Think about the common practices of an agile team: daily stand-up meetings, retrospectives after every sprint, pair programming and buddy reviews, collaborating with customers, and more face-to-face time instead of mountains of documentation. What is the agenda behind all these operations? Frequent and open communication.

Managers who want high-performing agile teams may think this involves finding people who all possess every required skill. But in addition to that being unlikely, it would also be a bad idea; it's the mix of perspectives that really gives benefit and value to the business. Instead, find experts in individual skills who can collaborate well together.

In both improv and agile, there is a tight-knit community where everyone can explore possibilities and feel free to innovate. Without that community, there can be no trust or collaboration. Travis Klinker tells you how success in both improv and agile means exemplifying transparency, adaptability, and unity.

Status accounting is following the evolution of a configuration item through its lifecycle. Using application lifecycle management along with agile helps prevent mistakes, but lets you have the minimum amount of red tape; the team achieves an acceptable velocity without being unduly burdened with too much process.