Can an agile workflow be less chaotic?

(My perspective)

A collection of thoughts & advice stemming from hands-on experiences

We all saw the word Agile on multiple job descriptions and heard people say they work in an Agile environment, leverage Agile workflows, etc. We also hear the word thrown around so much! It almost feels like it is a symbol of awesomeness or a level of experience you need to reach to attain the ultimate power. When you give an interview often interviewers ask if you are comfortable working in a fast-paced ever-changing environment. I mean of course! Why not? We always say yes to that question (who does not like challenges and curveballs? The brain needs to be challenged right!). Now let’s look at another perspective.

What is Agile? A list of google answers goes something like this:

• Division of tasks into short phases of work and frequent reassessment and adaptation of plans
• Continuous incremental improvement through small and frequent releases
• Allows room for flexibility and innovation. As they?work?toward a common goal

And more on the same lines. All statements/ definitions have something in common. Can you guess what that is? PLAN and GOAL. The core of the workflow is to segment the plan and work towards a goal. The workflow is a concept that gives wiggle room to work in short phases and change approaches to improve the process to get to the goal. Do whatever, but work towards accomplishing the goal no matter what (With all the improvements, you may end up with an outcome that looks like your expected goal on steroids, but the soul of it stays the same). This is a super cool concept. But! Ha ha, you all know there is always a BUT in my story. I also work in a fast-paced environment with ever-changing needs like many of you.?

Most work places switched to an Agile approach because of changes in technology, requirements, speed, and many other factors that may set you back from completing projects in one stretch. (I mean you are building an application 1.0 in a 2 month timeline. Someone already has an improved version with security patches and bells and whistles by the time you reach the end of your 2 month timeline)

Not saying all projects are agile but saying most of the projects this day call for an agile workflow.

Let me deviate a bit before I make my point. I am obsessed with the TV show MasterChef. Amazing cooks across the country compete for the title. At the beginning of the episode they have a theme, everyone gets a chance to cook individually and as a team within the time limit and that will be judged by the incredible chef judges at the end of the episode. Things always don’t go as planned some dishes end up missing the mark and some of them go through so many roadblocks, but in the end, manage to whip up something unexpected that saves them from being eliminated or maybe even turn up as a winning dish of the episode.?

Of course, while I was watching this show, it made me think about how close I was to having a train wreck project but saved it last minute (Several times). We start with a great idea, but things happen along the way, and we end up delivering a product that looks waay different than what we wanted it to look like and function in a weird way, but fortunately, things work out in the end (or not). This could be a happy accident or could be a project that haunts you for a long time. (You don’t know how or why it works but it does and now you have to document stuff and make sense of your nightmare of a project)

What is happening!!! Why does the goal that we saw so clearly when we started working, fade away by the time we get to the finish line? or in other words the soul of the project goes bye bye at some point and we don't even notice.

Through my experience, deep discussions with my friends who work in different work places, and discussing challenges with my colleagues, I understood that we all have the same/similar problems with this agile work structure. We know that the plan is segmented, and we improvise within the segments to reach the goal. Also, someone throws in another idea, we incorporate that thinking this could be an amazing addition. Things snowball and we end up in a sticky situation not knowing how we got there. I also identified a few patterns that are the root cause of the “goal fading phenomena” (from my perspective of course)

What is working and what is not?

Here are some of my observations. I’ll start with the positive ones

• Identifying the right people to execute the right task
• Setting clear timelines
• Following up (I don’t mean micromanaging)
• Empowering the team to execute their best work
• Making sure the team also believes in the initiative ( If they don’t believe, your goal will start to fade)
• Accountability (everyone on the team is equally accountable for everything, no one gets to blame someone when the sticky situation happens)
• Have a product owner send communication and create awareness on the project and how it works, its impact, and points of contact who can help give more details about the project to the end users
• Team engagement and morale (Make sure everyone has fun and learns through this experience)
• Celebrating milestones and acknowledging work

