Everyone is Authoritative on a self-managed team

One of my teammates said the other day…

“It is important that someone authoritative review all requirements documents.”

I gave him one of my you-killed-my-dog looks.

Considering this definition of authoritative…

“Having due authority; having the sanction or weight of authority: an authoritative opinion.”

…or this one…

“Having an air of authority; accustomed to exercising authority; positive; peremptory; dictatorial.”

…then everyone on a self-managed team is authoritative. This is because they are empowered to track down any answers they do not have.

However, there is another definition of authoritative that may be relevant…

“Substantiated or supported by documentary evidence and accepted by most authorities in a field.”

The most successful self-managed teams are those that are cross-functional, providing them with a balanced view of problems from all sides. If they do not have the variety of inputs they require to answer the questions at hand, they must seek out the advice of the experts—quite often “the experts” translates to “the customer”.

Once the team has collected all available inputs, they weigh the pros and cons—the “whats”—and then the team formulates their best “hows”.

If a better solution comes along later, they don’t waste time and resources defending lesser solutions. They adapt to the better solution ASAP and learn from the experience.

Now, if members of the team aren’t asking the right questions or identifying the domain experts they must consult, then those are different problems—”impediments” in Scrum—and they must be addressed by the team. If those problems are not being addressed by the team or the leaders within the team, only then should they be addressed by a manager.

If you have a process where one person has to “sign-off” instead of a process that compiles the wisdom of the crowds—aka project stakeholders—then you do not have a self-managed team. You have a command-and-control operation, and you are on the slow road to success.