Agile Adventures: My Journey Fixing Struggling Teams
Photo by Pickled Stardust on Unsplash
TL;DR
Agile can be super helpful, but sometimes teams get too caught up in making the perfect process and forget about actually getting stuff done.
My Journey
With a wealth of experience in Agile development, I have been a part of various product teams that have implemented a range of Agile methodologies, some of which I was with for years. During my journey, I was also part of a group that helped repair poorly performing Agile teams by equipping them with the necessary tools and knowledge. Through my experiences, I have observed three common symptoms of teams struggling with Agile — inability to project timelines, limited visibility into work progress, and confusion about who was responsible for what.
The problem
These teams exhibited a multitude of symptoms, however, two characteristics emerged as the underlying causes.
Firstly, they heavily customized project management tools like Jira, Trello, Asana, and the like. This often resulted in tools with excessive processes and rules around work. It manifests as many columns, ownership rules, and approval statuses.
Secondly, they had a tendency to gather feedback and revise processes too frequently. This led to constantly changing columns, updated workflows, and a tendency to alter the entire process to accommodate a single outlier that didn’t fit neatly into their process. The highly productive members of the team were hit the hardest by these changes, as they prioritized making progress and steer clear of the process discussions that occurred post-meetings and in group chats. They would show up to meetings without a clear plan or purpose and return to a project management tool that now had new rules and workflows, which they needed to familiarize themselves with.
Progress Over Process
Agile is designed to be flexible and tailored to meet your needs, isn’t it?
Yes, it is. However, the question is whether your primary goal is to have the best process or to make the best progress. Many teams don’t need the complexity that comes from having a tool with numerous columns, workflows, and planning processes. It’s important to keep things simple and start with the basic implementation of Agile (Scrum, Kanban, Lean, etc.) by focusing on the essential ceremonies and using straightforward tool setups. Your process and project board should not aim to solve every problem, but rather critical ones, such as providing visibility into the work how likely it is to be completed in a certain time frame. The board is not equipped to handle every aspect of everyones work which are best managed elsewhere.
KISS (keep it simple stupid)
When using Agile methodologies, it’s easy to fall into the trap of over-complicating the process especially when encountering a high-visibility or important issue. However, it’s important to keep the focus on creating progress rather than an overly complex process. Start with a basic implementation of Agile and keep the tools simple, focusing on how to move work forward. A good rule is to avoid making changes to the process unless there are at least three examples of problem. Following this approach will free your team to drive value instead of being driven by process and tools.
