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Agile culture

Agile helps to support a positive culture where shared beliefs and values can be developed, and a shared consensus on the purpose and goals of the team as a collective can be gained.

Regular structured feedback helps to maintain awareness and alleviates feelings of uncertainty: in delivering the outcomes expected, the team know where they are and accept accountability together rather than as individuals.

Solution-focused

It is important for the team to adopt the agile philosophy of continuous learning and improvement. By using agile teams can improve the accuracy of forecasts and map out potential options more realistically. This enables forward thinking and a solution-focused attitude within the team.

COLLABORATIVE

• Agile encourages team members to pull together to achieve a combined effort. When relationships are open this helps to build trust.
• Agile helps to bring teams together by opening up communication channels. With regular forums for discussion, the team are able to get to know each other better and begin to work together more smoothly.
• Collaborative behaviour improves the flow of work and reduces pressure on any one individual in the team.

PERFORMANCE

• Agile tools and metrics provide transparent data and tools to measure the performance of the team.
• When a team achieves a good rhythm and routine for working together this helps to create a balanced and realistic expectation of how much work can be achieved.
• Performance is measured for the team so the outputs become owned by the team rather than individuals. This encourages team members to help each other as there is a mutual benefit if the performance of the team improves.
• Peer review naturally occurs when discussing work ahead and reflecting on previous performance.

FLEXIBILITY

• The learn-act-reflect cycle supports a team that is open to change and provides a structure that encourages learning and development.
• The state of continuous improvement and delivery helps teams to be flexible and adjust systems to suit individual needs rather than being constrained by fixed and rigid processes and tools.

Shared purpose

The inclusive nature of agile promotes learning throughout a team by giving a clear view of goals and performance. Visually, the team can see how their work is structured and delivered and, at a glance, see what everyone is doing at any time:

• A positive, solution-focused way forward.
• Gives everyone on the team visibility of work.
• An inclusive method that gives everyone a voice.
• Empowers teams to identify and improve their work.

SHARED VALUES

The agile values in the Agile Manifesto (http://agilemanifesto.org/) and its principles outlined in Section 6 help the team to develop a shared understanding of what being agile means, and can be tailored to fit teams.

• Value individuals and interactions over processes and tools.
• Value working solutions over comprehensive documentation.
• Value customer collaboration over contract negotiation.
• Value responding to change over following a plan.

SHARED UNDERSTANDING

• Clear goals with objectives are vital to help the team to work with a common purpose.
• Brings the whole team into the decision-making process and provides them with a structure that allows them to define their own workloads and how the work is delivered.
• Ensures that everyone understands what is expected of them, and how that contributes to overall objectives and goals.
• Helps teams to focus on a specific problem and manage change on top of their day-to-day workloads.
• Results in a shared definition of success and a shared reality that help to ensure the team are all on the same page, and that a common language is used.

SHARED PERFORMANCE

• Metrics that help to track the use of resources, time and effort help to raise awareness of what the team are consuming and what value this then generates for the wider business.
• Metrics generated through the board are also valuable in order to validate, justify and evidence work that has been achieved, as well as flag problems both within the team and more widely by making them tangible and visible.
• Visual boards and collaborative tools allow logic to be mapped and for teams to see beyond the logic to discover innovative and creative opportunities for improvement.

SHARED LEARNING

The regular stand-up, planning and retrospective meetings help to ensure that the team are aware of the real-time position and work in progress, as well as the longer-term progress towards goals and outcomes, and this clarity helps to adjust and tune efforts accordingly.

Reflective meetings are key activities to help the team to understand their progress, and to identify change and challenges that the project faces. By holding regular stand-up and retrospective meetings, issues can been seen early and addressed quickly and easily. A key outcome of these meetings is learning and the sharing of experiences and progress to support future work, and implement improvements based on that learning.

Collaboration

COLLABORATIVE TOOLS

The central tool for encouraging the team to work as a unit rather than as individuals is the agile dashboard. The board gives the team a shared space for their workload, which encourages them to work collectively to find the best way to deliver the volume and quality of work required in the time available.

Collaborative activities, such as daily stand-up meetings and retrospectives, provide the team with an ongoing communications channel rather than the traditional once a month team meeting. A key feature and benefit of the agile system is that it enables teams to engage quickly and regularly within their working days rather than as a separate activity.

