Is Agile Something Teams Do? Or Something We Do To Teams?

I was working as a developer in an agile team. It was kind of a funky situation, as most of the team not only developed but either taught or wrote about agile practices. Note to self: next time a process team wants to actually write code, run away. Run far away.

We were just getting started, and we had a list of stories for the backlog. Our coach used what I call the "spaghetti" approach to backlog creation: if you think you hear a story, write it down on a card and put it on the table. Nothing wrong with that, as long as you somehow cross-check or quality-check the stories at some point before you start sizing and prioritizing.

Meeting with the technical part of the team the day before, (and without the coach), we spent an hour and did a little domain modeling and comparing it to the stories. Turns out the stories were all over the place in terms of quality. There were inconsistent terms, contradictory statements, vague wording -- you name it. It's was what you'd expect if you had a bunch of people write down random stories on index cards. We even had one story that was "As a user I would like the system to provide me with data". One of our stories was "I would like the system to do all of my work for me" Another story was "As a user I would like to type in static content"

So the smaller group decided that we should go down the stories again, this time with the full group and the product owner in the room, to delete/re-write/organize our stories. We were not comfortable sizing our stories until this was done.

Seemed like a logical thing to do. Something's broken. Let's go fix it.

The coach, I knew, was going to start sizing our stories first thing Tuesday morning. So although I had another team that was also starting out, which I was coaching, I skipped out on them to come to this meeting. The other team had a good enough backlog for sizing. This team did not. Work where you are needed.

I should have known I was in trouble when I approached the coach before the meeting, explained what happened yesterday, and said that we would like a little time -- maybe a half hour or an hour -- to go down the list of stories and ask our questions to the product owner.

He said, "I know that's what you want. I heard about it yesterday."

Somewhere in the back of my mind an alarm bell started ringing, but I paid no attention to it. You see, I am fairly well versed in agile philosophy: the teams own the process, not anybody else. When my teams ask for time during kickoff to ask questions, share, do presentations, etc, I am thrilled. That's what it's all about. I'm there to guide, not to control. Teams lead, I assist. If teams can't lead, then I provide as little direction as possible to get them on-track.

So like an idiot I pressed the issue. Is it okay if we have the time? I was having one conversation and the coach was having another, as we soon found out.

"I think you'll find we do the same thing in a different way," he said.

What the heck does that mean? We have questions. We have a product owner. We are the team. We are responsible for doing the work. Why can't we just ask the questions? How many ways can you ask a list of questions? So I asked the natural next question.

"So what happens if we get through with all of this and we still don't have our answers?"

This was like telling the pope he really should pray a little more. The coach's face started getting redder.

Somewhere the little alarm bell now was going off full steam, but we were in too far at that point. My natural predilection to bullheadedness was rising, and to no good. The team made a decision yesterday, and now this interloper, this outsider, was going to prevent us from communicating effectively with the product owner? For what? So he can show off to our boss his cool presentation style?

"I'm just asking if we can have some time to ask questions," I offered, "You know, the whole self-directed work team thing."

Ouch. Now I was using his own stuff against him. That had to hurt. He said, "I don't even know what you mean by that."

I looked off to nobody in general, "Being a self-directed work team is a great thing, as long as you're the 'self'"

Then his feelings were hurt. So the team, like the good corporate players they are, came to comfort him. "Go ahead with your stuff," they said, "We're here for you."

"Sure thing, big guy" I offered, "Let's see what we have"

So we went an hour or so. The tech team tried to fit in the same conversations as we had the day before only in some kind of weird, roundabout way. I was mostly quiet, but another team member had the product owner explain his concept of the categories of our stories. At the end of that time, we broke, and the coach asked us what we thought.

"I think I have the same questions I had an hour ago," I offered, adding fuel to the fire but also being honest.

"Look," he began, the storm reaching full gale, "I gave you guys the last hour. I'm here because certain people wanted to see my tools and techniques for starting a project out. If you're going to do your own thing, what do you need me here for?"

