Disclaimer: The statements and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Thoughtworks.
In the glory days when giants still walked the earth and the Agile Founding Fathers created "the team," they decreed that there would be three "team roles:"
The product owner would be omnipresent and omni-knowledgeable, the scrum master would (somewhat mysteriously) "move boulders and carry water," and the team itself, the AFFs explained, would be "cross-functional." Without being told how, the team would just swarm around the work and get it done: analysis, design, development, testing, release, the works. Boo-yah!
It's a seductively simple fallacy of division to interpret the concept of "cross functional" team to mean a "collection of cross-functional individuals." New agilists are quick to apologize that "we still have functional silos here" as though it would be much better if everyone could do all the same things. Grab some equally skilled poly-functional people, have them all take turns doing all of the jobs as needed, and you'll all laugh your way to on-time, high-quality, and valuable working software.
Not so fast!
The power of an effective agile team, like the power of any other effective team, doesn't come from its homogeneity, but from its ability to harness its diversity. What does this mean?
This post is from Pragmatic Agilist by Elena Yatzeck. Click here to see the original post in full.
Disclaimer: The statements and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Thoughtworks.