One central pillar of the Agile Manifesto is that teams can create their best-fitting work environment themselves. However, it is not recommended to simply leave the team all alone and hope that they will figure something out. Much rather, the team needs to be embedded into an organizational framework that allows them to work freely, but is still present as a guiding light and clear structure. This fosters collaboration as well as cooperation and contributes strongly to improvements of the work atmosphere.
A fitting example for a framework like that are fixed communicative meetings with the #team. Dailies or weeklies do not only serve the purpose of keeping everybody up to date, but are also helpful in identifying current or upcoming problems and in helping to decide what kind of action is needed to ensure the best operational structures. Other helpful structural elements are team missions, sprint backlogs and retrospective reflections.
When assessing how a team should be put together, there is a multitude of preexisting systems and guidelines. For instance, Kanban helps to optimize processes and productivity and a “Lean Team” is a team created with the intention of being as self-reliant and dynamic as possible.
As with so many things, the mixture is key. Teams should be able to operate in surroundings that are best for them, but lastingly supporting the people in finding that out is the job of leaders.