I make the distinction between a team a a workgroup. For many team means
- people I work with
- people who work on the same thing
- people who report to the same manager
I call all that a workgroup
To call it a ‘real’ team, I need the following aspects:
- we take decisions together
- we want to collaborate on tasks
- we share ownership of everything we do
Indications of a non-team workgroup:
- naming components after people
- don’t conclude discussions into group decision, letting the person who picks up the task decide
- decide on design / architecture without involving the team
- never / rarely do a retrospective
- no code reviews or pairing