The BIG Difference Between Agile Teams and Project Teams

Last week I ran an Agile Coach Training session in-house for a large Canadian organization. It was just myself and five other participants. We were discussing possible things to do if there is a person on an agile team who is not able to work effectively in that sort of environment. One “intervention” we discussed was to “Assign Work”…

Pause

Now hopefully everyone who just read that phrase “Assign Work” had all sorts of alarm bells go off in their head!!!!

As an Agile coach, I would only do this under extreme circumstances. And I would always be fully aware of the consequence of assigning work. I would be removing that person from the team by Assigning Work. A person is not in an Agile (self-organizing) team if they need to be assigned work.

Guess what?!? THAT is the BIG difference between Agile Teams and Project (or Functional) Teams.

On a project, the Project Manager gets someone onto the team by assigning them work!!!!

On an Agile Team, a person is removed from the team by assigning them work.

Have you seen this happen? How did the assignee feel?