Things that don’t work

• Telling the team what to do (Restricts them and limits them from doing their best work)
• No communication (You suddenly deploy a project and expect everyone at the work place to be excited & onboard with it. Doesn’t work that way. No one likes sudden changes or new things. It is like stranger danger)
• Putting the wrong people in charge of a task (Causes roadblocks and delays. Frustrating ugh!)
• Introducing new ideas at the wrong time in the workflow (Causes scope creep and your goal starts to fade. Another cause of the potential sticky situation)
• Unreasonable timelines (We all know this one! Don’t overcommit *)
• Making assumptions (This introduces confusion)

The points I specified above are not exactly the Agile workflow itself but are key parts that decide if you accomplish the task and meet the goal you expected (with roadblocks but still sticking to the plan and having a goal in mind) OR if the team had to jump through fiery hoops, fall on their face, scrape their elbows and knees to whip up something and make it work last minute.

I mean both these approaches get you a final product. But clearly, the first scenario sounds more ideal than the second. The first scenario works if we have all the external factors in favor. Like working at Company X who has their life together, the stars align, and birds sing (I’m being dramatic, but you get the point)

Now we know, that we are playing against the odds. How do we make sure we and our teams experience positive workflows? Can this process be less chaotic? If it was left to me to decide, I would start working on items that streamline things for me first. It does not matter if you are an individual contributor or a person leading the group. I know that we can’t change the entire organizational structure of the team and make things work perfectly overnight (not even in a million nights lol). I also know that a BUNCH of us are in the same boat facing scenario 2. How do we stay sane and get stuff done without the knee scraping and the fire hopping?

Start with?

• Make lists
• Ask questions
• Have a sticky note with the context of the project and the goal
• Make sure you ask about your role in the project
• Clarify your role along the project (Keep saying it out loud so anyone on the team who may have missed it would know what you are responsible for)
• Identify the goal (your goal) that ties into the final goal (Create a cute blueprint for yourself)
• Communicate with the people on the team with who your goal overlaps/depends on
• Work through your list, and separate the items on your list into moving parts and non-moving parts (Non-moving parts are the heart of your task list, moving parts are the items that can be affected by external factors or work done by other team members, you need to be ready to handle those)?
• Engage with the team and know what is happening around you (Or as I say, be nosey, not annoying)

All the items I listed above are just a few key things. It does feel like a lot of work in the beginning, but it will help save your butt in the long run. This is what I do to shield myself from uncertainty on some levels. There will always be something that throws us off, being ready for these will help us feel less agitated and will let us move on to the next task (Also helps us process the emotions faster because you kind of expected something to take an unexpected turn and it is not a surprise)

Going back to the Agility conversation. Yes of course we can all work in an agile environment. Things here are not perfect like we were taught in school or like the books say, but there is always something you can do to bring yourself and even the whole team back on track. Sometimes all we need to do is, remind ourselves of the context, and the goal, and question if everything is on track (Don’t get caught up in the moment)

Leaders of these Agile projects must keep in mind that the plan and goal are important, being agile does not mean that we can shapeshift and turn a hut into a palace. All workflows have limits. You can only push so far. Try not to introduce complexity when the task item is “nice to have”. Give teams time to build a strong foundation for your project, this will help you add your “nice to haves” and not break the whole process flow/pipeline. Do not insist on fitting a piece of the puzzle that is not cut out to fit in a space that you want it to fit in. Trust in the team and let them produce results. Guide them through the process.

The agile workflow/environment etc is not something that we do step after step checking items off our list. It is a creative process that involves skillful individuals working together to produce art (I think data science projects are pieces of art. You only see the output; you don’t see the process and people work together to make that happen and the work that goes into maintaining that piece of art)

This article is inspired by my personal experiences and what I did to overcome knee-scraping experiences when I was an individual contributor and how I lead my team with the idea of what I wanted this workflow to work like. Inspiring people and providing guidance and seeing results is the best way to tame the chaos we see all day every day. This is not a one-person show #TeamWork

Let’s make the Agile workflow less chaotic.