strong teams like that, that are communicating well, that are learning the practices, not losing sight of the fact that they are there to do work.

And then there's a business to be run.

So they're not all like star struck with agile stuff.

But these teams could easily get driven into a ditch and, by many of the things around them.

Before we talk about the ditch, how do you know when you have a good team? Like, how would you characterize a good team?

I'll take that one.

I think if teams are good at meeting their commitments, if they're gelling well together, if they're interacting well together, it's probably a good team.

They're productive and building things that they say they're going to build.

And if they're pretty good at estimating, that's even a bonus.

Not everybody's good at estimating, but if they can do that, then that's great.

And I think that I've seen a lot of teams that fall into that category.

Unfortunately, I see a lot of companies where a team will be so siloed that you might have a single points of failure within the team or everybody touches that team for every single feature that has to go out the door.

And just the kind of organizational structure makes it very hard on that team.

So I'm going to come back to the AI thing in a little bit because I do want to ask about how that landscape has changed.

You say they have lots of money to invest.

I would say they have lots of money.

They're hurling at AI, maybe not in the, in the most intelligent way all the time, but, When it comes to teams, so I'm going to say this right now, I'm working with three teams.

And for the first time in 30 years, I have three teams of people who all want to work together, who are fighting to learn this stuff and have support from management.

And I've even been set up in a separate workspace where they're all co-located.

And I can't believe this has finally happened because I've never had that before.

Did you do that, Dave? Yeah.

No, I got brought in.

I was like set up before I even got there.

And it's amazing.

I'm like, wow, this is why everybody liked this so much.

But I met the, at the cusp of three really strong teams like that, that are communicating well, that are learning the practices, not losing sight of the fact that they are there to do work.

And then there's a business to be run.

So they're not all like star struck with agile stuff.

But these teams could easily get driven into a ditch and, by many of the things around them.

Before we talk about the ditch, how do you know when you have a good team? Like, how would you characterize a good team?

I'll take that one.

I think if teams are good at meeting their commitments, if they're gelling well together, if they're interacting well together, it's probably a good team.

They're productive and building things that they say they're going to build.

And if they're pretty good at estimating, that's even a bonus.

Not everybody's good at estimating, but if they can do that, then that's great.

And I think that I've seen a lot of teams that fall into that category.

Unfortunately, I see a lot of companies where a team will be so siloed that you might have a single points of failure within the team or everybody touches that team for every single feature that has to go out the door.

And just the kind of organizational structure makes it very hard on that team.