The 2T Factor of Being Agile

Introspect with all the below said questions & help yourself to know where YOU stand today in Agility?

• Is your team's daily scrum becoming merely a status meeting?
• Is your team's Product Owner challenging development team's estimates during story grooming?
• Is your development team complaining on every other story that it needs further grooming though story is meeting the definition of ready?
• Is your team's product owner stating something like this "Why do you need X hrs? I think it is doable in an hour."

If YES, as a coach it is of grave concern to you since these are the leading indicators of failure. It may lead to "Gun Point Agile or Lipstick Agile" (Courtesy TCS Agile Ninja workshop)

Gun Point Agile: Team is bound to deliver through command & control with fixed time cost & scope.

Lipstick Agile: Actually teams are working in waterfall methodology with few of scrum practices incorporated and they call themselves as agile scrum team!

Can you sense the reason behind it?? I will call it as the "2T factor in Agile" (Transparency & Trust). It can be the Missing transparency between Product Owner & development team leading to lack of trust between them. This is also one of the most common challenges I encountered & one of the biggest roadblock to agile transformation.

Actually trust is like a savings account. In order to open the account, we need an initial deposit. Similarly, when an organization decides to “adopt Agile,” leadership needs to invest in their teams, granting an initial deposit of trust by trusting the team until there is a reason to NOT trust the team.

Why Trust is important?

Let’s refer the 5th Agile principle which talks about trust: "Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done." I feel Trust is also the foundation for the 5 Scrum values, Openness, Courage, Respect, Commitment and Focus. Without trust these values can not be achieved. Moreover Trust contributes to the psychological safety of the team which impacts team effectiveness. If the team do not feel safe, inspection, experimentation and reflection is not possible, must for any team to be successful.

Common reasons on how does team break trust from Product Owner (PO):

1) Partially done work If team often delivers partially done work by the end of the sprint, PO has difficulty to know where we are and loses the flexibility to adapt in next sprint, team breaks trust from PO.

2) No Transparency Team states that the work is done, while it is not. Later, PO finds it out. Team breaks trust from PO.

3) Over Sizing If team overemphasize the safety in delivering their commitment, it does not set challenging goal for themselves, team breaks trust from PO.

4) Inconsistency in Velocity As PO uses velocity for long-term planning, while velocity varies greatly, PO loses predictability. When team’s velocity does not get stabilized after a while, team breaks trust from PO.

Common reasons on how does Product Owner (PO) break trust from team:

1) Command & Control PO micro-manages the progress within the sprint through excel trackers.

2) PO committing to stories rather than team During sprint planning, PO pushes team to commit stories in a sprint.

3) Deadlines and Forced commitments Instead of targets and goals which can inspire the team, PO is busy in giving & tracking deadlines.

4) PO expecting exponential increase in velocity PO expecting increase in velocity in every sprint, eventually pushing the team to over commit.

5) PO starts deciding the "HOW" part If PO enters into the implementation domain and interferes team from self-organizing on how, he breaks trust from team. Let Team decides how.

6)  No Clarity on Project goal If Product Owner has not shared the project vision/goals with the team, team did not feel connected with the project & PO.

What an agile coach can do?

A coach can take various stances. Step 1: As a coach, I generally try to dig deeper into the real reasons of trust deficit between team & PO. For that I do trust assessment exercise.

Trust Assessment Exercise

A) Trust Assessment exercise for Product Owner where questions can be asked like “Team is not worthy of being trusted” to extreme “I fully believe all my team members”. Similarly other questions can be like “My team asks for my approval on everything” to “My teams take risks to achieve the sprint goal”. Scores will be associated with each option like score is low where there is more command & control & vice versa.

B) Trust Assessment exercise for Development Team which suggests how team members feel about the level of trust coming from Product Owner (PO). Here questions can be asked like “I have to take approval before working on any story” to "I am given 100% freedom to do my work". Again questions which states there is command & control to empowerment. Scores are associated with each option like where there is more command & control, score is low & vice versa.

So based on the scores, below three scenarios can arise:

1) PO and Team scores are identical with average score on higher side. It suggests everyone sis on the same page & there is good bonding/trust between PO & Team.

