Communication

Looks like we have forgotten about the values. Or the vision. Or the mission.

To an occasional observer it could appear that people have turned back to a former work-groove, although we’ve been trying to change for so many years now. We hear things like:

• „Questioning the assignment is lag time and reduces my performance.“
• „Meetings are not productive work.“
• „If I help you, I won’t be able to finish my own tasks.“
• „You broke it, you fix it.“

There is a new obscurity. There is a fear of being blamed for mistakes – so the work is not shown. It took us decades to propagate transparency, now it seems everyone is back hiding and panicking.

So, is agile dead? Did the experiment fail? How did we get here? The lock downs? The hype around artificial intelligence?

Isolation

Working from home definitely paved way for more isolation. There are always ways to collaborate all the same, but it is less preferred than it used to be. Meetings are felt as inefficient and ineffective. Presentations and status updates are not distinguished from real collaboration. Pairing or grouping are again seen as loss of capacity. In the end, four hands can type more than two, right?

Fear Of New Technique

Clearly, being afraid of a loss of control, power or wealth contributes to a high blame culture. The rise of new technology that makes simple crafting less necessary and inventive, creative – but also more daring – work more important can lead to out of interest expertise.

We Are Back To Simple Explaining Of Complex Problems

How is this possible? Simple populist arithmetic wins over plausible and proven values again? Transparency is crucial for quality work. Co-creation fosters innovation. Understanding is reached after confrontation. We can’t just only say “fail fast” and “shift-left” and hide from the line of fire at the same time.

It Is More Complex Of Course

Producing quality is in the interest of an organization, a group, a community, not necessarily beneficial for the individual. It is very probable that poor quality is not recognized if the work is not even shown until the original context is blurred. This applies to all levels, not only the producing hands. Hence the individual needs to see incentives for collaboration.

It Is Not Dead Which Can Eternal Lie

There are more aspects to the phenomenon, pointing in the same direction. Of course, agile is not dead. But instead of being thought through it left open the way of degenerating so that the resistance development is now more fit than the original branch.

People Don’t Feel Safe

So, it’s up to the affected sociology to keep up the values. Only saying the words doesn’t help. Giving the people more accountability instead of real self-management makes them insecure about themselves and not psychologically safe. The result is the contrary of it was meant to be.

There Is A Way

Agile vs. Waterfall

We should prefer “May the Force be with You” to „Try not! Do! Or do not. There is no try“. Let’s talk about it.