Teams are made up of individuals. But a team which is simply an administrative label applied to a group of individuals working in isolation on their own problems, is not actually a team at all, let alone an Agile team.
This situation can arise for several reasons. For example, one is for hierarchical organisations to simply re-label an existing functionally - defined unit as an Agile team. 'Hey you guys in the architecture department, you're a Scrum team now !'. If this sounds crazy, that's because it is.
Yet this problem can be very hard to see through Agile glasses. The Agile principles make much of the importance of teams, but say little about how teams should operate internally, save that it should be their choice. They refer to the importance of communication within teams, without spelling out the objectives of this communication. They emphasise the importance of 'motivated individuals' ( Principle 5 ), but they do not comment at all on how teams should be built. Simply assembling a group of motivated individuals will not give you a team.
On the one hand, this seems fair - it depends on the organisation, the project, even the particular people, etc etc. On the other hand, building an effective team is so central to Agile and Scrum that avoiding this question seems like chickening out when the going gets hard.
Scrum does acknowledge the problem indirectly. The Scrum master role certainly carries with it a responsibility for ensuring the effective functioning of the team, sometimes referred to as the 'health' of the team. Scrum's emphasis on team commitment is also an acknowledgement of the need for individuals to 'play for the team'.
But still this ( the individual/team tension ) seems like one area where Agile is somewhat conflicted. It wants to acknowledge individuals, but it knows that productivity depends on those individuals being team players.
So really the resolution of this problem is not found in Agile methodology. Instead, more traditional perspectives on team building are required. In fact, the answer is straightforward - team members should expect to discuss their work with other team members continuously, and help each other out as much as possible. It really is that simple. But for a deeper dive into team building and management, see here.
© Mark de Roussier 2021, all rights reserved.