On the back of my good day last week, I have run in to a somewhat frustrating day today.
I have taken it upon myself to challenge the adoption of Agile in the organisation, it has been over 18 months since they adopted Scrum, and there are currently 7 Scrum teams each with a Product owner and there are 3 Scrum Masters and an Agile Coach/Scrum Master. Sounds great! except that not one of those 11 roles have a job title to match.
In every case someone is ‘acting …’ – they are seconded from another role. In most organisations that wouldn’t be a problem, you could be pretty flexible, temporarily at least. But in the Civil Service a job description and responsibilities are a big deal, every 6 months there is an appraisal of your work where you are measured on objectives that are constructed based on your job description and designated roles and responsibilities of that job, so unfortunately those in the roles of PO and SM are struggling to meet any of their objectives, not to mention a lack of support and backup as those more senior in the organisation are not familiar enough to formally provide it. So it is being provided informally by those that are enthusiastic about agile.
So I decided that the time had come and I wanted to press it with HR, I want to create formal roles to reflect the work being done, to allow those interested to be able to apply and those doing the roles to be recognised and rewarded. And then finally I wanted to ensure there was a support network in place. (I could be biting off more than I could chew)
But today I met with two people – one responsible for organising the support network and one from HR, the lady from HR was fantastic, all you could ask for from an HR rep, she seemed genuinely concerned about the people, about ensuring they got the support and had career options and had clarification of their roles and responsibilities. But the support network guy… Now I don’t know if he misunderstood my request, or whether he was irritated by agile or what the situation was, but I felt I was on the back foot, he suggested that ‘some agile advocates’ were so zealous in their agile application that they created a rigid process worse than the ‘traditional’ approach. He seemed to suggest that as agile had no process that formal support was unnecessary, and he then spoke for a while about how the process was not understood, followed or even liked by the organisation, and I must confess at this point I wasn’t sure if he was talking about agile or the professional support network he was responsible for.
I felt very deflated, I really thought I would be pushing on an open door, this was someone (me) wanting to utilise their expertise and help make the system work by making it relevant to those doing the job and I was being criticised for not being ‘agile’ I found myself questioning what I was doing. Was I being un-agile? Was I imposing structure and regulation?
In the end the HR rep concluded very diplomatically that we were not ready for him yet and we would re-convene again without him – phew. But it still made me stop and think, was I doing the right thing?
So I have spent this evening thinking a lot about it, and on reflection I put it down to a belief that agile means no formal process. This is clearly wrong on a number of levels, but in the Civil Service it would be an impossible situation, formal process is so ingrained that you need a very formal process to not have a process.
The agile principle is that we favour “Individuals and interactions” over “processes and tools”. But that is not the same as saying we don’t believe in processes. I believe that the people are crucial and that providing structure, support, training and opportunities is very much the agile way, and if I need a process to do that so be it. What is un-agile is to not provide these vital people support because a process gets in the way – which is the current situation.
Sometimes being challenged in your thinking really helps clarify understanding, and whilst I left the meeting frustrated I am now very pleased I had that conversation, I feel more certain than ever that it is both right and necessary for me to challenge this situation, and keep the focus on the people.
John Yorke 