How To Make a Lean Team Successful
Some inexperienced software developers often wonder: “What are Lean development team tools?” It is quite hard to answer this question, because it is formulated improperly. In this article we will tell you about Lean teams and the means that make their work more effective. First of all, we should give the definition of a Lean team and describe its main features.
Lean is considered an Agile methodology. That is why its teams have Agile structure. First of all, it means that they are small. That can be explained by the fact that it is much simpler to achieve strong and effective communication in a small team. The size of Lean teams is the factor that strongly impacts their structure. Lean developers cannot include too much employees in their teams, so they don’t have some traditional software development roles like testers and business analysts. It does not mean that Lean projects do not require testing or business analysis. It means just that the members of Lean teams are interchangeable. Lean teams also don’t have strict hierarchical structure. There are no project managers in them. That is why they are self-managing. The team is responsible for the result of its work as a whole.
As you can see, it is quite hard to build a Lean team. You have to include only high qualified and experienced developers into it. Your people must be capable of performing several functions. The first thing you need to do while creating your Lean team is to implement strong communication between its members. It is necessary because like any other Agile methodology Lean is based on communication inside of the team and between the team members and their customer. There are no special tools to improve communication and collaboration inside of your Lean team. This can be achieved only through team building activities. Lean team building games are probably the most effective of them.
The most popular Lean team building game is aimed at project management simulation. The developers write down all conditions of their project including customer demands. After that they start discussing their plan and the process its implementation. They also discuss project control and everything relied to it. This game is not aimed at creating supreme project plans or training to implement them. Its main goal is to improve the range of communication inside of your team. While discussing the project planning issues the developers learn to work as a team.
