Team Empowerment

Empowering teams is one of the hardest challenges for tech companies going through an agile journey.

It’s not hard enough to start such a cultural change, but it’s even harder trying to maintain it. It is only through a mindset of continuous inspection and improvement that such a change is even possible.

As Marty Cagan says in his Inspired book:

we need teams of missionaries, not teams of mercenaries. Teams of missionaries are engaged, motivated, have a deep understanding of the business context, and tangible empathy for the customer.

Innovation can only come from an empowered and missionary team. The outcomes that can be achieved by these teams mean the difference between your company staying relevant in the market or not.

In the Infographic below I give some suggestions on how I believe we can achieve team empowerment. I tried to make it concise and with enough room for each team and organization to put their own 'flavour' on it:

What is your experience with empowering teams? What other tips or insights would you have for empowering teams?