As we begin Chapter 6 this week, we have four more weeks of our re-read of Great Big Agile, An OS for Agile Leaders by Jeff Dalton. We have three more chapters and then we will conclude with a few final notes before beginning Fixing Your Scrum: Practical Solutions to Common Scrum Problems (it is time to buy a copy).
Chapter 6 goes into detail on the Performance Circle: Affirming. This is the part of the Agile Performance Holoracy (APH), Affirming asks teams and organizations to continuously evaluate whether they are being effective, and then to take steps to improve. Some people take umbrage with evaluating how well a team or organization is working. I, on the other hand, have several reasons for a positive bias toward this part of the APH. First, I think retrospectives are critical (and often botched) for teams and organizations to improve. Retrospectives evaluate performance. Secondly, any organism that is not constantly pushing the boundaries will be overtaken and made irrelevant. I get up every morning and consider what I will learn today. If you don’t know how you are doing, how can you improve? Finally, every persona and organization needs someone to provide a different perspective on how they are performing at least occasionally. Assessment, mentoring, and coaching are tools to find a way to see past your own biases. In a nutshell, this Performance Circle says “prove it” when it comes to agile.
In this Performance Circle: Affirming, we see techniques such as Gemba Walks which require leaders to go and see how people are working. Retrospectives, which feature introspection so that teams can consider how they’re doing the work and get better. The holon Understanding has 12 performance outcomes all of which are very metrics oriented ranging from collecting basic velocity metrics to organizations using metrics to improve quality and performance. There are two holons:
- Confirming
- Understanding
One of the common myths about agile practitioners is that they eschew measurement. The resistance to measurement has ZERO to do with agile. Many people are afraid of some form of measurement because data has been used against them and they have no influence on performance. In the real world, humans use measurement to one extent or another every day. Measures and metrics are used to calculate, whether it’s calculating their gas mileage, determining how much their coffee costs in one store versus another, or evaluating their favorite sports player. Two of the main reasons people use metrics are that they get value from measuring and because the use of metrics is out in the open — it is transparent. Metrics in the software world often lack transparency even when they are valuable. Agile has tackled the lack of transparency issue by suggesting the use of big visible charts posted on the wall that engage team members and organizations rather than hide charts inside of tools. While the idea of big visible charts is well-meant, execution is rarely done well as data often gets hidden in tools or emails rather than prominently displayed. No one sees or uses the data except for leaders. The lack of transparency incites fear that data will be used for nefarious purposes.
The confirming holon focuses on determining how a team(s) have adopted agile and provides feedback to help guide better performance. Confirming uses an outside-in view delivered by coaches or assessors to break through biases. Biases such as the confirmation bias can blind teams (or organizations) from seeing areas they can improve. Coaching and assessment look past what is supposed to be done and see what is done reducing chances that the difference between planned and actual behavior is easily rationalized away. A few years ago I was asked to observe and provide feedback for a team. The team, actually the Scrum Master, had “decided” not to do retrospectives — ever again. In their opinion, the time spent on retrospectives would be better spent on coding. Having an outsider challenge that perspective provided the energy for the team to overcome the bias toward “just coding faster,” and begin to make changes to how they worked. Checking back a few months later the team reported that they were happier and had become more predictable. Having someone else with a different perspective challenge is almost always useful in terms of getting a deeper perspective
The Performance Circle: Affirming requires an agile mindset to get value from feedback. Individually, any of the techniques referenced in this chapter can be used and abused if there isn’t a relentless desire to improve.
Remember, buy a copy and read along.
This week’s installment can be found at http://www.tomcagley.com/blog
Previous installments:
Week 1: Re-read Logistics and Front Matters – https://bit.ly/3mgz9P6
Week 2: The API Is Broken – https://bit.ly/2JGpe7l
Week 3: Performance Circle: Leading – https://bit.ly/2K3poWy
Week 4: Performance Circle: Providing – http://bit.ly/3mNJJN7
Week 5: Performance Circle: Envisioning – https://bit.ly/2JEVXdt
Week 6: Performance Circle: Crafting – https://bit.ly/3ntsX69
