4 warning signs that your team is not agile
But agile productivity typically depends upon the quality of the team members. It requires high IQ, high EQ, and high focus. Put someone in with insufficient subject matter expertise, drive, or decision-making authority, and the team will be chasing its tail. Further, agile depends upon the impedance match between the resources and the tasks: if a team member just doesn't care, or can't stand to be in the room with another team member, close collaboration simply won't happen.
Since agile is all about flexibility and fast iterations, it would be a joke if you did not assess the members of the agile team as early and often as possible to detect and correct the problem children. Fail-fast on team assignments is a best practice.
If, as the Zen masters say, "how you do anything is how you do everything," it should be possible to detect team membership issues before the first sprint has completed. Ideally, you could do that before the first sprint has started. But how
4 major areas for concern in agile teams
If there's a good thing about a character flaw, it's that the flaw's owner seldom realizes they have it...and they often have it on full display. You just have to know where to look. In most agile teams, there are four major areas for inspection/introspection: users, developers, consultants, and management. Here are forty things (in no particular order of importance) that set off red flags when we see them in agile teams.
Users who...
Developers who...
Consultants who are...
Management that is...
The bottom line
There's no scoring system here -- but if you detect enough of the issues outlined above in a team member, seriously consider replacing him/her fast. If you detect enough of the issues in the management area, it's not likely that agile is going to be a success within that part of the organization.