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Advantages of Working With Agile POD Teams

The term “agile POD” refers to a collective composed of responsible and talented people or professionals. Members of this small group or “pod” bring a variety of expertise to the collective. The aim of the group is to deliver a defined product successfully. Usually, it takes multiple iterations and a host of different manual skills for an impressive product delivery.

There are generally three to nine members in a pod. Each member manages certain backlog parts while focusing on a single task. Every pod teammate is self-organizing, highly functional, adaptable and autonomous. This enables a pod to come up with flexible solutions for different problems.

Advantages of Deploying Agile POD Teams

In addition to versatile problem-solving and faster product delivery, pod teams offer the following benefits –

• Usually, multiple pods function together while focusing on their individual projects. This creates a highly functional and productive environment. Pod members find it much easier to stick to deadlines and pay attention to details.
• This means less mistakes and more time for testing new products instead of mitigating avoidable disasters.
• Pod members understand how a group or company works at a macroscopic level. They learn how different departments and employees use a variety of skills and expertise to work together in the pursuit of common goals. This encourages pod members to be more aware of cross-functionality.
• Every pod member is an expert in their respective skill or field. They are solely responsible for their part of the project. This means decisions do not have to travel up a hierarchy for approval. The expert pod member can make important decisions quickly on their own.
• Pod members build deeper and more constructive relationships with stakeholders, sponsors and clients. This allows them to understand the needs and requirement in depth.
• The chances of a successful delivery are much higher when there is a greater understanding between the client and the provider.
• New consultants can truly thrive in pods. The pod environment offers a fail-safe model which allows new consultants to experiment with new ideas without the fear of rejection or failure.
• More ideas translate to better and more advanced developments in a product.
• The pod model functions as a high-demanding course on management. Each pod member is trained to be efficient, social and extremely organized.
• After receiving this training, pod members can join any project or department and work with the same level of energy and outcome. They can even inspire new teams to bring the best out of them.  

For more information on Agile requirements or Agile POD teams, please visit www.microgreentech.com