Agile is inherently a team-driven discipline, and collaboration is its lifeblood. Task 3, “Promote Collaborative Team Environment,” centers on fostering an environment where team members are empowered, aligned, and supported to deliver value collectively. Agile teams thrive when they share a clear vision, operate with mutual respect, and continuously improve how they work together.
Promoting collaboration is not just about good communication — it’s about building psychological safety, shared ownership, and interdependence. This task equips agile practitioners with the mindset and mechanisms to form high-performing teams, support team-level decisions, overcome silos, and coordinate across multiple teams in larger delivery settings. Collaboration must be deliberate and continuously cultivated, especially in complex, cross-functional environments.
Enabler 1: Establish Team Vision and Working Agreements
A clear, shared vision aligns team members toward a common goal and helps prioritize decisions under pressure. Creating working agreements sets expectations for how the team will interact, communicate, and resolve conflicts. These agreements, developed collaboratively, become a foundation of trust and accountability. For example, a team may agree to always review pull requests within 24 hours or to limit meetings to mornings only.
Successful teams revisit their working agreements regularly, especially after retrospectives or personnel changes. Without such alignment tools, misunderstandings, unspoken norms, and inconsistent behaviors may slow progress or erode morale. Working agreements provide a low-cost, high-impact way to reinforce transparency and cohesion.
Enabler 2: Form and Develop a High Performing Team
High-performing agile teams are not born — they are built through time, intention, and shared experience. According to both the PMI Agile Practice Guide and widely accepted models like Tuckman’s stages (Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing), team development requires leaders and members to consciously foster trust, collaboration, and continuous growth.
Forming a team means creating the right balance of skills, diversity, and roles. Developing a team includes regular retrospectives, feedback loops, cross-training, and servant leadership. For example, when a Scrum Master supports a developer learning backlog refinement, they’re investing in team maturity. Challenges like team member turnover, unclear roles, or siloed responsibilities can delay team performance. Agile practitioners must actively remove barriers and create space for teams to self-organize and evolve.
Enabler 3: Use Retrospective Findings to Improve the Team
The retrospective is a cornerstone of continuous improvement. It’s where teams pause, reflect, and adapt. While many teams hold retrospectives, not all act on the findings — and that’s where value is lost.
Retrospective outcomes should lead to small, testable changes in how the team works. Whether it’s adopting a new estimation technique, limiting work in progress, or improving meeting facilitation, the key is to take action. When teams regularly implement and inspect retrospective improvements, they create a self-reinforcing cycle of learning and ownership.
Neglecting to follow up on retrospective insights sends a signal that reflection is performative rather than purposeful. To maintain momentum and morale, teams should track improvement items visibly and review their impact in future sessions.
Enabler 4: Use Collaboration Practices to Break Down Silos
Silos — whether functional, departmental, or geographic — inhibit flow, delay decisions, and reduce shared accountability. Agile teams work best when cross-functional and co-located (physically or virtually). Techniques like pair programming, cross-role swarming, daily stand-ups, and shared planning sessions help dissolve walls between disciplines.
In practice, this might look like a QA engineer contributing to backlog refinement or a UX designer pairing with a developer on implementation. Such collaboration leads to more informed decisions, broader ownership, and faster delivery. Organizational support, such as rotating responsibilities or shared objectives, further strengthens collaboration and reduces the “us vs. them” mindset.
When teams neglect collaboration and default to handoffs or isolated work, quality suffers and responsiveness declines. Agile leadership must champion behaviors and structures that reward shared success over individual output.
Enabler 5: Commit to the Team’s Decisions Even in Disagreement
Agile values team autonomy and decision-making. But consensus isn’t always easy — especially in diverse, self-organizing teams. Committing to the team’s decisions, even amid disagreement, reinforces mutual trust and keeps the team moving forward.
This enabler speaks to psychological safety and team maturity. It’s natural for disagreements to arise during backlog refinement, estimation, or solution design. The goal is not to eliminate disagreement, but to foster constructive dialogue and then align behind the final decision — whether it was unanimous or not.
Without this commitment, dissent can resurface later as passive resistance, undermining team unity. Practitioners should model respectful debate, timely decision-making, and full alignment post-decision. Techniques such as “disagree and commit,” dot voting, and facilitation rules can help teams reach and respect conclusions.
Enabler 6: Evaluate the Team’s Understanding of Agile to Tailor the Agile Approach
Every team is on a different point in its agile journey. Applying a one-size-fits-all model risks confusion or disengagement. Evaluating a team’s current understanding — through observation, retrospectives, and direct inquiry — helps agile practitioners tailor their coaching, tools, and practices accordingly.
A newly formed team may need more guidance on ceremonies and roles, while a seasoned team might benefit from experimenting with scaling models or advanced engineering practices. Tailoring the approach means meeting the team where they are, then helping them grow deliberately and sustainably.
This adaptive mindset reinforces agile’s foundational principles — especially those that emphasize individuals and interactions over processes and tools.
Enabler 7: Identify the Key Factors to Consider When Determining the Appropriate Inter-Team Coordination Approach
When multiple agile teams work on the same product or program, coordination becomes essential. Choosing the right coordination mechanism — such as Scrum of Scrums, Scaled Daily Stand-ups, or a Team of Teams model — depends on several factors: the number of teams, integration dependencies, delivery cadence, and communication channels.
For example, in a program with five Scrum teams working on a shared product, a weekly Scrum of Scrums can surface and resolve cross-team blockers. If the environment is large-scale and rapidly evolving, a more structured model like Nexus or SAFe may offer the needed visibility and alignment.
Misaligned coordination leads to bottlenecks, duplicated work, and architectural drift. Practitioners must evaluate not just the number of teams, but also the complexity of integration and the pace of delivery when choosing coordination mechanisms.
Summary Points
- A collaborative environment is essential to high-performing agile teams.
- Shared team vision and working agreements align expectations and behavior.
- Team development is a dynamic journey that requires support and reflection.
- Retrospectives must lead to action to foster real improvement.
- Collaboration practices help dissolve silos and create shared ownership.
- Respectful disagreement is part of agile culture — commitment after decision is key.
- Tailoring the agile approach to the team’s maturity improves effectiveness.
- Coordination across teams must consider dependencies, delivery cadence, and communication needs.
Test Your Knowledge
To complete this task, take a micro-exam to assess your understanding.
You can start the exam by using the floating window on the right side of your desktop screen or the grey bar at the top of your mobile screen.
Alternatively, you can access the exam via the My Exams page: 👉 KnowledgeMap.pm/exams
Look for the exam with the same number and name as the current PMI-ACP ECO Task.
After completing the exam, review your overall score for the task on the Knowledge Map: 👉 KnowledgeMap.pm/map
To be fully prepared for the actual exam, your score should fall within the green zone or higher, which indicates a minimum of 70%. However, aiming for at least 75% is recommended to strengthen your knowledge, boost your confidence, and improve your chances of success.