One Team, One Country
I saw a ClintEastwood movie named "Invictus" last week, and could not resist but write this one. It may be because I am seeing everything with Agile lens but this gives us a wonderful view on the Leadership skills and fore thought that Mandela had.
The focus on breaking the chinesewalls that get formed by the blessed and the not so blessed is very important in any team work. The movie depicts this very well and provides a very clean view on the importance of leadership to help implement the same. "springboks" making it to the finals and finally winning the match and more than that winning the heart of 40 million South Africans is inspiring for a person embarking on this journey. While integrating the two begins as an impossible and formiable task, the movie unwinds an approach of supporting the cause of one team while focussing on the larger goal is a very nice illustration of the problem and a possible solution.
Agile is about team work and cultural change to break the barriers of division and working together as a team to work on team goals. It is very important to understand what the agile boundary is - is it a module development team, a development team, overall delivery group, product group, business group including the sales team or the entire company. Once the boundaries are marked, it is then working towards open and effective communcation amongst within the team such that everyone is aware of what is happening on a daily basis and decisions are taken effectively with this in mind. Where is the development team with respect to iteration, where is the sales team with respect to sales, where is the documentation team, where is the implementation team etc will become very important in the decision making process. This will also help in managing changing decisions in such a quality driven way that no one seeks explanation to have taken decision but infact collectively supports the same.
Once the team boundaries are drawn, it is important to make sure that the interfaces outside the boundaries are managed effectively to ensure that the contracts and obligations are met and managed well. This will bring the tough question of converting a open, scope changeable constant velocity train( Agile Train), to agree to move a committed number of passengers within a specific period of time. This some times is hard and something that may make agile break more often than not. The movement of the agile ballparks to committable proposals simply diffrentiates between an agile team and a effective agile team
The focus on breaking the chinesewalls that get formed by the blessed and the not so blessed is very important in any team work. The movie depicts this very well and provides a very clean view on the importance of leadership to help implement the same. "springboks" making it to the finals and finally winning the match and more than that winning the heart of 40 million South Africans is inspiring for a person embarking on this journey. While integrating the two begins as an impossible and formiable task, the movie unwinds an approach of supporting the cause of one team while focussing on the larger goal is a very nice illustration of the problem and a possible solution.
Agile is about team work and cultural change to break the barriers of division and working together as a team to work on team goals. It is very important to understand what the agile boundary is - is it a module development team, a development team, overall delivery group, product group, business group including the sales team or the entire company. Once the boundaries are marked, it is then working towards open and effective communcation amongst within the team such that everyone is aware of what is happening on a daily basis and decisions are taken effectively with this in mind. Where is the development team with respect to iteration, where is the sales team with respect to sales, where is the documentation team, where is the implementation team etc will become very important in the decision making process. This will also help in managing changing decisions in such a quality driven way that no one seeks explanation to have taken decision but infact collectively supports the same.
Once the team boundaries are drawn, it is important to make sure that the interfaces outside the boundaries are managed effectively to ensure that the contracts and obligations are met and managed well. This will bring the tough question of converting a open, scope changeable constant velocity train( Agile Train), to agree to move a committed number of passengers within a specific period of time. This some times is hard and something that may make agile break more often than not. The movement of the agile ballparks to committable proposals simply diffrentiates between an agile team and a effective agile team
Comments
This in my opinion is the key to successful Agile adoption.
Since people always respond to incentives, I think a way to make this happen is to incentivise this behaviour. The parameters for appraisals of people working in Agile teams should change to focus less on their individual achievements and more on their contribution to the team.