The People that make Agile Projects Successful

In this article we will look at the people that make projects delivered with Agile successful, including who should be in an Agile project team.

A first point to make is that the people involved are incredibly important – probably?the most?important factor- for making the Agile project a success. (Arguably the people involved are the most important factor for success in any project regarding of what lifecycle it follows but they are?even more?important in the Agile project).

Why is that?

You may have heard of the?Agile Manifesto , a set of short statements that set the direction for what Agile is based on what people working with Agile practices should value. It gives direction and guidance for people using Agile practices. It is incredibly brief and simple and therefore a lot of people take it to be just a bunch of shiny words and they don’t really reflect on their meaning. This is a mistake – because it means they will not do Agile properly. Yeah they might use the terms and phrases, they might do a couple of activities or use some tools but it is like going through the motions without doing the real thing.

So what does the Agile Manifesto tell us?

A key point is that we shouldn’t do things for the sake of doing them (we should do things that matter, that add value) and that the way we work together, collaborate, ensure everyone is on the same page is more important than what tool, document or process we use. That puts a lot of emphasis on the people. In a way it is saying the people and how they work together are more important than anything else.

So what are the people in an Agile team like?

Each individual that make up an Agile team has to be:

Dedicated.

Eh, excuse me? Surely all teams have people who are dedicated to the team/ the business/ the cause/ the goals/ the task … what are you talking about?! The word dedicated can be a bit confusing. It doesn’t refer to the person’s motivation, or emotional connection to the work. It takes about their availability to the project.

For the Agile team to be able to be agile and move forward at pace, it cannot be held back by lack of suitable resource, or having to restrict work to certain days or hours (if we need to do that we need to schedule that work in in advance and in that case we might be better of using a linear lifecycle). Resources have to be dedicated to the team in the sense that they have to be available to the team at all (working) times.

In practice this means the same individuals (and only those inidividuals) work on the project, full time, for the entire life of the project. This is important for a few reasons:

1. If you do not have certainty on who you have available and when you will need to create detailed schedules in advance – this will restrict your ability to use Agile
2. A benefit of using Agile methods is the ability to change, learn and improve. This includes improving the output but also improving how the team works together. A dedicated team will jel together and learn to improve their ways of working and skills from one sprint to the next. If you do not have a dedicated team you reduce the ability to learn (remember: people learn, not machines or businesses or documents)
3. In Agile the way we think of project constraints (the triangle of constraints of Scope, Cost and Time) is turned on its head and rather than being scope led (or constrained) as you would be in a linear project, you will be constrained by Time and Cost and your scope will be flexible.

It is very difficult to fix cost if you have variable resources.

Forming dedicated teams is challenging for many organisations and it will restrict what parts of the business can do Agile projects, what people can be involved and also what type of projects can be done in an Agile manner. This is important knowledge because if you attempt to run an Agile project without a dedicated team you will fail and would be better off using a linear lifecycle.

?Empowered

Again… what are you on about? Every company worth its salt these days will say their people are empowered – it’s likely mentioned somewhere in your corporate values!

Well… bad news… the kind of (shallow) empowerment most organisations give their employees is not enough for an Agile project to work.

Think about it: how will a team be able to move forward at pace if they constantly have to go ask approval or advise from someone else? They will be in a constant state of waiting for permission for take action = not Agile!

In practice empowered means that the team does not have to rely on anyone external, which includes executives, other business areas or managers etc. The team will have the authority to make decisions and take action and also have the knowledge and skills to recognise what is the right thing to do (see below under?Cross Skilled)

This is also challenging for a lot of organisations, because different layers of decision making an power is built into the fibre of how the organisation works. This might upset the organisation’s ways of working, it’s culture and ruffle a few feathers.

If you think your organisation, team structure or the subject matter or your project does not allow for the team to be truly empowered then Agile might not be the right way to go.

Self organising

Following on from being empowered the team also has to be self organising. That means they take shared ownership of structuring how they do work, what tools they use, who does what task etc.

This requires knowledge skills, dedication (there is again) and empowerment (these are all connected).

It also requires a certain type of person. If your team consists of a bunch of people who are used to, and prefer to, be told what and how to do their job the team will not be able to work in an Agile manner because every single person has to be able to step up and take equal place and responsibility. At the same time, a team made up of people who will only go their own way without concern for others will also not work because that will not create a cohesive team where everyone is equal.

In practice this means you need the right type of people and the right culture.

Cross skilled

Above I outlined why you need a Dedicated team. In order for the dedicated team to work the team members have to be empowered and self organising. And they also have to possess the right skills. The right skills in this case are whatever skills will be required to deliver the project and it might include subject matter or technical skills, communication skills, procurement or legal skills etc. The point is that the team can only be truly Agile if they are able to move forward at pace without being dependent on anyone else.

