A recent incident experienced by one of our SCRUM teams provided a great learning experience for me. I watched a SCRUM team consisting primarily of developers and testers work with IT to ensure that their new web application got rolled to the customer on time.
The software was rolled to a test server and IT was set to promote the application to stage. When IT rolled the application the clustered web servers had a bit fiddled somewhere way down in machine.config or something that made the app crash. Then what happened? The team dived in and helped resolve the issue, that’s what. There was a collective sense of responsibility for getting the application into the hands of the customer. IT was not addressed as the group that received the software after it was thrown over the wall, they were instantly part of the team.
This is crucial in a Software as a Service model. If you can’t get your web application deployed within 24 hours of final compile, it is time to start asking the hard questions about your internal cross-team relationships.
Agile works, but it only works with good people who can and do trust each other.