The Average Team

Continuing our discussion of teams on the software team spectrum this post describes signs of average teams. I’ve been a member of a number of these teams. When willing, these teams are capable of moving towards high performance with guidance.

Differentiating an average team from a high performing team can be more difficult if you’ve never seen a high performing team in action. Here we’ll contrast the average team with the low and high performing teams to give you an idea of where your team lands.

Mostly Reliable Estimates

Unlike a poor performing team the estimates provided by the average team are reasonably reliable. It’s fairly rare for an estimate to be incorrect by months but not uncommon for them to be out by weeks. What differentiates these teams from the high performers is usually the timeframe when you’ll learn about estimates being incorrect. An average team will tend to continue trying to meet their original estimate by working extra hours, or they’ll quietly just let the work slip into the next iteration without notifying stakeholders. If you’ve heard, “we didn’t finish that but hopefully this sprint”, from your team then you know what this is like.

Bugs Happen

The scale of how many bugs are present in your system naturally lands between the two extremes. Most times it’s pretty easy to blow off the number of bugs an average team releases because it’s not an extreme amount and usually they’ll fix the issue reasonably quickly. While a stakeholder may determine that the impact of these bugs are low enough to ignore, it is a sign of an average team when features are released with “a couple of small issues”.

The Product is Usable

On the scale of user satisfaction your product lands squarely in the middle. User’s are glad the product gets their job done but they’re likely not raving about it. Features they’d love to have take a long time to reach them and often come with trade offs they didn't expect.

Chances are pretty good that your team is average - the statistics don’t lie. Whether you’re at the low end or the high end of the average range is somewhat insignificant. The results you’ll see from either one will vary but not likely in massive ways. There are things each team does well and often things they are unaware of that could amplify their results and nudge them into the high performing category.