By Nicola Brown
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| Photo by Naassom Azevedo on Unsplash |
One of the things I love about Agile is the value it places on people. After all, it’s people who are building solutions to improve the experiences and interactions of other people. So, from very early on, it was easy for me to erase the use of the word ‘resources’, from my vocabulary, when referring to our team members. Even the use of ‘capacity’ irks me at times, as it still feels like we’re reducing our team members to things, pieces or parts that can be easily switched out.
So how do we foster a behaviour which exemplifies the Agile value of ‘Individuals and Interactions over Processes and Tools’? I think, so far, I’ve narrowed it down to 3 things.
It is necessary to involve persons in conversations/ decisions from early on, so that all parties, who have the knowledge, or may be impacted has a voice at the table.
Ensure there is mutual respect for each other. Now that everyone is at the table and we’re starting the conversations earlier, we must ensure we truly listen to each other’s point of view. We’re not encouraging group thinking, and we know that there’ll be disagreements, but once all this is done respectfully, it is easier to come to a compromise.
Allow persons to be comfortable with being vulnerable. We know we all make mistakes, but as Chantal Jenoure reminds us in The Power of an Increment, if we have learnt from a mistake, then we haven’t failed. Rather, it was a learning opportunity. However, in order to get to such a state, it’s important that people feel safe to openly talk about these ‘learning opportunities’.
There’s still a lot that I’m learning so I expect that I’ll be able to extend this list at some point. But for me, right now, at a minimum, these are some of the things that we can do to show that we truly value people.
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