Practical Applications of Agile in a Non-Software World: Part 2 of 4

This is article two in a four-part series about applying Agile principles in a non-software environment. For a fun introduction, check out my first article speculating on how we might apply Agile to an alpaca-cheese pizza business... a new twist on an old concept.

Nate has been a good friend of mine for years. Our kids are in the same class and our families get together regularly to hang out on the weekends. He and his wife, Kate, have introduced us to a number of amazing experiences, like camping with small children, renting an armada of houseboats for a week on Smith Mountain Lake, and learning to play Catan. Over time, we developed a strong bond talking about our families and our hobbies, but one of my favorite things to talk to Nate about is our jobs du jour. While my career has centered around technology and the digital world, Nate has an entirely different line of work in the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, which fascinates me.?

Nate is the Branch Chief of the Hatchery Operations and Applied Science Team—a team of five. They have three programs: Asset Management (e.g., property), Operations (e.g., growing fish and other aquatic critters), and Applied Science (e.g., research and development). There are 70 National Fish Hatcheries in the U.S., 13 applied science centers, and 4,600 total facility assets with a total value of $3.6B. They produce aquatic animals with conservation goals, often for release into the wild. They are undoubtedly doing Product Development—except instead of digital interfaces, they’re developing fish.?

When I learned he was struggling with meeting inefficiency, we discussed some opportunities to apply Agile techniques to improve meeting engagement and timeliness. Despite some initial resistance at his workplace, he persevered and championed a new way of working that is now celebrated within the headquarters program and may serve as the roots for larger change.

With these new changes in place, I have yet to hear someone say, “This is a waste of my time.”

I recently asked Nate to indulge me by answering some questions about his application of Agile principles and the results he's seen so far:

What kinds of special fish do you produce?

We produce 80-100 species each year, which equates to up to 200-250 million animals (including eggs), like salmon, trout, sturgeon, striped bass, and alligator gar, which is kind of a crazy, misunderstood animal.

Wait. What’s that?

That’s a big fish with a lot of teeth that lives in the Southeastern U.S. In some circles they’ve gotten an unfair reputation, but remain critical parts of a healthy ecosystem. If you’re interested, I suggest you look up Dr. Soloman David on Twitter.? He knows what’s up when it comes to Gar.

Photo credit: Texas Parks & Wildlife

Tell me about your role.

I’m responsible for this team and making sure our activities and facilities are conducting work that aligns with the Fish and Wildlife Service and Fish and Aquatic Conservation priorities. Those include: recovery of endangered species, restoration of declining species, and mitigation for federal water projects. Being at headquarters, funding is appropriated to us and we allocate those funds to partners around the country (members of the fisheries team), according to Program and Service priorities.?

What were meetings like before you implemented Agile principles?

(He laughed.)?

Long. Our meetings were a lot of what I would consider lost time. People were focused on listing what they accomplished. There was a lot of small talk, which I’m not opposed to, but there are different forums for that separate from operational meetings, which ran one-to-two hours.

I began to wonder if the meetings were important. We would generate action items and you might provide an update on them next week, or some of our meetings were bi-weekly or monthly. In essence, they were just update meetings.

Where did you hear about Agile?

I first heard about it over informal conversation at work when someone mentioned stand-up meetings. I talked to you about it and you mentioned the word ‘Scrum’, which I’d heard of but didn’t know what it meant.?

You explained you literally stand up and don’t get comfortable sitting down and relaxing, and you talked about having it driven by two-to-three questions and each person gets an opportunity to report out.?

I was interested, so after some basic online research I realized it wasn’t so much about updating one another but aligning on immediate goals and identifying some things that will keep us from accomplishing those goals.

What attracted you to it as a methodology?

As I’ve become a more experienced manager, I see my role as eliminating obstacles. So one of the questions I ask is, “What obstacles will keep you from accomplishing your goals over the next week?”?

Overall, the blockers are related to efficiency.

