By Chantal Jenoure
Agile offers a lot of beautiful opportunities for collaboration.
Most of us are probably used to working in an environment that we believe ‘fosters’ collaboration. But truly, most of us are used to working in an environment that fosters handoffs and "dis-ownership". Handoffs and dis-ownership are not akin to Agile - they are in actuality, anti-Agile.
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| Unsplash Photo by Uday Mittal |
Here’s a hypothetical scenario:
- You are asked to create a painting.
- How you are used to working is that you’d take anywhere from a day to up to two weeks to actually begin.
- You would take another four weeks or so to complete the painting.
- When you are finished, you show your customer what you came up with.
- You pray and hope that, even if they don’t love what you came up with, that they can at least like it enough to accept it and live with it. After all, this isn't the first item you have painted for them and so you believe you are well-acquainted with their tastes.
- Because of this outlook, you can’t be 100% sure how they truly feel about your new masterpiece.
- If they do like, or at least, accept it, you’d call your ‘framing’ guy.
- You’d have preliminary discussions about what colours you were thinking about and then he’d go off to source the materials needed and frame your piece.
- This could easily take another two to four weeks to complete, depending on how busy your guy was before you called.
- You keep in touch with him and it’s now taking him weeks to get around to your piece; why? Because you're in a queue based on when he got your requests and so he has to complete the orders he received before yours. He wasn’t expecting your job to come when it did.
- On the other hand, if your customers didn't like it, you’d go back to the drawing board, hopefully using insights from what they didn't like about the first artwork, and use that to come up with another painting.
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| Unsplash Photo by John Schnobrich |
This way of interacting might be a hyperbole. But doesn't it all sound so exhausting and unproductive? To top it off, there will always be a high risk of leaving your clients and team members disappointed. Or worse, you may even find yourself with output that frankly, nobody likes or wants to buy.
But what if I told you that there is a better way for us to work?
Let’s look at what I mean, using the previous scenario. It could look as simple as this:
- Your client comes to you with a desire to get a new custom painting.
- You sit down with your clients to understand what appeals to them, their interests, where their passions lie and agree on what the outcome could look like.
- On the spot, you do a few sketches to see what their preference may be leaning towards - at a preliminary level.
- You both leave that session with a tangible idea of what your artwork may become.
- Now, you confidently set off to work.
- Periodically, you show your work-in-progress to your clients so that they can see how you are progressing and what the artwork is shaping up to be.
- You ask questions and they provide insights into what they want; they give you feedback on what they’d like to see next, etc. and you comfortably continue working.
- While the artwork is in progress, you call in your framing guy and he is able to see what colours you have used and the vibe of your painting and he goes off to source his materials and prep the frame.
- You both agree on when the painting should be finished so that he can plan to start working on his side of things, as soon as it’s delivered to him.
- By the time you are done with the artwork, it is a quick 2-3 day turnaround from your framing guy.
- You deliver in half the time to your clients and they are ecstatic with the outcome.
We can all agree that scenario 2 sounds more ideal. But on the face of it, many of us would think that in its own way, it too can be exhausting - having regular conversations about where we are - and you could potentially receive feedback that may cause a delay in the intended outcome.
In the long run however, taking the time while you are developing, planning, working or executing can actually save you time and heartache. This collaborative way of working eliminates the unknown and it increases your chances of delivering with all checkboxes ticked. It allows you to constantly validate your work as you go along, without waiting until you are finished to determine if you've delivered as you were asked to.
There are several Agile Principles at work with this way of thinking. Let's review them.
Applicable Agile Principles
Principle 4
Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.
Principle 5
Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.
Principle 6
Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
Principle 8
The most efficient method of conveying information to and within a development team is fact-to-face conversation.
Principle 11
The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.
Principle 12
At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behaviour accordingly.
What does collaboration look like in your way of work?
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