Working in iterations, taking care of quality, estimating work items efficiently, and collaborating with other team members take time and patience. However, if there is no chance of reaching a high commitment-to-progress ratio, then the team coach should react appropriately by discovering and addressing the underlying reasons. The most common reasons for continuous over-commitment include the following:
- The factors influencing the commitment-to-progress ratio are set up in an unfavorable way: tasks are too difficult for your team to grasp, the definition of “done” is too vague, the environment is distracting, etc.
- The environment cannot be embraced by the team members in a predictable fashion due to nature of the tasks (see part 2)
- Team members do not possess key skills.
- The team members feel a strong pressure (real or imaginary) to deliver more and, as a result, commit to more than they can handle. Because of this, they cannot focus on improvements and tend to repeat the same flaws.
- The team has no motivation to change their way of working.
It might also be tough for experienced teams to embrace new subjects, which results in a long period of over-commitment. However, the more a team is mature, the less time it takes for its members to get back to the high ratio.
Figure 6: Sudden ratio deterioration
About the author
Aleksander Brancewicz helps agile teams achieve outstanding results. In his career he has coached teams comprising of agile newbies as well as very experienced agile team members. Besides agile team building his areas of interest are new media product management and software architecture. He lives together with his wife and daughter in Amstelveen in the Netherlands.