I was flabbergasted. This was the "my way or the highway" speech. Then it hit me directly: somehow we were in a conversation about who's practices were best. This wasn't about kicking off the project, this was about 'what's the best way to create, size, and prioritize a backlog'

None of which I cared about at the time. This actually pissed me off even more. We couldn't size, so I just wanted to do something ad-hoc to get us to where we could size. It's not something I'd ever done before -- going through the stories one-by-one. But it seemed good enough for our purposes. Ad-hoc, seat-of-your-pants process was clashing with educational, train-and-perform practices.

I was being educated, whether I needed it or not.

"I don't know what you're talking about giving us the last hour," I offered, "you've been in charge here the entire morning. I'm happy with that. Continue on. I'm just asking if we still have questions how do we go about getting them answered? And I'm telling you I'm no farther along now than I was at the beginning."

Then I got the "sit down, shut up, and get with the program or leave" speech. It caused quite a stir in an organizational culture that shunned conflict. I could tell everybody was waiting for the next shoe to drop.

I deadpanned, "Look. I'm with you. I was with you this morning, and I'm with you right now. You're leading here, not me. I'm not about to go anywhere"

The coach started the next section with "Ok. We're going to try some things that you might be a little uncomfortable with but they work very well."

I could tell he was talking to me. I wasn't uncomfortable at all. We went through a game to size stories and the team played along. It was something I was very familiar with and have used myself.

i have a gripe with ritual-driven agile over risk-driven agile, but that's a topic for another day. But after thinking some more about what happened over the last few days, I have a simple question:

Is agile something teams do? Or is agile something we do to teams?

It sounds silly or Yoda-like, but in a large organization it's an important distinction. If agile is something teams do, then coaching/training is just about helping teams act in whatever their natural ways are to be more agile. If agile is something we DO to teams, then coaching/training is about making teams do certain things that we think are good for them.

I think too many times as educators and coaches -- as the people who are supposed to change organizations - - that we think of agile as something we do to teams. That the people and the team situations are things to be looked at from afar instead of as organic to the people and the circumstances.

And it's easy to get sucked into this. I've had project managers ask to meet me about "problem" team members. "Have you spoken to the team member?" is my first question, and the answer is usually no! PMs will approach me with what they think of as poor behavior. "Have you taken this issue to the team?" I ask. Once again, the answer is no.

You see, they want to sit outside the team and plan and judge how to change people and relationships. My coach had already heard about us wanting to ask questions because the PM and the coach were meeting to "plan" how things were supposed to happen. Sometimes sitting outside and planning is all you can do. But most of the time, this is simply a matter of recognizing a problem and not communicating to the team. The team should be the final arbiter of whether something is working or not, whether it's broken or needs to be fixed.

I had a team go completely off the rails last month because a Scrum Master created her own backlog without consulting with the team. When she sprung this on us during kickoff, I simply said, "I really like working with you, but you can't be creating and changing the backlog when the team is not around" -- and I said this in front of the team.

Communication is a good thing. And communication means communication to the entire team.

My friend (hopefully still!) who was the coach is really good at this. The team will do an exercise and he will ask. "Are you okay with this?" or "Do you feel comfortable with this so far?"

This is the right idea. Teams will lie, however, especially in organizations where conflict is minimized. You'll get one thing one day and something else another. Asking leading questions usually gets you the answers you expect. In passive-aggressive organizations people will smile and applaud and all sorts of other externalized behavior that has no basis in reality. So reading a team is not as easy as simply asking questions. The guys yesterday who thought it would be good for an hour to ask those questions were the same guys who thought we didn't need to. And they're the same guys who had the same questions at the end of the exercise. Honestly getting a feel for team is very tricky.

But hey, if it were easy everybody would be doing this coaching stuff.

I've got to go. There's an alarm bell I need to tune up.