This doesn’t mean we expand the team to include everyone we might possibly need at some point (that would make the team huge, unwieldy and very expensive). Instead we try to pull together people that have the right skills or look to upskill, and cross-skill all team members.

In practice this might restrict the type of projects the Agile team can take on. For example: for a project that requires very specific skills at very different times that require very diverse skills that need years of training it might not be possible or desirable to cross skill the team and in that case you might be better off running the project in a linear fashion (or perhaps break it into several smaller projects that each can be run by a small dedicated team)

Who do we need in the Agile project team?

Scrum is considered the most common method to deliver projects with Agile, in fact according to the most recent State of Agile Report 66% of teams that use Agile to deliver projects do so by using the Scrum methodology. It therefore makes sense to look to Scrum to understand who we need to have involved and what their roles are.

The scrum framework and its roles is outlined in the Scrum Guide, available for free?HERE

(Development) Team

This is the Dedicated, Empowered, Self-organising and Cross-skilled group of people that do the work to deliver the product.

Within this group there is no hierarchy, no one who is more senior or more important. Each individual is equal and their opinion, skills, and input must count as much as everyone else’s.?

Scrum Master

This is an individual with a tough, and somewhat difficult to nail down, role. The Scrum Master role exists to help the Development Team do their job without disruptions. It involves facilitating team meetings and addressing any obstacles that might prevent the team from performing.

The Scrum Master is not the same as a team leader, and not the same as a manager. In fact, the Scrum Master has no power at all – they are a servant leader, or even a “servant facilitator”.

Product Owner

If the Agile project is going to work the team has to be able to move forward at pace and to do this (and to make sure that the right things are worked on) the customer has to be constantly involved in the project.

This can be difficult for the Development team to manage without getting side tracked or spending all their time dealing with the customer. This is where the role of Product Owner comes in. Their role is to be the connecting between the Development team and the customer, and to act as the voice of the customer towards the project.

Other important roles:

Customer

The customer has to make an active commitment to be being involved in the project and to be available to test the product and make speedy decisions all the way through the project.

This means your customer also has to be Dedicated, Empowered, Self-organised and Cross-skilled. If the customer has to go and seek permission or ask for advise at every decision point the project cannot be Agile.?For this reason who your client is and how they behave and their culture should play into your decision about whether the project can be delivered using Agile or not.

Agile coach

Many organisations benefit from having an Agile Coach. This is typically an individual that sits outside any one project team and who can work on a more strategic level (as well as helping the individual teams at a tactical level) to implement Agile practices in a way that works for that organisation.

Organisations such as?Spotify ?have reported huge successes from using an Agile Coach.

The PMO

The PMO is in a fantastic position to foster the right type of culture and practices across the organisation that helps the Agile team do what they need to, in the way they need to, and how they need to do it.

This can include knowledge sharing, briefing stakeholders and looking at what tools can help support the Agile teams.

PMO’s can also serve the organisation by helping make decisions around what projects should be done in an Agile way and which ones should be linear.

But… hang on a minute! What about the Project Manager? And don’t we need a Steering Committee?

A lot of people struggle with the idea that there is no Project Manager in an Agile project. At least not in a project delivered with pure Scrum. This is because:

• All team members are equal, no one individual can decide what, when or how to do work
• There is no place for some of the traditional project manager responsibilities since there is no long term project schedule, minimal documentation, no formal management of people, more dynamic stakeholder engagement, and monitoring and controlling is built into the ways of working

But if we step away from pure Scrum and into a somewhat watered down but potentially more widely applicable version, there could be a role for a project manager-esque role for large and complex projects or projects with external dependencies. The project manager would then act more as a coordinator.

The traditional Steering Committee role is not listed in the Scrum guide, but in reality most organisations (and projects) require, and benefit from, having a defined Steering Committee. In essence it provides the same benefits whether linear or Agile, i.e providing strategic direction and control.

In an Agile project it is important that the Steering Committee members understand the differences between ways of working so that they appreciate and can carry out their role and the commitment it requires. They will need to understand that the information they get will be different (shorter, briefer or maybe even non-existent and definitely not in the lengthy documents they expect once a month and there won’t be any mention of scope!) and they may be required to be available more often and make decision faster than they are used to.

Upskilling and preparing the Steering Committee is crucial or they can easily become a blocker, preventing the team from being Dedicated, Empowered, Self-Organising and Cross-skilled.

Do you want to learn more about how to deliver projects using Agile methods? Have a look at Wellingtone’s?APM accredited Agile Project Management ?– a unique learning experience delivered entirely as an Agile project where you get to step into the shoes of an Agile team from Day 1.

About Wellingtone

Wellingtone is a Project & Portfolio Management consultancy and training company. We enable our clients to make a step-change in their Project & Portfolio Management maturity.?Learn more ?about how we can support your organisation.

Written by Karin Maule - Wellingtone