Hey there, Agile adventurers! Today, I’m tackling another harrowing harbinger of the agile apocalypse: Judgment. This formidable foe manifests through prescriptive, one-size-fits-all methodologies that strangle creativity and innovation. It’s a world where “Thou shalt do Scrum” becomes more of a commandment than a guideline, and where deviation from the prescribed path attracts criticism rather than curiosity. Let’s dive into why this mindset is detrimental and how we can pivot towards a more principle-driven approach. 🌪️
The Tyranny of Prescriptive Agility đź“ś
In the realm of Agile transformations, judgment often rears its ugly head through totalitarian, prescriptive frameworks. Organizations, in their quest for structure and control, fall in love with rigid methodologies that dictate exactly what to do and when to do it. But here’s the kicker - this approach fundamentally misunderstands what agility is all about. 🤷‍♂️
My Encounter with Prescriptive Madness đź“Ť
I once navigated the stormy waters of an organization (somewhere between Seattle and Portland) that had just shown their Scrum Master the door. Why? Because this Scrum Master insisted on standing meetings as the sine qua non of Scrum, despite a team member’s disability that made this impractical. The team’s choice to sit, out of respect for their colleague, embodied the true spirit of Scrum and Agile—adaptability, respect, and collaboration.
The Fallout of One-Size-Fits-All Approaches đź’Ł
This judgment-driven approach stifles the creative, collaborative essence of organizations, transforming them into factories rather than hubs of innovation. The real irony? Tools like Scrum, intended to foster agility, can become instruments of rigidity when misapplied. 🛠️
Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose: The Lost Treasures đź’Ž
In the pursuit of business agility, we must remember that the goal is to deliver the highest possible value to our customers. Everything else—be it Scrum, Kanban, or any other tool—is merely a means to that end. Prescribing methodologies without considering team dynamics, project specifics, or organizational culture is akin to putting the cart before the horse.
Principles Over Prescriptions: Charting a New Course đź§
Instead of falling into the trap of rigid rules that breed judgment and discontent, we should anchor our efforts in core principles that empower individuals and teams to make informed decisions. This shift from a rules-based to a principles-based approach invites innovation, adaptability, and true engagement.
Crafting Your Compass: Establishing Agile Principles 🌟
Honesty: Cultivate an environment where truth and transparency are valued above all.
Courage: Encourage teams to challenge the status quo and explore new territories.
Openness: Foster a culture where information flows freely, and everyone has access to the data they need to make informed decisions.
The Power of Data Accessibility đź“Š
A striking example comes from Tesla, where product owners have immediate access to telemetry data from cars. This openness allows for quick, data-driven decisions, in stark contrast to traditional models where access to critical information is bogged down by bureaucratic red tape.
The Cure for the Common Judgment: Moving Forward 🚀
To escape the judgment trap and nurture an environment where agility thrives, consider the following strategies:
Empower Decision-Making at All Levels: Ensure every team member has the information and autonomy needed to contribute meaningfully to the organization’s goals.
Foster a Learning Environment: Encourage continuous growth and experimentation. Allow teams to select the tools and methodologies that best suit their needs, without fear of judgment.
Champion a Principles-Based Culture: Clearly communicate your organization’s core principles and let them guide decision-making, rather than imposing rigid rules.
Wrapping Up: A Rallying Cry for Agile Warriors đź“Ł
The journey to true business agility is fraught with challenges, but by embracing principles over prescriptions, we can overcome the judgment harbinger and foster an environment where creativity, innovation, and collaboration flourish. Let’s commit to building organizations that are not only agile in name but in spirit and practice.
Feeling inspired or want to dive deeper into Agile, Scrum, or DevOps discussions? Let’s grab a virtual coffee and explore the endless possibilities together. Until next time, keep challenging the norm and driving towards excellence. 🚀
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One of the harbingers of the agile apocalypse is judgment, and this normally comes in the form of prescriptive ways of doing things. This could be organisational prescriptive ways of doing things, but quite often it’s these top-down totalitarian prescriptive frameworks that tell organisations exactly what to do, when to do it, what practices to use.
I understand why organisations and leaders love it. They don’t necessarily know any different, right? They don’t know what the impact is on the ground of a lot of these tools and things that people decide you’re all going to do it this way. They don’t understand the whole problem of you’re all going to do it this way. That’s fundamentally part of the problem; everybody doing the same thing at the same time is a factory, not a creative collaborative organisation.
