A maturing agile team functions quite differently than any other team environment. Here are 10 examples of statements you’ll hear in a developing agile team.

1. “Change is to be expected. Change is welcomed and embraced.”
2. “Your work is already fantastic but the team is growing. How can we support you in developing the skills to adapt to our advancing team?”
3. “You need to change. So do we all. What can we put in place as an organization to support this advancement?”
4. “Let’s do an experiment. It might be right or it might be wrong but we won’t know until we try, learn, reflect.”
5. “No one is to blame.”
6. “Sure. We have all made mistakes but pointing them out gets us nowhere. We can say instead, ‘I am learning how to do… ‘such and such’ in a more effective way,’ and move forward confidently.”
7. “Let’s talk about this with the whole team.”
8. “Let’s take a vote.”
9. “Let’s keep doing our work as we sort this out. Maturing teams mature when individuals keep doing their positive work.”
10. “You have a choice about what work you do, when and how.”

Scott Ambler writes more on Agile teams in his article Roles on Agile Teams: From Small to Large Teams and elaborates on how “generalizing specialists” are the key to successful cross-functional teams. He writes, ” Generalizing specialists are the sweet spot between the two extremes of specialists, people who know a lot about a narrow domain, and generalists who know a little about a wide range of topics.”

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