How self selection lets people excel
David Mole, Sandy Mamoli 2015. (View Paper → )
We believe that the fastest and most efficient way to form stable agile teams is to let people choose their own team. This was a scary prospect when we first considered handing over the decision making responsibility to the people involved. We were frightened whether it would work, whether people would make the right choices and whether we would be breaking up fights between our developers and finding out we had empty, unpopular teams. Fast-forward two years and the self-selection process has had a profound effect on the New Zealand based company where we piloted the concept. Since then it has had a hugely positive impact on all the companies who have since followed the process and in particular on us as Agile Coaches
I’m skeptical about how robust this approach would be across different companies - seems to me like you’d have to have the right right people, culture, company and timing for this to work.