Disciplined agilists strive to add value to the whole, not just to their individual work or to the team’s work. The implication is that we want to collaborate both within our team and with others outside our team, and we also want to be proactive doing so. Waiting to be asked is passive, observing that someone needs help and then volunteering to do so is proactive. We have observed that are three important opportunities for proactive collaboration:
- Within our team. We should always be focused on being awesome and on working with and helping out our fellow team members. So, if we see that someone is overloaded with work or is struggling to work through something, don’t just wait to be asked but instead volunteer to help out.
- With our stakeholders. Awesome teams have a very good working relationship with their stakeholders, collaborating with them to ensure that what they do is what the stakeholders actually need.
- Across organizational boundaries. Your organization is a complex adaptive system (CAS) of teams interacting with other teams.