While I am a huge proponent of stable teams, I do understand
the reality of acquiring or losing team members. There will always be some
amount of on-boarding and assimilation to a new team and their spoken and
unspoken working agreements.
Some feel that standardizing practices would help this
transition. But with a healthy, self-organizing team, I don’t think formal
definitions or supporting structures are needed. Instead, we should focus on
creating a shared understanding of WHY we follow certain practices.
This suggestion for standardizing agile practices has been
around for years. Some managers argue that if we all did things the same way,
then they could more easily shift & shuffle us around teams. I will steal
my response from Google and say to them, “Don’t be evil.” I can deal with the
deeper dysfunctions of these folks in another post.
Then there are managers who genuinely think it would help
their employees to have continuity between teams. They aren’t advocates of
shuffling, but know the reality is that people will be moved from team to team.
Even good intentioned, creating standards is not the answer.
Most agile practices already have common definitions or
commonly acceptable components. So creating standards would be wasteful. Why do
we think we need to create new standards for our company? Are we that unique?
Why don’t we just follow what’s already established?
Asking this uncovers the disconnect – our lack of awareness
and acceptance of those common definitions.
Each practice was created to solve some repeating problem. So
it has, at its root, a kernel of intention behind the suggested behavior. For
example, let’s look at stand ups. How can we, as a team, stay connected to each
other and what we are working on, as well as raise issues and ask for help, on
a regular basis? Solution: Let’s take 5 minutes every day to intentionally
check in as a team.
The implementation can vary from team to team but the intent
is the same. So one team with several verbose members decides to use a talking
bowling ball – you must hold the ball when it’s your turn to speak. Another
team feels bored with going around a circle, so they throw a hacky sack
randomly at the next person. Because they understand the intent, these teams
experiment with rituals that work for their specific needs.
The problem at many companies is that the original intent of
a practice is missing.
For example, your “stand ups” are actually status updates
for your PM. They last from 10-30 minutes because your team members are spread
among different projects. The time is spent reporting to the PM what you are
doing. The original intent is completely lost.
Or maybe it was never there in the first place. When we
teach practices, the WHY is so much more important than the WHAT. Because without
the WHY, any practice can, and will be bastardized to fit the current
dysfunction. And no amount of standardization will help that.
