You’d like your team to take on more responsibility when it comes to processes, problem solving and decision making? You want to understand what needs to be in place in order to foster efficient self-organization? You’ve come to the right place!

While self-management is the epitome of autonomy, and gives all the decision-making authority to the team, self-organization grants some of it. Amongst other things, members of a self-organized team are responsible for their own workload, distribute the workload amongst themselves, and take part in decision-making. According to several studies, self-organization has several beneficial effects such as improved productivity, response time and quality, as well as increased team and client satisfaction. That being said, you can’t just declare that your team is self-organized, and tell your team, “Figure it out!” To be successful, self-organization needs to rest on  the right context, and the right team characteristics.

So, what do you need to foster self-organization within your team? Studies show that well-functioning self-organized teams exhibit six fundamental characteristics to. This guide will show you practices for each of these characteristics, and allow you to quickly assess if they’re present in your team or not.

WHEN?

• You want to increase your team’s autonomy.
• You agree to delegate come management responsibilities to your team.
• You want your team to evolve toward self-organization.
• Your team members wish to evolve toward self-organization.

HOW?

• Start with the self-assessment in this guide, and meet with your team to explain your intention.
• Ask each of your team members to complete their own self-assessment using the worksheet.
• Have a group discussion about the results, and make sure that your team members also want to evolve toward self-organization.
• Determine which practices should be implemented as a priority to foster more self-organization.
• Of course, make thesedecisions as a team!

TO LEARN MORE

• Building Blocks for Self-OrganizingSoftware DevelopmentTeams: A Framework Model and EmpiricalPilot Study- Karhatsuet al. (2010)
• Is therea big5 in team work- Salas et al. (2005)
• Bittner Kurt, Le leadership Agile est la clé de l’auto-organisation