Facilitation Crew
Crew Type
A Facilitation Crew enables other Crews to get their work done.
Crew Types: Governance Crew • Value Stream Crew • Facilitation Crew • Capability Crew • Platform Crew • Experience Crew • Partnership Crew
Purpose
Sometimes, you need a Crew whose sole purpose is to help other Crews do a great job. Such teams have no value stream of their own. Instead, they ensure that the Value Stream Crews in the Base can operate smoothly. Examples would be a team of Scrum Masters or agile coaches.
The work on a Facilitation Crew is typically a full-time job. The number of Crew members could be smaller than the number of Value Stream Crews, so each member of a Facilitation Crew might divide their time and availability across more than one team.
Notes
Besides coaches and facilitators, others who could organize themselves as Facilitation Crews are product managers, architects, and testers. On their own, they have little to do. Their work entirely depends on what happens on the value streams. That's where they contribute their value, and that's where they do their job.
The Facilitation Crew is inspired by (but NOT the same as) the “enabling team” in Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow.
Rules / Constraints
The Facilitation Crew supports the Value Stream Crews.
The Facilitation Crew does not have its own value stream.
“Cooperation is the thorough conviction that nobody can get there unless everybody gets there.”
(Source: Virginia Burden)
Visual MS is a Spanish business software development group with 114 employees organizing with different Product Type Turfs and scaling up via bases, leagues, and a crowd.
Exploring the application of unFIX patterns in the structure and dynamics of Visual MS group. Visual MS highlights the importance of psychological safety and the sense of belonging, two fundamental aspects in unFIX, creating a special synergy of the model with the organization.