The Agile Wilderness: Principle #4: Working Together

Agile Principle #4: "Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project." (1)

Image from medium.com (2)

I think this is another principle that was a big step at the time 20 years ago, but we need to take it a step further. As you dig into recent thought leadership within product thinking, you realize the need for us not only to meet regularly but actually work to solve problems together by bringing out skill sets together. In "continuous discovery habits" by Teresa Torres, she talks about how a product trio works together continuously as partners to focus on solving customer problems and work toward the desired outcomes. The product trio is the product manager, design lead, and the technical lead. (3)

Digging into the agile principle

As we look at this principle, we see the basic concept of meeting together daily. Many take this to just implement a daily stand up with a product owner representing the business. Although the practice of a daily stand up is fine when used in the right context and with the right guidelines, many just treat it is a status update. We need to use this time as a space for the team to collaborate and own how we move toward out sprint goal together.

Also, let's make sure that this is not the only time we are meeting. We should be regularly meeting to discuss the problems we are trying to solve. This comes in many forms from discovery sessions, refinement, reviews, etc. The collaboration and partnership between business and technology to solve the complex customer problems we have in front of us and respond to what we are learning as we go.

Comparing the agile principle to Scrum values and SAFe scaled principles

As we look at the Scrum values (4) this closely relates to Commitment, Openness and Respect. To work together well, we must be aligned toward the same goal and committed to working to solve the customer problem in this space. We then need to be open and respectful of each other as we share ideas and work to solve the problem together. These are key to the collaboration needed to drive the outcomes we are trying to achieve as a team.

As we look at the SAFe scaled principles, we see that the key to scaling working together is #8 or "unlocking the intrinsic motivation of knowledge workers" and #9 "decentralized decision making". (5) The scaled principle #8 from SAFe focuses us on unlocking our motivation for us to work together to achieve our goals. We want to be on a mission together bringing each of our skills to the table to create the greatest solutions for our customers. The scaled principle #9 from SAFe around decentralized decision-making builds on the idea of setting up the right environment to work together. Setting a framework on how we will make decisions and empowering the teams as much as possible brings clarity to work together well. We need to give the team the power to respond to changes as they see fit within certain parameters. SAFe defines these parameters on when to do centralized vs. decentralized decisions shown below which can help provide guidance to the team.

Suggested changes to the original agile principle

"Business and technology people must collaborate daily to solve complex problems for our customers"

Update in language to "business and technology people" as this is how we usually talk about them today. I also changed "work together" to "collaborate" for simplicity and alignment to agile manifesto. The major change I would suggest to this is to "solve complex problems for our customers" instead of "throughout the project". We need to get out of the old mindset of projects and pre-defined solutions to implement and move into a world where we are continuously learning and working through complex problems for our customers.

Closing

In closing, collaboration is key and takes us back to the manifesto to focus on how we strive to focus on collaboration over the process and tools. Here is a summary of the article below:

I hope you have enjoyed this article and as always feel free to reach out to discuss further or drop a comment below to join the discussion. Thank you for your time and look forward to sharing my thoughts about "Principle #6: Face to Face Communication" next time.

About the Author

Jeff Mortimer?(#theAgileMoose ) is an Agile Enthusiast with over 10+ years of experience working in various roles on agile teams including business analyst, product owner, scrum master, team leader, technical delivery manager and now an agile coach consultant focused on product transformations. In additional to his certifications in CBAP, AAC, CSP-PO, SAFe Agilist and SAFe LPM, Jeff?has presented at several conferences throughout North America and joined the blogger universe a couple years ago to bring a voice to the everyday agile practitioners. He also just received his EMBA at Quantics School of Business and Technology. He is a husband to an amazing intelligent wife who has her doctorate in math education, father to kids who bring him joy every day, friend that brews beer and plays soccer, and citizen who helps organize volunteers to give back to the community.

Follow #theAgileMoose for the latest insights in the agile wilderness.

References

(1)?Agile Principles ?from agile alliance

(2)?Principles Image ?from medium.com

(3) The Product Trio from product talk

(4)?Scrum Values ?from scrum.org

(5)?SAFe Scaled Principles ?from scaledagileframework.com