The standard for project management

 

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Section 4

4.3.3 GENERALIZING SPECIALISTS

Agile teams are cross-functional, but the people often do not start off that 

way. However, many successful agile teams are made up of generalizing 

specialists, or “T-shaped” people.

This means team members have both a focus specialty plus a breadth 

of experience across multiple skills, rather than a single specialization. 

Agile team members work to develop such characteristics due to intense 

collaboration and self-organization to swarm and get work done quickly, 

which requires them to routinely help each other.

A single person’s throughput is not relevant. Focusing on a single 

person’s throughput may even be harmful if it creates a bottleneck for the 

rest of the team. The goal is for the 

team

 to optimize the delivery of finished 

work to get feedback.

If the customer desires great results, such as rapid feature delivery with 

excellent quality, the team cannot be structured just with specialist roles 

in an attempt to maximize resource efficiency. The team’s objective is flow 

efficiency, optimizing the throughput of the entire team. Small batch sizes 

promote working together as a team. The product owner’s job is to make 

sure the team works on the highest-value work.

“I-SHAPED PEOPLE AND 

T-SHAPED PEOPLE”

Some people have deep 

specializations in one domain, but 

rarely contribute outside of that 

domain. These people are known 

in agile communities as “I-shaped 

people” since, like the letter “I,” 

they have depth, but not much 

breadth. By contrast “T-shaped 

people” supplement their expertise 

in one area with supporting, but 

less-developed skills in associated 

areas and good collaboration skills. 

As an example, a person who can 

test some areas of the product 

and develop different areas of 

the product is considered to be a 

T-shaped person.

A T-shaped person has a 

defined, recognized specialization 

and primary role, but has the 

skills, versatility, and aptitude for 

collaboration to help other people 

when and where necessary. This 

collaboration reduces hand-offs and 

the constraints of only one person 

being able to do the job.

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4.3.4 TEAM STRUCTURES

Teams have adopted agile principles and practices across many industries. They organize people into cross-functional 

teams to iteratively develop working products.

Some organizations have been able to create colocated, cross-functional teams; others have a different situation. 

Instead of having all team members colocated, some organizations have distributed or dispersed teams. Distributed 

teams have cross-functional teams in different locations. Dispersed teams may have each team member working in a 

completely different location, either in an office or from home. While these arrangements are not ideal due to increased 

communication costs, they may still be workable.