Guitar tuning and team dynamics

At 14 I was given my first guitar. The make and model escape me now, but it was a natural wood toned acoustic guitar. Having zero ability nor musical ability, I whaled on it like any child looking to make it into the revolving Van Halen lineup of the mid 90’s. Eventually, I learned you need to take care and tune this instrument to make it sound close to how it should. I would hear it sound progressively more horrible over time and take it to someone to tune it for me. This became old fast. I then noticed I would hear the tuning go more acutely, and picked up a device to help dial in the tuning. Eventually I could hear as a single string lost its tone and would slowly move away from using my tuning device all together. I was tuning by ear — and my playing marginally approved too :-)

Teams are like guitar tuning. The team is the music (early, more akin to the whaling) the value delivered is the guitar, and the maturity level is the time needed to notice you are out of tune. Beyond Tuckman’s stages of group development (forming, storming, norming, performing) is the environmental and cultural influences that impact a team. Are the teams co-located or virtual, are they a blend of organizations, or do they flow into a single reporting structure, are they all from the same legacy group, or is there a mix of newly acquired talent joining, and are these teams multi-talented, or do they all work in the same domain. Learning from each other allows for teams to realize when they lose tune. However, having an engaged coach to assist them getting back in tune and point out when they drop a half step, allows for faster recognition loops.

Over time, teams become self aware and course correct naturally with less reliance on coaches. The issues become smaller as there is more group context, so the tuning process is much less disruptive. Eventually, the team is fully tuning by ear when they reach the point of high performance.

I love the opportunity for continuous improvement. In scrum, we have the retrospective ceremony for this. At its core, the retrospective is a great time for teams to tune and optimize themselves. So the next time you see a musician tuning his guitar, realize the great impact he is having on software delivery :-)