Agile 2. Adrian Lander
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into working in a way that is not suited to their personalities.
Coaches Should Not Assume
What has continued to amaze us is that if one asks an Agile coach, “Is Agile working?” the answer will usually be an emphatic yes followed by gushing about how productive teams are and how Agile has revolutionized software development. Yet if one asks the typical programmer—the very people who Agile was created for—they will have a different range of responses. In fact, it seems to us that most programmers have not had a very positive experience with Agile.
Studies at the University of Florida and the University of Notre Dame indicate that introverted team members tend to view their extroverted co-workers more negatively, whereas the extroverted co-workers do not seem to have that negative bias.23 In other words, the introverts silently judged the extroverts negatively.
We think something like that might be happening among Agile teams. Agile coaches tend to be people-oriented, and therefore more extroverted than programmers on average, so they don't see a problem; programmers tend to be more introverted than average.24 The Agile coaches think things are great. The programmers? Well, not so much.
The University of Florida and Notre Dame experiments might also indicate that extroverts tend to be relatively insensitive to how introverts are experiencing things, because if they were aware, they would probably not be so favorable in their own ratings of their introverted colleagues. That conclusion is also supported by a Yale study that indicated the introverts are generally more sensitive to the feelings of others.25
This is why coaches should not assume that what they would prefer is what their team will prefer. Ask! And pay attention to what is being written and said, even if it goes against Agile dogma. For example, in her book Carved In Sand, Cathryn Ramin writes the following on page 33:
“… an endless stream of interruptions has become the norm. Researchers at the University of California, Irvine attempted to quantify the number of distractions and interruptions that occur among IT workers in a medium-sized office. They predicted that something would interfere with concentration every fifteen minutes, but on average, interruptions occurred every three minutes, and only two-thirds of the interrupted work was resumed on the same day.”
If this sounds like your organization, do you think that team members can focus? Ask them!
What about use of tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams? Are they too distracting? Consider this article in Nir & Far, “If Tech Is So Distracting, How Do Slack Employees Stay So Focused?”:
“Slack management leads by example to encourage employees to take time to disconnect. In an interview with OpenView Labs,26 Bill Macaitis, who served as Slack's chief revenue officer and chief marketing officer, states, “You need to have uninterrupted work time … . This is why—whether I'm dealing with Slack or email—I always block off time to go in and check messages and then return to uninterrupted work.”27
Perhaps do not assume that the team should be texting each other all day in these tools. Perhaps encourage them to disable desktop notifications and to not install the tool on their phones.
Maybe some people are bothered by these tools and by ambient noise, but others are not. Ask! Consider this post in Slashdot, “Why Office Noise Bothers Some People More Than Others”:
“According to a 2015 survey of the most annoying office noises by Avanta Serviced Office Group, conversations were rated the most vexing, closely followed by coughing, sneezing and sniffing, loud phone voices, ringing phones and whistling. Why do we find it so hard to be around these everyday noises? … As the researchers suspected, all the students performed better in silence. But they also found that … the more extroverted they were, the less they were affected by noise.”28
Maybe some team members can work just fine in a team room, but others cannot. Do not assume that a team vote is the answer. Maybe a range of approaches should be considered. Ask!
Noise and pop-up alerts are not the only problem. Some people also find local movement distracting. That is why Panasonic has developed “horse blinders” for humans, specifically for use in open office layouts (Figure 1.1).29
Figure 1.1: Blinders to help people focus in “team rooms”
Source: (Photo from Japan Trends:)
www.japantrends.com/wear-space-panasonic-wearable-concentration/ )
Are frequent “stopping by” discussions disruptive? For some people, yes. According to a study at George Mason University, being interrupted for only 60 seconds while concentrating can completely wipe one's short-term memory.30
Perhaps do not advise your team to just “stop by” each other's desk at any time. Perhaps people should have an “I'm thinking” sign on their desk, indicating that they do not want to be disturbed.
What about all the Agile ceremonies? Many developers think it is too much.31 Perhaps instead of assuming that the team needs those, ask! According to an article in Doist.com ,
“This trend toward near-constant communication means that the average knowledge worker must organize their workday around multiple meetings, with the time in between spent doing their work half-distractedly with one eye on email and Slack.”32
Talk to teams. Find out how they feel that they work best. Do not assume. Do not blindly follow someone else's methods.
Now What?
We can see that while there are some really powerful and important ideas behind the Agile movement, things are not quite right. What should we do?
Agile 2 is not intended to be a new set of ideas. The ideas of Agile 2 are all well-established, but they are not Agile doctrine. Many members of the Agile community have been using these ideas on an individual basis but usually describe these as implied nuances, or “bringing in ideas from other domains.” These ideas pertain to leadership, to effective collaboration, to empowering people to work in a way that is best for them individually, and to applying context and judgment instead of just adopting an extreme practice. Agile 2 is about bringing these nuances explicitly into the Agile idea set and making them part of the Agile envelope.
In the next chapter, we will take a more comprehensive look at some problems of Agile to establish a better understanding of what areas of Agile need improvement. In later chapters, we will then look at models for effective leadership, collaboration, product design, transformation, continuous delivery, and other ideas that are part of Agile 2, and we will conclude with examples of some specific problem domains through an Agile 2 lens.
Notes
1 1.