Part 4: Multiteams, Short-term, and Long-term Goals

“Hi, Dr. Khan,” Maria smiled while entering the beautiful office of Dr. Khan with a very young boy. “First, thanks a lot for giving us time; let me make an introduction. Dr. Khan, he is Obi, our new Scrum Master; Obi, this is Dr. Khan, wonder women of our company.”

“Welcome onboard, Obi” Dr. Khan smiled and shook hands with Obi.

Obi is smiling all ears and enthusiastically replies, “Nice to meet you; when Maria told Dr. Khan, I couldn’t recognize you at that time, but now I know that we already met at one conference at our University, and you were a speaker there.”

“Oh, nice to know that,” Dr. Khan replied and smiled.

After settling down, Maria started speaking. “Let me give you a little background; you are probably already aware that Mr. Fischer broke our API team into two teams, the Data and API team, and now there is already a discussion going on to create one more, the Platform team. Obi joined us as a Scrum Master of the newly created Data team and possibly will be a Scrum Master of the new Platform team too.”

Dr. Khan was, as usual, listing patiently without saying a single word the whole time. When Maria didn’t speak further and looked puzzled, Dr. Khan responded with only one word, “And?”

Maria still looked puzzled, then said, “I don’t know how to explain, but I am confused about how these three teams will work. Is it just one big team with three sub-teams, or what?” Dr. Khan thought for a second, then asked Obi, “And what do you think, Obi?”

Obi was not expecting a direct question, paused for a moment, then started speaking while collecting thoughts, “Maria explained to me what you taught her last time; what team is it? It looks like one big team, although from a management point of view, we break into three, it is still one big team.”

Maria started speaking, “That’s exactly what my confusion is. I thought these were three different teams, but when Obi pointed out that they have the same common goals, mutual accountability, and interdependency, it is one team. We need to understand it better; therefore, we came here.”

Dr. Khan smiled and said, “I think I understand your confusion, but interestingly the answer to this is available not only in academic literature but also in Scrum Guide itself; from where do you want me to start from academia or from the Scrum Guide?.”

Maria and Obi looked at Dr. Khan in surprise but didn’t speak a single word.

Dr. Khan continued, “Ok, let me start from the literature; it is known as Multiteam System, sometimes abbreviated as MTS. The first time I learned about this was in a 2008 paper written by Leslie DeChurch and John Mathieu, if I remember the name correctly (Mathieu & DeChurch, 2018), although this concept was first introduced in 2001. By the way, this and lots of other interesting papers are collected in one book, ‘Team Effectiveness in Complex Organization’ (Salas et al., 2013), in case you want to find more information.”

“So basically, it is neither one big team nor multiple teams,” Maria replied.

“It depends on how you organize them; let’s go to the basics; this is what we discussed last time,” Dr. Khan stood up and drew this on a board.

Maria nodded.

We discussed a little bit about types of interdependencies last time, pooled, sequential, and reciprocal interdependency. This time we will discuss a common goal in more detail.”

Dr. Khan stopped here and seemed to be giving them time to think. Obi is still hesitant to speak, but after some time, Maria asks, “You mean we are going to discuss different types of goals this time?”

“Exactly, but try to keep it simple” Dr. Khan smiled.

“The first thing that came to my mind is a personal and team goal,” Obi replied this time.

“Good one, let’s focus only on the team goal and ignore personal goal for a moment, let me give you a hint, consider from the time perspective,” Dr. Khan guided them.

“Can it be a short-term goal vs. a long-term goal,” Maria spoke hesitantly.

“Precisely,” Dr. Khan replied, “although, in literature, they call it proximal and distal goals, but you got the concept.”

“And how is it related to our situation?” Maria asked

“Good question; if their long-term goals are the same, but short-term goals are different, then it is the Mutiteam system; on the other hand, if both long-term and short-term goals are different, then it is multiple teams,” Dr. Khan replied and stopped.

After some thought, Obi asked, “what if their short-term goals are the same, but long terms goals are different?”

