Team Resonance

People and groups vibrate. When you first join a group you can sort of sense their vibration and feel whether yours resonates with theirs. Have you been in a gathering where what people say makes perfect sense to the other individuals of that group but makes no sense to you? Or have you travelled to a distant country and the exposure to a new culture felt somewhat disturbing? When a person is long enough in a group or culture the vibration of the group will affect that of the person and eventually things that didn't make sense before suddenly start to become more sensible.

Humans are social beings and seek interaction. If they interact frequently enough they will acquire a natural synchronization. They will start vibrating in a frequency where resonance occurs. The power of resonance is that it feeds on itself, growing stronger at each oscillation. Think of a bouncing ball. Each time you beat it with your hands you need less effort, because each bounce builds on the previous one. When teams synchronize frequently and with a time box (fixed maximum amplitude) they are not just been given an opportunity to manage their task dependencies, they are building up a team resonance. Team resonance is the reason why velocity is bigger in agile projects.