Why are higher‐order factors all trending up or down while team effectiveness goes in the other direction - theliberators/columinity.docs GitHub Wiki

You may encounter a situation in which the five core factors of Agile Team Effectiveness show a negative or positive trend, whereas "Team Effectiveness" shows the opposite trend. This may seem odd; if "Continuous Improvement," "Team Autonomy," "Stakeholder Concern," and other core factors show a positive (or negative) trend, how can team effectiveness show an opposite trend?

To better understand this, it's important to understand that we calculate "Team Effectiveness" independently from the five core factors, meaning that "Team Effectiveness" is not calculated from those five preceding factors. Although we measure "Team Effectiveness" independently, our research shows that the five factors (e.g., "Management Support," "Responsiveness," etc.) predict a lot (between 60-75%) of the variance in "Team Effectiveness" on average across teams and organizations. So for a fairly simple model - with five factors - we can predict quite a substantial amount of the actual team effectiveness. At the same time, any model is necessarily a simplification of a much more complex world. Other factors outside our model also influence team effectiveness. While increases in the five core factors are usually accompanied by increases in effectiveness (and vice versa), this is not always the case.

If you find you have results like this, the following is useful to do with teams:

• Explore what else seems to be going on in or around this team that may influence the results beyond the model. If you discover an important factor that isn't included in the model, please let us know at [email protected]. We're always trying to make the model more comprehensive.
• If "Team Effectiveness" is entirely based on surveys from team members, it is possible that the results are biased. Sometimes, team members are overly optimistic or pessimistic, which may influence their self-rated scores for "Team Morale" and "Stakeholder Satisfaction." We highly recommend also inviting stakeholders to offer their perspectives, as they can counter such biases.
• "Team Effectiveness" may lag in trends on other factors. So the five core factors trends may manifest more clearly for Team Effectiveness a few months from now.