Are Teams Still Relevant?
Are Teams Still Relevant?
In a world shaped by artificial intelligence, automation, and decentralized work, the fundamental question about the future of traditional team structures arises. The pandemic has radically accelerated remote working models, while tools like Claude and ChatGPT enable entirely new forms of collaboration between humans and machines.
As Peter Beck argues in his article “The AI-Enhanced Team of the Future”, individual developers today can coordinate dozens of specialized code agents with the help of AI agents to create production-ready features. Nevertheless, teams remain as fundamental social systems – though their composition and focus are evolving into what Beck calls “AI-Enhanced Teams” or “Full Business Teams”.
Two complementary perspectives illuminate the ongoing relevance of teams: the proven foundation in the Agile Manifesto and the dynamic evolution through modern work concepts.
The External View: Teams as the Foundation of the Agile Manifesto
The Agile Manifesto from 2001 unequivocally places “Individuals and interactions over processes and tools”. Teams form the beating heart of agile practices. Principle 4 demands daily collaboration between business experts and developers – a mechanism for continuous feedback loops and sustainable innovation. Without functioning teams, iterative sprints, constructive retrospectives, and collective learning would be simply unthinkable.
Team research impressively underpins these principles. Katzenbach and Smith already defined in “The Wisdom of Teams” (1993) a team as “a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.” This definition remains valid even in the digital age.
Richard Hackman expanded this perspective in “Leading Teams” with the crucial success factors: a compelling direction, an enabling structure, a supportive organizational context, and the availability of competent coaching – elements that also apply to virtual and AI-supported teams.
Current studies by McKinsey demonstrate that agile transformations can increase operational performance by 30 to 50 percent. They create synergies through knowledge transfer, master conflicts productively, and adapt flexibly to market changes – competencies that are vital for survival in volatile markets.
The Internal View: New Concepts and Their Challenges
The modern workplace transforms teams through technological innovation and new organizational forms. Jurgen Appelo’s Management 3.0 framework and his concept of “unFIX” organizational units show how teams evolve from static entities to dynamic, self-organized networks. Appelo argues that modern organizations should function like living systems – with teams as autonomous cells that reconfigure themselves as needed.
This evolution manifests in various organizational topologies, as Alexey Krivitsky and Roland Flemm demonstrate in their “Org Topologies” framework: From classical hierarchy through matrix structures to fully networked organizations without fixed team boundaries. Their seven archetypes range from task-based work groups to highly adaptive, value stream-oriented teams.
AI Pairing, such as collaboration between developers and AI tools like GitHub Copilot, creates new forms of collaboration, automates routine tasks, and unleashes creative potential. Peter Beck emphasizes that AI functions not as a replacement but as a “cognitive amplifier” that extends rather than replaces human team capabilities. Teams evolve into “AI-Enhanced Teams” responsible for complete business capabilities, with AI serving as a force multiplier.
Dynamic Teaming – the formation of fluid, project-based teams – dissolves rigid structures. This flexibility corresponds to Appelo’s vision of “Crews” and “Crowds” that situationally come together and dissolve again.
This evolution brings specific challenges: Spatial distance in remote settings undermines the face-to-face communication demanded in the sixth principle. AI systems can reinforce existing biases or create problematic dependencies. Beck explicitly warns that excessive dependence on AI recommendations without critical reflection can become problematic. Nevertheless, it’s clear: Teams complement and control AI tools – they make ethical decisions and drive genuine innovation.
How Do We Start the Conversation?
Metaphors create powerful images to make team concepts tangible in organizations:
The Solid Fortress: Traditional teams according to Katzenbach and Smith offer stability and reliability but react sluggishly to change.
The Swarm: Dynamic teaming enables maximum flexibility but risks chaos without clear leadership – a phenomenon Hackman describes as “authority vacuum”.
The AI Hybrid: The human-machine partnership, as Beck outlines it, increases efficiency and extends teams’ reach across the entire value chain.
The Isolated Islands: Individual work accelerates decisions but increases error susceptibility due to lack of diverse perspectives.
These images stimulate essential discussions: Which metaphor reflects our organization? How can we integrate artificial intelligence without losing team spirit?
Conclusion
Teamwork remains the indispensable glue of agile organizations – this core message of the Manifesto has lost none of its relevance. However, the form is fundamentally changing: Static work groups are becoming hybrid, AI-supported networks. Beck emphasizes that teams of the future won’t become smaller but broader, more empirical, and closer to the customer – they win by learning faster than the market changes.
Hackman’s basic principles of successful teams – clear direction, enabling structure, and supportive context – remain intact but must be reinterpreted for the digital era.
Organizations that actively shape this transformation, combining Katzenbach and Smith’s lessons on genuine team accountability with Appelo’s innovative approaches to adaptive structures and Krivitsky/Flemm’s organizational topologies, develop superior resilience.
Your practical experiences with modern team concepts enrich this discussion. The association looks forward to exchanging ideas with you.
About the Association
The Association for Adaptive Organizations e.V. is a coalition of leading European organizational developers, coaches, and trainers, working to create unified quality standards for education and training in organizational development and supporting companies in uncertain markets. The goal is to help organizations achieve greater customer focus, effectiveness, and resilience.