Estimation games and priority ranking tools for defining, estimating and prioritising work provide tools that support collaboration by facilitating communication within the team. The tools work to provide channels to discuss and communicate views of the situation openly, encouraging the team to share previous experiences and knowledge in order to assist the decision-making process. Through open discussion, expectations are clarified and a shared understanding is developed.

CONSENSUS

• Estimation planning games and priority ranking tools help the team to gain consensus and agreement.
• Communication channels allow each member of the team to contribute and have a voice.
• Experience and knowledge can be shared to identify who is best suited to which jobs and working with whom.
• Peer learning is strong, as skills are shared and developed as a by-product of working together.
• Ensures that the team does not become overly dependent on one person, which helps to mitigate losses if a team member leaves or is absent for a period of time.

COMMUNICATION

• Clear communication and visibility of jobs to do along with clear success criteria to reduce the risk of mis-communication or misunderstanding amongst the team.
• Builds relationships with customers and users and gains a deeper level of involvement and support that helps to secure the team’s loyalty and buy-in to the solution.
• Short regular meetings to work on mapping, reviewing and planning enable teams to discuss and communicate openly and develop a shared understanding within the team and, more widely, with customers, suppliers and associates.
• Communication during reflection as a team is a key activity to help the team to understand their progress and to identify change and challenges that the project faces together.

COLLABORATION GAMES

There are some great games for teams to help them come together to explore scenarios and identify solutions, such as mapping timelines. Smooth sailing is a game I have used, which helps teams to identify the things that are causing friction and slowing them down, and those things that help them gain traction and work optimally. The game is adapted from Innovation Games™ Speedboat, originally developed by Luke Hohmann (http://www.innovationgames.com/).

SMOOTH SAILING

Outcomes of the game:

• Identify issues that are causing friction in the team and preventing them from achieving optimum performance.
• Identify ideas that the team have to gain traction and improve their performance.
• Achieve a shared understanding of key issues being experienced or that are expected to occur.
• Create ideas and opportunities for improvement as a team, discussing each to clarify what and why this is a sail or anchor on the boat.
• Create actionable jobs to implement improvements for the future.

Each team draws a boat on their paper, a simple sailing boat with a body, main mast and anchor. Using sticky notes, key issues that are causing friction are used as anchors and potential options for solutions are used as sails. These are then discussed and scored.

The boat represents the team or a specific project or job.

• The anchors are added to represent the things that slow the boat down, things that cause friction and delay progress or affect performance.
• Once the anchors have been added, the team should discuss and score each. With a negative score to represent the impact this anchor has on the speed and performance of the ‘boat’, score between –10 to –1. This should be a measure of how much this anchor slows the boat down. If it has very little impact on speed, it scores –1; if it is a significant slowdown, it scores –5; and if it comes to a complete stop, it scores –10!
• Then the sails are added. These represent the things that help the team to gain traction and speed. This can especially include ideas and opportunities to release, raise or compensate for the identified anchors.
• Again, once all the sails have been added, the team should discuss and score each with a + 1 to + 10 as a measure of how much this sail will speed up the boat. If it is a little better, it scores + 1; if there is a significant increase in speed and performance, it scores + 5; and if is full speed ahead, it scores + 10!

This game helps teams to explore what they feel is holding them back and what can be done to improve performance. The key strength of the game is that it encourages communication and discussion and can lead to the identification of key actions that can help to improve the performance of the team.

Agile environment

The working environment for any team should be structured to help that team to work effectively and efficiently. The workspace for a team should be safe and comfortable and should be owned by that team, that is, in how it is set up and maintained for maximum benefit. Spaces where the team can be creative away from distractions of day-to-day activities are vital to help the focus of a team.

SHARED SPACE

• Wall space is essential to enable physical boards to be present in the team space. However, many teams I work with use corridor space, windows, room dividers, mobile whiteboards and other suitable alternatives.
• Boards in shared spaces are good as they make work even more visible to the wider business.
• Digital options are growing into viable solutions, but there is a unique value in the tangibility and tactile nature of physical boards and cards in bringing a team together to work collaboratively.
• The environment we work in can have a big impact on our ability to work: some workplaces are quiet and others are full of distractions. Subtleties such as layout and decor can directly affect the atmosphere and mood of a room and indirectly influence the behaviour of a team.
• The team boards, meetings and games within agile create a space for the team to share and work together.
• More widely, agile methods help teams to connect and share with other teams, providing a space where all can interact and engage.
• Teams that work in separate spaces can become easily disconnected, and teams that work remotely even more so. Using agile methods, such as team boards, can help connect teams and build regular channels of communication around a shared space.