Dynamic Teams: Reteaming Patterns & Practices • Heidi Helfand & Charles Humble • GOTO 2024

• Teams naturally change and evolve over time - attempting to keep them completely stable is impractical and can be counterproductive

• Five key patterns for reteaming:

  • One-by-one: Individual joining/leaving
  • Grow and split: Teams getting too large and dividing
  • Merging: Combining teams
  • Isolation: Dedicated teams for specific initiatives
  • Switching: Moving between teams for learning/resilience

• Successful onboarding requires focusing on belonging and connection - both for new hires and existing team members

• Isolated teams can be highly effective when given process freedom and autonomy while maintaining appropriate communication channels with the broader organization

• Values and culture need to be authentic and demonstrably useful - they should actively guide decision making rather than being mere slogans

• Transparency and inclusion are critical during reorganizations - involving people in designing future team structures leads to better outcomes

• Team size impacts communication and decision-making effectiveness - signs like longer standups and diverging work indicate potential need to split

• Physical location changes (even within same building) can help teams establish new patterns and ways of working

• Having local team coaches (separate from managers) can help facilitate team development and conflict resolution

• Timeline visualization exercises help teams build shared understanding of their history and evolution

• Regular reflection and adjustment of team structures should be viewed as normal rather than disruptive

[End of Summary]