2) PO and Team scores are identical but average score on lower side. It suggests everyone is on same page but there is lack of trust between PO & Team.

3) There is a gap between PO & Team scores . It suggest a lack of openness & trust deficit between PO & Development team.

Step 2: If scores are on lower side or there is huge gap (Scenario 2 & 3) below things can be tried:

A) Common Understanding of Trust Run a brainstorming session using trust canvas where teams suggests what trust means to them & then showing that canvas to PO using below questions.

• Which things can add up the trust
• Which factors are important for creating trust
• What are the things one does not have control but are leading to distrust & lack of transparency

Thus creating a common understanding of what trust means to them.

?B) Pairing Up Invite development team members to pair with PO for a day & have them sit in on a stakeholder PBI roadmap discussion. Let them get good insight into what a typical PO day is like & see the PO world. Team will be able to understand the challenges of PO.

C) Management 3.0 Delegation Poker exercise Facilitate a delegation poker excise. It allows Product owner to uncover disconnects in servant leadership. It provides a good platform to team members to talk openly with the PO & find answers to their own problems.

D) Nudging Product Owner on Micromanagement One to one discussion with PO on their goals & thought provoking questions make them self-realize that micro-management is counterproductive. Innovation & accountability can only be achieved if team feel empowered. Also educate them about the Golem and Pygmalion effects, and the impact they have on team performance.

E) Sustainable Pace Coach PO on the value of sustainable pace by working closely and making PO realize how employee satisfaction can increase productivity automatically & satisfaction can only come if employees are not overloaded.

F) Support top Leadership to enable Safe Environment for teams Safety is a basic human need and a key to unlocking high performance. People are afraid to make changes, afraid to voice their opinions and afraid of making mistakes. If you have a culture of fear, none of your fancy processes or practices will help you. Demonstrate impact of their practices & leadership style on teams by assessing psychological safety of teams.

G) Enable face to face Conversations There is an inevitably cultural difference and language barriers if teams are distributed & not communicating directly, it can create misunderstanding & confusion impacting trust. So, if teams are distributed, realize PO to invest in Video conferencing equipment for face to face conversations by making him understand agile principles & values.

H) Make PO understand Estimates are not Deadlines The development team forecast the work to be completed within a sprint, make PO understand that this estimate can change and he should take this into account.

I) Bring in Information Radiators Help the team use a visual Scrum Board to see their progress. It will help team to meet their commitments & sprint goals boosting PO trust in team.

J) Limiting Work in Progress (WIP) Support team in limiting their WIP by making them aware of techniques like Swarming, enabling team meet their commitments. 

K) Team Working Agreements Build trust through team alignment by facilitating creation of “Working Agreements”.

L) Addressing Cultural Gap Cultural differences is a major roadblock if teams are distributed. To address cultural challenge, cultural working preferences tool can be utilized where team reflects their preferences. Thereafter compiling the scores onto one chart & looking at the differences with open discussion can help in bridging cultural gaps.

M) Leverage the Power of Gamification Using games enable PO to share his personal life with the team. I use to facilitate 2 Truths and a Lie game for this.

N) Clarity on Project Goal/Vision Informal Constellations approach can be used to bring clarity on project goals. Here asking simple statements to team members like “I have clear project vision” with an open conversation can do the magic. I have seen team members feel more connected and committed towards the project after this exercise. To share the vision & goals, Objectives and Key Results (OKR) technique can also be used

O) Promote culture of Servant Leadership Help PO promote culture of Servant Leadership in place of Command & Control. Schneider model quadrants can help them identify their way of working. Thereafter SCARF model can be used to influence PO, making them realize the benefit of minimize threats and maximize rewards by explaining how the brain works under both the circumstances.

P) More Collaboration Spider diagram exercise can be used to map PO leadership style to team relationship (where team members draw the relationship between various stakeholders using thick, thin, dotted lines depicting their relationship) After that showing the results with open discussion, enables PO to build effective collaboration strategy which can build the foundation for trust.

Trust & Transparency at all levels can enable teams to move from doing to being agile. I believe it is this 2T factor & not talent, the foundation for building high performing teams. 

What do you guys think??