This is part 7 of a 10-part series I am writing on Agile Project Management, by Jim Highsmith.

After the Speculate phase comes the Explore phase. The purpose of Exploring is to deliver working, tested product features. It is the job of the agile project manager to create a team that can deliver those features.

The agile project manager has several practices at their disposal for generating a high-performance team. Forming the team from individuals is the first task. The goal is to encourage community and a sense of team identity. One practice that helps is a daily team meeting Scrum-style; the meeting is brief and each member goes over what they did the previous day, what they plan to do today, and any obstacles hindering their progress. Daily meetings with the customer team helps focus the team on delivering results, not compliance work. Giving team members the responsibility to manage their own workloads is also a team builder. It generates buy-in from each team member, and avoids micromanagement. Participatory decision-making is perhaps the most important. Although some decisions are made individually by the team leader, the majority of the decisions are participatory. This does not mean consensus is achieved, but that everyone has given their input and agreed to live by the decision, even if it is not their preferred outcome.

The Explore phase also includes all of the software development practices. Solid software development practices like test-driven development, refactoring, simple design, and continuous integration would be found here, but the book is more focused on the management of agile projects (that’s the title, anyway). Highsmith refers readers to XP (Extreme Programming) for further information.