Leave your comfort zone

This post is part of 101 ideas for agile teams.

Context

Knowledge is not shared in the team, there are specialists working in silos.

Action

Developers should not always work only in their main area of expertise. They should take a task of work outside their comfort zone from time to time. For example, if you are a user interface expert (you know all the little dirty secrets of all the controls) then help working on data access code, too.

What you gain

Know-how transfer — more people know about all aspects of your software.

Increases courage — team members will have the heart to do tasks outside their expertise, thus lowering risks of bottlenecks and enforcing team spirit.

How to strengthen

More than one person has to work on a user story, otherwise it will not get accepted.

Put a limit on the user stories that can be “Work in Progress” that is one smaller than the team size.

Practise pair programming.

Risks

Lower productivity due to team members working outside their expertise. Balance this with the reduced risk of potential knowledge loss.

More ideas at 101 ideas for agile teams

Many thanks to bbv Software Services for making this blog post possible.