What’s Agile Swarming, And How Can You Benefit From It?

Agile swarming is a great agile collaboration technique that pushes a team to collaborate at high levels, preventing it from falling into independent, asynchronous work.

Want to learn more about this superior collaboration method? Read on the blog…

In project management, it's very common to see each team member working on their own to create their part. The team then get together at the end, and once everything is completed the work is submitted.

The problem is, this set up is less than ideal. That's why more teams are trying to collaborate more and work together on their deliverables. Many are choosing to do this via agile swarming. What it this, and how can it benefit your team?

What Is Agile Swarming?

Firstly, let's take a look at what agile swarming is, exactly. What does it mean for you and your team?

If you're trying to work together more as a team, you'll be an Agile team. That's a team that works to lift each other up, and optimize each other's performances. As such, there's less emphasis on completing more tasks than other members of the team, or being the 'best' in the team. It's all about that group effort.

Agile Swarming, in this case, is a method by which Agile teams complete their projects. It's most commonly used on high priority single work items with short turn around cycles. When there's a need for a 'all hands on deck' approach, then you'll see that swarming is the way to go.

When this would happen, the production line would be stopped, and the engineers would then 'swarm' around the station that had pulled the cord. That would ensure that if the problem was significant, the issue could be solved before it became worse later down the line.

At first, that sounds rather counterproductive. If you're stopping work every time a defect is found, then you're making the work slower, right? The fact is, you're bringing everyone together to examine the issue and discuss it. Because you're doing this, you can benefit from everyone's knowledge.

Toyota ended up making the Andon Method a core part of their production lines, and saw that it helped them quickly fix problems, stop them from happening again, and actually sped up their production as they decreased the issues that6 were happening.

Translating the Andon method to other industries: While this method was at first developed in manufacturing, it has made its way to other industries too. It's especially helpful in software development, engineering, and marketing have all benefited from what has become known as agile swarming.

The method is mostly the same when it comes to swarming. If one person comes across an issue, they can put out a signal. That's easy to do with modern tech like work boards and in team message clients. Once everyone has got the signal, they can then get together and start discussing how to handle the problem.

Let's look at an example of agile swarming to see how it would work. In a telecommunications setting, a help desk employee can pick up a help desk ticket. As this ticket contains complex issues for the customer, the employee doesn't have all the skills needed to solve it for them.

Because of this, they'll decide to ask for help from the rest of the team. At this point they'll 'swarm', coming together to find a solution. Because the initial employee called for help, they were able to solve that customer's problem quickly. That leads to improved customer satisfaction and retention.

Why Implement Agile Swarming In Your Team?

You've seen just how agile swarming works, but would it work in your team? There are several benefits that you could take advantage of if you want to use it. Here's how it could benefit your team when they're working.

Together as a team you'll come up with a solution, and be able to hammer out any issues with relative ease. Once you've done that, you're going to avoid any bigger issues later down the line. That will save time as you won't have to wrestle with more complex issues that have been allowed to develop over time.

Improve end product quality: One of the best benefits of agile swarming is that it's going to improve the quality of that final product. Again, take that Toyota production line. They were aiming to reduce the defects that they found in their products, so they stopped and dealt with defects whenever they found them.

Potential conflict: When there's more people from different teams suddenly brought together, it's natural that there may be conflict. That's something that you can't really avoid, but it can be dealt with swiftly with a good management style.

Disorganization: As there's so many people trying to work together, it can get disorganized quickly. Members of the team may start to try multitasking, and that creates problems if not avoided. Using a clear method for swarming should mitigate most of this.

Not right for every product: You won't be able to use agile swarming on every single project that you're working on. While it works well for a new user story, for example, it won't be right for other tasks. As such, you're going to need to find other methods to ensure top work here.

How Will Agile Swarming Benefit Your Business?

You've seen that there are a whole lot of benefits that your team can take advantage of when it comes to agile swarming. There are several reasons why it should become part of your everyday workflow.

Bring down wait times: As you saw in the example above, the customer didn't have to wait long for someone to solve their issue for them. Instead, the whole team came together to work out what needed to be done next.

As you're using swarming to bring teams together, you'll see that wait times and bottlenecks are very much reduced. You don't have to wait around for the right person to tackle the problem, as everyone will come together and workshop it.

Being able to reduce those wait times will have a real impact on the overall product and customer satisfaction. When they know that they're getting quick response times, they'll be more likely to buy or work with you again.

Increase shared knowledge: If you're using swarming in your workplace, your teams are going to have more interaction than before. That has a lot of benefits, such as helping them get to know each other. Another great benefit is that they'll start learning from each other when they're working together.

Every team member will have a different set of skills, and they'll be sharing them together as they work. This is a benefit that's great for both you and your team. They'll be able to build extra skills that are valuable to them, and when they do that they can offer those skills to you.

Increase team collaboration: As mentioned at the beginning of this guide, team collaboration isn't as emphasized in a traditional project management style. The team all work their parts alone. That does have its own benefits, but they're outweighed by the fact that the team aren't picking up on what the others are doing, and problems can go unnoticed.

With swarming though, this doesn't happen. The teams get together more regularly, and help each other get to the bottom of any issue they come across. When they're doing this, they're actually learning to work and collaborate together.

This is highly beneficial, as a team that can work together will be able to get better and better at it over time. The more they work together, the more used to it they'll be and the faster they'll be at getting results.

That's important as when swarming does need to occur, you'll see that everyone knows what the goal is, and what you need to be working on. That saves time when you do need to be working on a solution to a problem as you'll all know what the best outcome would be.

That's something that you don't have to worry about when you're using agile swarming. As the team all come together to work on problems, you're going to see exactly what's going on at all times. Everyone know what's happening, making it one of the most transparent ways to work. If that's a major concern of yours, then you'll want to try swarming.

Wrapping Up

Agile swarming is offering a different method of team working, something that really takes advantage of what every single team member can bring to the group. You'll be able to solve issues quickly, as every time there's a problem everyone puts their head together to solve it.

As such, you can see why so many businesses are looking to bring agile swarming to their teams. It offers so many benefits that you should be taking advantage of. If you've never used it before, there's never been a better time to experiment with it. You'll see just why it's one of the best ways to put out products quickly and effectively.

As one of the pioneer agile software development companies, we at Bridge Global, help our clients produce a viable product in no time by agile swarming. Hire our developers to know how we deliver high-value features swiftly.