“Hmm, that’s an interesting situation,” Dr. Khan thought for a moment, then replied, “I guess it will happen when two or more teams are going to do some short terms collaborations,” she draws this table on the board.

“Now I am going to give my touch on it; this is what my thoughts are on the same topic,” Dr. khan continued. “Let me draw something on the board; for simplicity purposes, I used only three teams, but it can apply to more than three teams too.” She draws this diagram on the board.

“It is an example of multiple teams. Now support all teams have only one long terms goal; what do you call this?” Dr. Khan updates the diagram.

“It is a multiteam system with three teams,” Maria replied.

“Good, but do we have interdependencies among the team?” Dr. Khan asked

No one replied.

“If there are no interdependencies among individuals, then we can’t call it a team; it can be a group. Similarly, if there are no interdependencies among teams, I call it a “Group of teams,” Dr. Khan said. “Now let’s consider if teams have interdependencies among them,” she added a few arrows in the diagram, which would be like this.

“I call it ‘Team of Teams, ’” Dr khan said.

“Interesting, never thought from this angle before,” Maria said, and Obi nodded.

“Can we extend it further, like a team of teams of teams,” Maria asked.

“You are going too fast,” Dr. Khan again smiled, “Technically, yes, what about having “long-term goals, mid-term goals, and short-term goals, but you can imagine the complexities which it brings to,” Dr. Khan said.

Still deeply thinking, Obi asked, “Can you give us an example of a group of teams? Whatever example I think of, they have some interdependencies.”

“How many medals did the US win in Tokyo Olympics?” Dr. Khan asked unexpected questions.

“Over 100, don’t remember the exact number,” Obi replied.

“113 to be exact,” Dr. Khan replied while searching for something on her computer, then continued, “let’s focus only on Gold medals. 39 Gold medals, two for Men’s swimming, one for Women’s basketball, one for Men’s basketball, one for Women’s Water polo, and a lot more; if I am looking correctly, nine teams won Gold for the US. Now my question is did those teams have interdependencies among them, although they all have the same goal?”

Obi and Maria thought for a minute then Obi said, “I think I got it; no, they don’t, so it is an example of a Group of Teams, not a Team of Teams.”

“You mentioned that it is also mentioned in the Scrum Guide,” now Maria asked.

“Not only in the scrum guide but also in other agile-related literature, John Turner and a few more authors wrote a paper on it in 2019 (Turner et al., 2019) and a book, The Flow System (Turner et al., 2020) in 2020,” Dr. Khan said.

“Now comes to the scrum guide; in the 2020 version of the Scrum guide, there are only two sentences that discuss this topic; let’s take a look at those,” Dr. Khan offered. “One discusses the definition of done, another one discusses Scrum Team; let me read it for you.”

“If Scrum Teams become too large, they should consider reorganizing into multiple cohesive Scrum Teams; each focused on the same product. Therefore, they should share the same Product Goal, Product Backlog, and Product Owner.” (Scrum Guide, 2020)

“Can you observe that Mutiteams System or MTS, if they are working on the same product, they may have different Sprint Goals, their short-term goals, but have the same Product Goal, their long-term goal.” Dr. Khan explained.

Maria and Obi both got their aha moment simultaneously.

References

Mathieu, L. a. D. a. J. E. (2008). Thinking in Terms of Multiteam Systems. Team Effectiveness in Complex Organizations, 301–326. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203889312-19

Salas, E., Goodwin, G. F., & Burke, S. C. (2013). Team Effectiveness In Complex Organizations: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives and Approaches (SIOP Organizational Frontiers Series) (1st ed.). Routledge.

Scrum Guide | Scrum Guides. (2020). https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html

Turner, J. R., Thurlow, N., Baker, R., Northcutt, D., & Newman, K. (2019). Multiteam systems in an agile environment: a realist systematic review. Journal of Manufacturing Technology Management, 30(4), 748–771. https://doi.org/10.1108/jmtm-10-2018-0355

Turner, J., Thurlow, N., & Rivera, B. (2020). The Flow System: The Evolution of Agile and Lean Thinking in an Age of Complexity. University of North Texas Press.