One of the biggest knocks of Agile methodologies that I hear is the belief that the team just get things done when they get things done. This couldn’t be further from the truth with a high-functioning team. It’s critically important that stakeholders trust their teams in how they are operating and what they are accomplishing. Getting to consistency is only possible with shared beliefs tied to that trust; challenging while understanding and accepting.
The quantification of work is a team metric
Whether it be points, hours, or something else, how you estimate the work needs to be considered by the entire team and expressed that way. If you rely on specific team members to do support specific work items and only take in singular perspectives, teams are doing themselves a disservice in two ways:
- It limits the team members to only operate on the items they estimated, which negates our team’s ability to self-manage and self-organize
- If other team members do end up taking on items they haven’t estimated, then your guess is as good as any to justify and meet the original estimate
Estimation as a team metric gives the team more flexibility in operating effort, duration, and therefore value generation. Also, managing the work at the team level is just less work, which means more time available to the team to make sure questions are answered and work keeps flowing through the team.
Use past performance as an indicator of future success
Simply put, don’t chase loses. If a team isn’t deliverying the value they thought they would or the value the business wants them to, making a committment double, triple, exponentially more than they have been able to previously deliver is a recipe for disaster. Make plans based on a combination of what the team has already proven they can accomplish with any significant capacity changes to the team and this supports the team in two ways:
- Sets better, more realistic expectations for everyone
- Keeps the unnecessary and unwarranted stress of the team down which keeps them more relaxed and available to find optimizations in what they are doing that can lead to greater productivity
Focusing on what a team is available to accomplish now builds a solid foundation of growth for the entire team. It is always better to have a glass that is half full versus half empty.
Nothing is perfect and don’t be afraid of exposing it
The elephant in the room is that everyone has some level of belief that everyone, every team can give more. Do more. It is important for teams to acknowledge that they might not have been operating in the most efficient and effective ways possible. Retrospectively looking at past performance and documenting what went well (in order to keep doing it) along with what could be improved and how (so the team can work on them) also has a bi-directional benefit:
- The team itself is able to be proud of what they are accomplishing along with continuing to maximize their productivity
- The business is appreciative of the honesty along with seeing actions turning into increased productivity builds trust
Additionally, sharing this information along with what a team has been able to accomplish can really set a great precedence for when the team says something isn’t going to plan, the business should listen and appreciate because it is backed by sound logic and proven results over time.
While Agile doesn’t work across the board of all types of work, no one can honestly say that it isn’t a rigorous set of methodologies in order to deliver value to the business. Delivery is a team sport that requires everyone to play a key role in its success and overall work is done when it is supposed to be done and not necessarily when it is asked to be done. Being able to quantify work as a team, avoid the planning of moonshots, and objectively find and fix problem spots that increase productivity will fortify the trust between teams, business, and anyone else.