So, these prescriptive ideas, whether those prescriptive ideas could be Scrum. I’ve worked with organisations where Scrum ends up in the contract: “Thou shalt do Scrum,” or it ends up as an organisational mandate: “Everybody’s doing Scrum because they’ve been told to do Scrum.” That’s stupid. Scrum might not be the right thing for every team. It might not be the right thing for every group in your organisation. Agility is not about Scrum. Business agility is about figuring out how you can effectively deliver the highest possible value to your customers. That’s what it’s about. Everything else is the tools you use to try and make that happen.
Okay, so one of those tools in your toolbox might be Scrum. Another one might be Kanban. Another one might be Scrum and Kanban. There are all sorts of tools that you can have in your toolbox that your teams can choose to use. Don’t prescribe stories or story points. Don’t prescribe planning poker. Those things are great once or twice, maybe for a little bit, but they’re not the long-term solution to your problem. The long-term solution to your problem is not in rules; it’s not in prescription.
Rules beget judgment, right? People are going to judge you for breaking the rules or not following the rules, and “Thou shalt follow here’s the Commandments you must follow in our organisation: Thou shalt do Scrum.” Don’t covet your neighbour’s agility, right? Your other organisation’s agility. Don’t do those things because you will be judged.
What we need instead of judgment is we need principles. What are the principles upon which you would like people in your organisation to make decisions? You create a set of principles for your organisation, for your ways of working. Be very careful that they don’t just become rules in disguise. You should have very few principles in your organisation. This is how we’re going to do business. Everybody should be honest, right? We want honesty in what we do. We want courage in what we do. We want openness and transparency in what it is that we do. These are principles that can help us make better decisions.
Every single person in your organisation is then an effective decision-maker. They understand; they have access to the data. They have access to the information they need in order to make those decisions. A great example of access to data is I was talking to some product owners from a car company, and I asked them, “So how do you get access to the telemetry that’s collected from the cars?” You know, not all cars have live telemetry, right? They might have, when you go in to take your car in for service, they plug in and download the telemetry, right? So it’s dumped into the system. But how do product owners and things get access to that telemetry?
Well, at their organisation, it took six to eight months to get access to the telemetry for whatever request they made because of all the legal rules and procedures they had to follow in order to get there. Oh, but they did tell me a story about what happens in Tesla when a product owner wants access to the telemetry data. That’s all it takes. They just have full access, open and transparent within the organisation. All of the product owners have access to all of the data, and they can go slice and dice it however they like in order to help them understand what’s going on, what trends are happening, what faults are happening, what do we need to focus on in order to make better decisions.
But rules and procedures get in the way of people doing the work. Rules and procedures were great in the old school of organisations, traditional management organisations. You had a largely uneducated workforce. This is turn of the century Industrial Revolution thinking, right? You’ve got a largely uneducated workforce. They are not educationally or intellectually capable of making decisions about the future of your business. Therefore, we want to push all of those decisions up the organisation, and here’s the leadership cadre, the bosses who make all of the decisions, and the people on the ground just do what they’re told.
So we’re going to plan their work, we’re going to separate them into ability-based groups, and we’re going to tell them, and we’re going to train them only in those particular abilities that they’re going to do. That’s how we’ve ended up with marketing departments and sales departments and legal departments and engineering departments and testing departments and whatever other silos you’ve got in your organisation. They slow down the ability for you to do business.
In the old days, it was great, right? Because you had this group of people you could train them in that one thing; they just do that one thing, and our product goes through those gates. Those things happen, or it’s designed, and then the analysis happens, and then it’s coded, and then it’s tested, and then it’s deployed, right? It goes through that process.
But today, we don’t have the luxury of that amount of time. The markets move much faster, and those procedures that were designed to enshrine the business processes that we need in order to continue to move forward with a largely uneducated workforce are now getting in the way because you have a hugely educated, massively smart, engaged workforce. They’re looking at your rules and procedures and going, “Why do I have to do it that way?” That’s getting in the way of me delivering value for my company. That’s getting in the way of me taking advantage of a business opportunity that’s floating by, right? They can’t take advantage of it.
What happens to you when you’re extremely frustrated with an activity? Do you continue to like that activity, or does it really annoy you, and maybe you want to leave that activity? That’s why your best, smartest people leave, because they don’t like working in those environments. You need to move towards principles based on the three key motivators of people: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.
Autonomy, right? People need to feel like they’re in control of their own work, that they’re making decisions for the betterment of the organisation and are able to support and engage in the organisation in order for them to engage with your company. For that, you need principles, not rules and judgment.
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