We have our core annual work plans. But we work on behalf of the U.S. taxpayer and are asked for a lot of information from members of Congress, so we often have high-priority, short-turnaround projects in addition to our planned work, and we run out of time to accomplish our goals. The draw with this methodology was we have a lot of meetings, they’re long, and we run out of time to do the work.

How did you evolve your meetings? What did you decide to adopt? Did you intentionally leave anything out?

It wasn’t a slow evolution. It was a rapid change in what we decided to do. I said I wanted to change our meeting structure and we’re going to ask two questions:

1. What are your priority projects in the next week?
2. What can we do to help / what obstacles do you see ahead??

The word, ‘We’ was important, because I wanted the team to help each other out.

The first line in all caps is, ‘THIS IS NOT AN UPDATE MEETING’ and everyone has five minutes each (but you don’t have to take all of that if you only have 30 seconds of content).?

Each week the team answers these questions on a shared document we can all collaborate on digitally. They fill it out in advance and then we go over it—that way no one has to take notes during the meeting. It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes to update—you should know what you’re doing and anticipate obstacles.

Were people receptive to the changes? Did you run into roadblocks?

There was some skepticism because it was different and I was new-ish to the team. They’d been around longer than me. But the idea of short meetings was appealing to people.?

We did this with some success for several months (just me and the Branch), and along came the pandemic. My team was already communicating well—we’d implemented a Tuesday and Friday meeting. Friday we called ‘close.’?

Now we were all at home, so one of the challenges was I didn’t get to communicate with the other five Branch Chiefs like we normally would—informally, stopping by each other’s offices to discuss what was happening in our branches. We realized we weren’t communicating well during the pandemic because we were busy coaching our own teams through the change.?

I suggested implementing the Scrum every week with this group to talk about what we’re doing and how we can help each other. These are people like me who have a lot of meetings every week, so no one really jumped on board because no one wanted another meeting.

Luckily, one person said, “I don’t really need another meeting but I’m willing to give it a try.”

This is what I’d call a Leadership Team Meeting and we do five minutes each with six people. I set up the same rules and sheet for everyone to complete in advance. My big goal as a facilitator was to not go over 30 minutes. If I see people go off track we commit to taking it offline. Within three-to-four meetings, the individual who initially was hesitant became the biggest fan of the meeting because it focused on needs and it was efficient.?

Have you noticed improvements in your team's productivity?

It created a better team atmosphere because it’s not about creating lists of what you’ve done. But there are some confounding factors, because a lot of this has happened during the pandemic and we’ve excelled in the remote environment.?

One thing we noticed was people wanted to linger after the meeting, because that’s what we were used to doing in our old meeting culture. It was weird for me to change too, but after about two times it was fine and it sank in that the meeting was over and we’re going our own ways. It was just different.

What about their morale?

I think these meetings help. I have to create other opportunities to meet for team small talk, like hosting happy hours and having an open door policy.?

Everyone has a clear role and it creates (for us) more opportunities for collaboration and teamwork because your employees are talking about the obstacles, so people are able to help each other out—either with the work itself or by sharing experiences with similar situations.?

Do you think you’ll incorporate other Agile principles beyond meetings?

Yea, if there’s more to learn. I’m pleased with what I’ve done so far. We coordinate a lot of national teams (people from all over the country), many of whom are outside of our reporting structure. I would like to find a way to make it happen for those meetings, so we’re close to trying that.?

Members of our senior leadership team have been happy with how these meetings are working and provided positive feedback after the first one they attended. It’s been a hit on my team and at my peer level.

Any final comments??

I think there’s a transition happening with how we operate as a program, and a new work culture where there will be more digital interfaces and working at home. This method is really well-suited for a digital environment.

I want to see this happen with our program at a larger scale but that takes change and change is hard.?

No one has come to me yet and said, “This really isn’t working,” and I’ve heard that about so many other meetings; for example, “Why are we here? What are we doing? We don’t have an agenda.”?

With these new changes in place, I have yet to hear someone say, “This is a waste of my time.”

#noregrets

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