Interview: Jean Tabaka About Team Collaboration and RAPID Management

Posted by Abel Avram on Aug 01, 2008 04:10 AM

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Agile

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Collaboration,

Teamwork,

Agile Techniques,

Adopting Agile

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RAPID

In this interview made by Deborah Hartmann of InfoQ, JeanTabaka talks about team collaboration as a key ingredient of the Agile development, but she also mentions RAPID management as a solution for the product owners who found themselves in an Agile environment.

Watch: Jean Tabaka About Team Collaboration and RAPID Management (25 minutes).

During her consulting work aimed to help companies becoming Agile, Jean has discovered there are teams who do not want to become self organized, they don't want to make decisions, to take tasks or to make their own estimates. She found that as a surprise, and working with the respective teams she discovered that people were avoiding taking responsibility because they were afraid of consequences.

Another major issue Jean has discovered during consulting was related to the difficulties encountered by the product owners. In an Agile environment, the product owner has to collaborate and negotiate effectively with the team, he has to appropriately prioritize the backlog tasks and make decisions he knows he will be accountable for.

Jean talks about RAPID management, a decision making process, which eases the burden of the product owner by being provided with reliable information and by sharing the responsibility with the team. RAPID stands for:

R - Recommender. One who recommends something to the decision maker.

A - Agreer. Someone who is not a decision maker, but who has a veto on specific topics.

P - Performer. The development team is made up of performers.

I - Input. Someone who brings in valuable information. The developers can play the R, P and I roles.

D - Decider. The product owner is the final decider, but he makes his decisions in the general context of the RAPID process, having more complete information and sharing responsibility with others.

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