Bioteams

Unofficial Content applying some of the theories of another theory (Bioteams) to OpenAgile --JoshW 17:38, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

"The fundamental thing missing from teams today is the recognition of the dynamic and living nature of the team itself as a separate and distinct entity from that of its individual members." [1] - Ken Thompson

In other words, the sum is greater than its parts and "the sum" can take on its own life and characteristics. I think some of the bioteam principles could be integrated to help the OpenAgile community grow.

Mr. Thompson looked towards nature for some of the most successful teams and looked at how they worked for inspiration in improving corporate teamwork. Examples include Ants in an Ant Colony and Bees in a Beehive. The individual members can be very simple and relatively unintelligent, but the colony is very strong and resilient, and shows a strong "swarm intelligence" lacking in the individual members.

Here is a summary of one of his articles with questions and comments about how it could apply to OpenAgile.

What Nature Teaches Us About Teams
There is a small number of characteristics of nature's teams that are not usually present in organizational teams [1]:


 * 1) Collective Leadership: Any group member can take the lead.
 * 2) Instant Messaging: Instant whole-group broadcast communications.
 * 3) Ecosystems: Small is Beautiful … but Big is Powerful.
 * 4) Clustering: Engaging many through the few.

Collective Leadership
For example, a goose leads the part of the migration journey where it knows the way, and it flies back into the V and waits for another goose to take over when it recognizes "I don't know where to go next".[1]

This is usually not the norm in most corporate cultures.

How to encourage the "the right leader for the right task at the right time" to step forward from within the OpenAgile community?

Instant Messaging
Bees use dances and ants use chemical pheromones in their trails to send very short and very simple messages or "alerts" of two types:


 * Opportunity Messages: Food, nesting materials, prey
 * Threat Messages: Predators, rival colonies

It is important to note that:


 * These messages are group broadcasts and are not replied to.
 * They are received and acted upon immediately; there is no concept of a 2-stage communication that is received at point A and acted on later at point B.

A critical point is that these instant messages are so simple they really act just as "alerts." The recipient has to "decide" what to do. Such instant messages do not convey orders or instructions.[1]

''What are the "Opportunity Messages" that OpenAgile champions should be looking for and broadcasting? Engagement Meetings, Training Sessions, similar groups to network with? Probably the only "Threat Message" to avoid at this point are disunity and excessive conflict.''

Ecosystems
In nature, the size of the group is always right for the job and small groups link into bigger groups, that in turn link into still bigger groups. Where you a have a very large group or a crowd, it is only possible to achieve coordinated action if each member does the same thing at the same time.[1]

The small groups allow innovation, complex coordination and "division of labor", while the larger crowds allow greater scale and range.

''How is it possible to encourage innovation and adaptation on a local scale while still having coordinated action on the larger scale? IMHO, this seems to be part of the "leadership crisis" that happened within some of the larger, more well known Agile communities and talked about by some of the smaller less well known Radical and Agile Management Circles''

Clustering
In most naturally occurring networks, some of the (individual) nodes have many more connections than the average [1]. Examples include neurons in the brain. More practically: do you have a friend who seems to know everyone?

These highly connected people are described elsewhere in various terms, including alpha users,connectors and influentials. But no matter what they are called, if they are well managed and motivated they can provide the most efficient and effective channels for the team to engage with its wider community. [1]

How do we encourage more highly networked individuals to explore OpenAgile and become Champions and thus "engage the many through the few"?

[1] Examples and excerpts from The Bioteaming Breakthrough for High Performance Teams By: Ken Thompson, author of "Bioteams: High Performance Teams Based on Nature's Most Successful Designs" Source: http://www.bpminstitute.org/articles/article/article/the-bioteaming-breakthrough-for-high-performance-teams.html