Damon Poole has written an interesting blog post about Whole Teams and Colocation, particularly in the context of self-organising teams…
Self-organisation and empowered teams is one of the key principles of agile software development.
For sustainable success – and for the team’s personal growth – it is so important that teams become as self sufficient as possible, and rely as little as possible on managers to achieve their goals.
But this is also why agile development often has to be driven from the top down.
As Damon points out, *putting whole teams together* often requires changes to organisational structure, and relocating people. Neither of which is necessarily easy. And both are likely to require support from senior management.
In my opinion, this is a pre-requisite when implementing an agile methodology. It’s a critical success factor. Put whole teams together, and implementing agile is significantly more likely to succeed.
Kelly.