Is structure supportive or restrictive?

I have been engaged in a discussion along these lines with a colleague over the last few days, it is a subject we both are interested in and one that I have been very much on the fence. 

I began from a position of a very strong belief that structure was beneficial and that it provides a scaffolding that enables teams to grow. But my colleague took the view that once in place the structure becomes at best a crutch and at worst a barrier to self-organisation and agility. 

This conversation is the basis for the usual discussion on whether a Scrum Master is necessary or should they make themselves redundant.  Or – Do we need a designated product owner or simply a better understanding of product ownership? 

Even to the point of whether there are any designated roles within the team, do we need to identify Devs, Testers, QAs, UX, BAs etc etc or can we consider all “Team Members” that are ‘T’ shaped, that is to say that whilst they possess specialty skills they are first and foremost team players able to cover most of the core software delivery skills.

Baseball

I am (very)English, so my knowledge of baseball is minimal. But today I had someone explain the finer points of ERA and ERA+ and some of the other joys of the statistics of baseball. I can sense you preparing yawns at this point so I shall go no further. But the conversation progressed to “Designated Hitters” players who do not field, they have a specialist skill, or are able to stand in to save the pitcher from batting (another dedicated role?)  I may have misunderstood this, but it was described as an “abomination to the sport” by someone that clearly believes that it is a sport where the players must participate beyond their specialty.  The converse argument presumably is that if you have exceptionally skilled specialists why should they need to participate in other roles – the team is more effective as a whole by them specializing.  Okay so I am stretching the analogy a little, but the argument holds.

Should we specialize

Specialism may aid the efficiency or the effectiveness of the team, but is it still a team sport and can a team ‘self-organize’ if there a members that can only fulfil a specialty role?

And let us suppose that we have two expert catchers, and they have no batting or fielding skills, there is no benefit to having both of them on the team. And what if our best catcher is also a good outfielder, do we use our second best catcher in the catcher position because he only has the one skill?

My view started with the opinion that the most effective teams I have worked with had both a Coach and a Product Owner, that specialism in those roles is necessary to achieve the focus necessary to be optimally effective, both individually and for the team. In the case of the coach his input magnifies the team at a higher rate than adding another team member and for most medium or larger teams the product ownership tasks are demanding and require one person to have a view on many aspects of it – albeit that the team can and should be involved as much as possible.

I stand by this position, if our only goal was the effectiveness of an average team in average circumstances.

The problem with this situation is that there is an implied hierarchy, and that the appointed people in those roles may not be the best choice, that members of the team if enabled may be able to take on some or even all of those responsibilities.  Essentially those enabling roles also become limiting factors to growth.

So long as there is a coach there, some of the team will use them as a crutch, the implied hierarchy may disguise or suppress dysfunctions, the coach may be more valuable elsewhere or in another role but is constrained.  The same for Product owner, they can easily become a bottleneck as much as a facilitator/enabler. And let’s be frank how often is the workload for a coach or a product owner approximately 1 full-time employee. Chances are one or the other or even both will be grossly over or underworked and consequently stressed or bored.

The teams will never become completely self organising in those situations. Not until enough of the team are skilled and effective in those roles and are able to internally organize themselves. And that can and will only happen if they are allowed to grow into that. 

What to do?

But of course just starting on day one and say “go organize yourselves” would be madness in most circumstances, the skills are not off the shelf skills and generally come more from experience than teaching.  But having guidelines or even common practice of teams of that structure creates an expectation of what ‘good’ looks like, and it becomes a self-perpetuating concept.

My belief and I am conscious I may be a minority here, is that we provide scaffolding, but from the outset make it clear that the end goal is independence from constraint, that the structure presented is to enable learning and will eventually be removed.  That we take our ‘T’ piece team members and we encourage them to diversify further, to become capable and aware of more skills.  We support specialism, specialty skills ARE valuable but all rounders are more valuable.

Say no to designated batters…

We don’t want designated batters, we are a team, and in a team we still function near to 100% if/when we lose a player. If that means we lose some specialists because we favor all rounders, perhaps that is a risk we have to take.  I don’t believe this means that we compromise on quality, it just means being more open to learning other skills.

Coaches should focus as much on teaching and enabling independence as they do on effectiveness.  The pragmatist in me still believes that we are a long way from this ideal, and that in most cases the teams will likely organize themselves with designated product owners, QA, UX and Devs, as inevitably there will be some people that are more skilled than others, but I would like to see us blurring those lines to the point where it is difficult for an outsider to recognize. 

The teams will likely still desire coaching and support in difficult situations, I am still of the opinion that we all benefit from coaching (even/especially the coaches), but if this can be owned by the team and it can be their choice as to who and how performs the roles we will be much closer to the goal of self-organization.

A lofty goal and one that will likely have a few hiccups along the way, but  I am beginning to believe that we can use the scaffolding of structure to be a stepping stone to self-organization.