Agile Coach & Trainer
Aarons, Inc.
Standup & Listen!
Tell me...can a morning standup that consists of up to 30 people, all working on a corporate point of sale system spanning over 2100 stores and affecting every department in the company...be effective?The Agile coach in me says, "No way is anyone getting anything out of that standup. Most don't even want to be there to begin with!"
But at Aaron's, innovation with 'agility' is at play. After spending years in textbook Scrum, Scrum-Ban and Kanban world's, we're taking a little time to play around with process and see what sticks. Oh sure, the pre-packaged processes worked just OK for a little while, but Agile is about innovation right? That constant improvement thing?
In an effort to shake things up a bit, create a proactive framework around the upcoming backlog of work requests and work to improve on value delivery, a particular Aarons software director approached me with the idea of taking 4-5 teams of 8-14 people each; silo'd at times by contractors/consultants/internal employees, and instead creating pods of smaller, more focused teams reflecting a blend of all of these roles. Additionally, we would move away from the Scrum based dedicated planning sessions, estimation exercises and burn down charts. This will have more of a constant flow\Kanban feel to it. The goal? Increased business engagement, improved team collaboration and dynamics, exposure in more areas to business needs and delivering more value quicker.
My response? "We're innovating the process....why not!?"
Too many organizations allow the process to dictate the people. "We were told to have planning sessions so we're going to sit in planning sessions for as long as it takes! We were told to estimate so we shall live and die by our estimates and burn down charts. If they aren't accurate...we shall wear sackcloth and gnash our teeth at each other in disappointment!"
Not here....not this time.
This time we will let the body of work and needs of the teams determine the process and then we will be humble enough to continue to make changes as the teams see fit to do so. Business owners and product champions will hold themselves to a higher standard of knowledge and availability to make up for lack of dedicated planning. Every story will be expected to have continued conversation as opposed to one conversation where everyone walks away assuming we know everything about what we are getting into. WIP limits will help ensure reduction in bottlenecks of work and have been made horizontal as opposed to vertical. In other words, the entire TEAM is responsible for doneness at EVERY level as opposed to WIP in their own little world. Oh...and by the way...we dont care if you are a contractor, consultant or internal employee; we all want to be successful and we all make up the team!
The result? Well, we retrospect on this change in true Agile nature. Teams were polled on how they like the change. Debates and discussions ensued. On average, the response was overwhelmingly positive. Teams felt more was getting done. Collaboration was at an all time high. Dependencies were identified much quicker and feedback turned around much faster. There is a buzz of discussion and activity. Was it worth making such a radical change? Time will tell.
Every morning we have a standup for each team to be able to provide updates and gather information as needed. Not everyone is expected to attend save for one rep from each team (about 6-7 people in all). Typically, standups were once considered monotonous. Now, as a general rule, everyone shows up. The benefit of the knowledge sharing that goes on has been infectious. Make no mistake about it...this is a culture shift.
We will preach about Agility and embracing changes in requirements, 'even late in development'; sometimes even looking back on our accomplishments as badges of "agility" honor. But, then, we will rigidly stick to our processes that taught us to embrace change and innovation to the sacrifice of self and team improvement.
Remember, Agile is as much about constant self improvement as it is about delivering value; and the two are not exclusive of each other. Don't let the process define you. Define the process and embrace the new you...again.
