Author: Savita Pahuja

Team Alignment

It is difficult to get every team member to change how they think overnight. Rather than trying to build understanding about agile methods as a full set, first align everyone on goals, roles and skills, values, rules and activities. This is a good way to avoid conflicts in a team. Alex Ivanov and Mitya Voloshuk present a model called Team Canvas for team alignment.
The Team Canvas is a Business Model Canvas for teamwork. It is a free tool for leaders, facilitators and consultants to organize team alignment meetings and bring members on the same page, resolve conflicts and build productive culture, fast. Alex and Mitya says that based on their experience and research on company cultures, they identified the key components of self-leading teams that tend to have a) sustainable creative culture and b) high performance standards. Summing up in three words, it is a mix of purpose, openness and mastery. Based on these attributes they came with the team canvas. Below is the example of the team canvas:

Goals: What are the goals for the whole team, as well as for each team member?

Roles and Skills: What are the roles and corresponding skills that each member posses in the team?

Values: What are the core values that you share as a team?

Rules and Activities: What are the ground rules that you want to agree on? How are you going to communicate? How would you make your decisions? How are you going to plan, execute and evaluate them?

All the above mentioned techniques bring value in a positive environment where people feel safe to express themselves and try new things. Without the right culture as a foundation, tools and processes won’t get you very far.