Does Columinity Work For My Type Of Team?

Can teams that don't develop software use Columinity? YES! Can Columinity be used by teams that don't use Agile or Scrum? YES! Can Columinity be used for teams where people don't always work together? YES!

In this post, we explain how to leverage the science and research behind Columinity for almost any team.

A Tool For Teams

Continuous improvement for teams isn't easy. We designed Columinity to help teams self-diagnose using evidence-based scientific models and identify research-based actionable improvements. This is done through psychometrically validated surveys filled out by team members, stakeholders, and supporters.

Columinity works best for teams that:

• Are actual teams in the sense that they are people working together on tasks toward short-term and long-term goals.
• Deliver some valuable outcome (a product, a service or other deliverables) to stakeholders (i.e. users, customers, other stakeholders).

Columinity does not require:

• Specific methodologies or approaches (i.e., Agile or Scrum).
• That teams perform technical work (i.e., coding, testing).
• That teams use an iterative approach. Although we do recommend it.

Three scientific models: three perspectives

Columinity offers teams three scientific models for self-diagnosis. Each model approaches teamwork from a slightly different angle and identifies factors contributing to overall team effectiveness. The models overlap partially, so each model adds to the richness of the data available for your team.

You can choose the model whenever you set up a survey for a team:

Agile Team Effectiveness

Agile methodologies promise organizations that they make them more capable of adapting rapidly to changes in the market and customer needs, and to stay ahead of the competition. But the strong focus on frameworks and methodological details sometimes distracts from this goal. We developed an agnostic model that identifies five core factors for effective Agile (teams). It is based on a peer-reviewed study by Verwijs & Russo (2023) of 1.978 teams (4.940 members).

This model measures teams on five core factors:

• How responsive is a team to changes?
• How focused is a team on the needs of stakeholders, and what is valuable to them?
• To what extent does a team operate in a climate of continuous improvement?
• How much autonomy does a team have to make changes?
• To what extent are teams supported by management?

This model is most suited for:

• Non-technical and technical teams that practice Agile methodologies, such as Scrum, XP, LeSS, SAFe, etc.
• Teams that deliver some shared outcome to stakeholders, like a product or service.
• At the time of writing, this model assumes that teams use iterations or recurring timeboxes in which work is delivered. While teams that don't use iterations can still enter 95% of the questionnaire, some questions may not apply.

Teamwork Quality

Teamwork is the defining component of high-performing teams. When team members genuinely work together to achieve short- and long-term goals, they become more productive, and work becomes more enjoyable. Unfortunately, few organizations can capitalize on this. This model allows you to evaluate teams from this perspective.

This model measures teams on three core factors:

• Teamwork quality, composed of social cohesion, task cohesion, social identification, task interdependence and team goal commitment.
• Supporting factors, such as work focus, psychological safety, leadership and support structures in the organization.

This model can be used by any kind of team. Some questions in the survey may not apply to some teams, but you can simply skip them.

Agile mindset

When teams have an agile mindset, they see value in continuous learning, close collaboration with stakeholders, taking control of their own work, and working together as a team. If such a mindset is present in teams throughout an organization, it provides a strong competitive advantage. We developed a model with Dr. Karen Eilers based on her research into Agile mindsets.

The model measures Agile mindset and the factors that contribute to its formation:

• Agile mindset and its four sub-dimensions: customer co-creation, collaborative exchange, learning spirit and empowered self-guidance.
• Three core factors that evaluate how well organizations support teams in their ability to develop an agile mindset; knowledge impulses, work design and leadership.

This model can be used by any kind of team, regardless of whether or not they use an agile methodology to support the development of such a mindset. Teams that don't use Agile methodologies can be very agile in their thinking nonetheless.

Survey customization to fine-tune measurement

Each model in Columinity comes with a set of overlapping factors. You can fine-tune the factors further to make it fit your team. To do so, choose the "Advanced" flow when setting up a new scan, and go to the "Select topics"-step and click "Customize topics".

Skip questions that don't make sense

The various models and survey customization should allow you to customize the survey to fit most teams. However, if you still run into questions that don't make sense in your context, you can always skip them without issue:

Skipping a few questions in the survey won't meaningfully impact your results. Some factors may not be measured if you skip many questions, but this is probably desirable in that case. Columinity is designed to intelligently aggregate team- and organization-level results.

The Best Strategy: Experiment

Finally, no model or survey can account for every variation in teamwork. Even with all the above, you may run into scenarios where a model or survey doesn't work for your team. The best way to discover this is to try. Columinity is free for individual teams, and you can do as many scans with the various models if you want. The worst that can happen is that you inspect the results as a team, and conclude that the chosen model doesn't deliver useful insights. But more often than not, you'll be surprised just by how many useful insights originate from even models that don't seem to fit so well at first glacen. Experiment!

You can evaluate your team(s) with Columinity. Go to columinity.com to try it now. Our free plan is great for individual teams, but with a paid plan, you can track many factors across many teams in the same or different organizations.