Implementing Agile Values and Principles: Chapter 2 (5th post)

A few years ago I wrote Understanding Agile Values and Principles (https://www.infoq.com/minibooks/agile-values-principles/). I’m working on a follow-up book about implementing them entitled Implementing Agile Values and Principles. I will post draft parts of the book on Medium.com as I finish them. I would certainly be interested in hearing people’s opinions about the draft material which I will certainly consider in making revisions as I work toward the final version.

This eleventh post is the draft of the Collaboration topic in the second chapter.

Collaboration

Effective collaboration involves how easily and willingly people share work together to produce or create something rather than just getting “their own work” done. Historically, the word “collaboration” derives from the Latin word collaborare which means ‘to work together’.

One could consider that cooperation with others would imply the same thing. In both cases the “co” prefix does mean together, but to “operate” together might simply occur if people pursue their individual work without impeding the work of others. To “labor” together, to me, suggests sharing concern for all the work, not just doing one’s own part of it.

Ron Jeffries has noted that “Much productivity improvement comes from the synergy of working together effectively. Build a true team, not just a work group assigned to a project. Support each other. Help each other grow. Leave no team member behind. Solve problems together. Respect each other. Respect the differences, the special abilities, the varying perspectives. These things give the team strength and resilience.”

Alistair Cockburn, however, has pointed out that “you [may] know how to collaborate, but you may not want to.” The commitment to collaborate (as well as communicate and trust) is a critical step in developing the ability to collaborate effectively.

Supporting Collaboration

A willingness to share work includes accepting accountability to see that, to the full extent possible, all the team’s work is accomplished even though you are not directly responsible for all that work. This can be impeded, though, by people sticking strictly to their role descriptions which reinforces a “my work” versus “your work” mentality. While this may be how people new to one another on a team behave based on their non-agile experience, sticking to role definitions will hold them back from fully effective interactions.

In 2007, Alistair Cockburn wrote an article entitled “Collaboration: the dance of contribution.” In it he identified things that contribute to the ease with which people can work with one another. Some of the things he mentioned are:

Lift others -

· “Recognize others. … Ask for their thoughts.”

· “Giv[e] others the chance to speak, listening, inquiring and abstaining from grandstanding and other displays of ego.”

· “[Pay] close attention to … what the person says, and [ask] a question that shows that you have understood what they said and are taking it to a new level.”

Increase safety -

· “Donate [your ideas so] people feel safer in offering up their own.”

· “Widen the boundary [by saying] something outside the expected boundaries [as this widens] the boundaries of what others can do.”

· “Don’t leak information that will hurt someone. “

· “Leave some space for people to hide in. If there is nowhere safe to hide, then fear goes up again and safety goes down.”

Make progress -

· “Try to make sure that your first speaking contributes something of value.”

· “Clarify the way forward … and illustrat[ing] either what has been achieved, where the group is, or even better, show what the way forward looks like.”

· “Get a result. … generate some sort of victory to help encourage and bind the group.”

Add energy -

· “Challenge others’ ideas, not to put them down, but to explore the truth and the limits of the idea [as this is] part of helping to make progress, part of listening intently.”

· “Contributi[e] your own ideas [because if] everyone only sits and listens, the group will wind down.”

Humor is a part of generating energy. Try to inject humor into work and encourage others to do so to get people to relax.

Silos — Impediments to Collaboration

The structure of organizational silos started with the views of Frederick Winslow Taylor in The Principles of Scientific Management where he advocated splitting mental (thinking) and physical (doing) aspects of work. Over time, this led to a view of strong specialization to improve efficiency of production.

Sometimes such specialization seems to make sense:

· If there are not enough people with specific skills or knowledge to equally spread across all teams that need it, distinct performance, security, or database groups, for example, make sense. But this can lead to problems in coordinating dependencies between such groups and the teams that need such expertise.

· If there are too few team members with the necessary basic design and implementation experience to operate independently, this may require asking those with such skills to work across multiple teams, increasing dependencies.

· If time zones of distributed team members seem to make collaboration challenging, work may be divided between people/locations in a way to avoid as much communication and collaboration as possible, leading to more comprehensive documentation demands and less collaboration.

However, dealing with these situations, as necessary as they may seem, means devoting effort to avoid the negative impacts to collaboration such as:

· Dependencies dilute a team’s control over their own work and progress. One of the main wastes identified in work is waiting, which interrupts successful flow of work.

· Turf boundaries discourage sharing work accountability and collective ownership. Siloed groups are likely to optimize their behavior in ways that impede the work of others suboptimizing the overall organizational workflow.

· Communication barriers from text-based forms of communication (e.g., documentation, emails) and resistance to face-to-face or video communication by those not on the same team. This may lead to communication only between specified “leads” on each siloed group decreasing the richness of what is communicated.

· Limited understanding of customer expectations isolates teams trying to meet those expectations from the information needed to do so.

Given all of the above being the new (or continuing) reality for people, what can be done about it?

As organizations make changes which increase collaboration expectations, it is important to realize that collaboration experiences are not automatically shared in teams. Deliberate attention must be paid to offloading work from people if demands on their time increase disproportionally. This is where the positive aspect of collaboration can help by team members working together to share the increased demands.

Behavioral changes are likely going to be required to ensure that collaboration demands focus on value-added work. Push decisions lower in the organization where teams can (be trusted to) make those decisions for themselves rather than having to involve others more frequently. (Remember that part of the fifth Agile principle is to “trust them to get the job done.”)