Focus on Team Capability
Team capability reflects the capacity of the team relative to the scale of the work. It also reflects the abilities of the team relative to the technical complexity of the work. If there is insufficient team capability the rate of delivery and quality of service will both suffer. If there is too much team capability, members will be bored and demotivated. The team seeks to balance its supply of capability against the demand for capability from its product.
In a Nutshell
Our teams must be capable of delivering the work that is demanded of them. There must be sufficient capacity within the team to deliver the volume of work in needed timescales. There must be sufficient ability to meet the technical demands made on the team.
Demand for capacity and ability vary over the lifetime of a product. Defining the capacity we require is a potentially complex balancing of cost, expected return on investment, understanding of customers’ needs and many other factors. In any case, capacity is slow to change because we seek to have stable, integrated and high-performing teams.
Ability is, perhaps, less complex to define, but is also slow to change. To add to our abilities as a team, we must add new skills and must then navigate the learning curve. Alternatively we can bring in new colleagues who already possess the skills. However, the team will need to re-form in order to start performing again.
Practices
To deliver and support the product the team needs a full range of skills to avoid reliance on other teams, experts and other potential points of failure. The team needs to sustain its abilities in the face of inevitable changes in membership. It also needs to take account of developments in the technology it already uses and of the need to adopt new technologies that may be forecast in the product’s roadmap.
The capacity of the teams delivering a product constrains the rate at which new features can be added and feature improvements delivered. Sustaining capacity relative to demand over time is important because of the high cost of trying to change quickly. The rate of change of capacity is limited by the requirement for teams to adjust to changing membership and for new team members to acquire the ability to deliver.
Acquiring new abilities within the team takes time and effort. To acquire sufficient ability so that new technologies can be used or new working practices adopted, the team needs to be prepared. The Product Roadmap provides insight into the technical strategy for the product. The team also needs to stay up to date with developments in the technology that it uses or plans to use so that its delivery capability is sustained.
The capacity of the teams delivering a product constrains the rate at which new features can be added and feature improvements delivered. Sustaining capacity relative to demand over time is important because of the high cost of trying to change quickly. The rate of change of capacity is limited by the requirement for teams to adjust to changing membership and for new team members to acquire the ability to deliver.