One of the past week’s topics — Agile Development Practices — turned out to be more thought–provoking that I would expect, having practised Scrum for over 5 years as part of various UX squads. Agile Manifesto presents an opportunity to reflect on the practices, especially being in the middle of putting together a team for a new, exciting project: have I been paying enough attention to technical excellency before? Leading the teams, have I always granted my designers the environment and support they need?
Interestingly, agile delivery is empowered by reflective practices: as Babb, Hoda, and Nørbjerg put it in “Embedding Reflection and Learning into Agile Software Development”, daily habits of sharing knowledge with peers, exchange ideas, and learn from one another help the squads use agile rituals — such as daily stand-ups and biweekly retros — to reflect on their progress (Baab, Hoda, Nørbjerg 2014).
A wide variety of Agile frameworks, some of which I rarely ever hear of these days (i.e. Extreme Programming), present a rich choice to pick from, depending on the project’s needs and team’s maturity. What poses a challenge, however, is how agile methodologies embrace proximity and promote close, physical collaboration, ideally — in an enclosed environment with a whiteboard.
In his book, “Agile Foundations”, Masey goes as far as using Hofstede’s cultural dimensions theory (Hofstede 2010) — a framework for cross–cultural communication — to justify the need for a physical contact as a mean of avoiding misinterpretations and “building the environment of trust”, which is “more likely to foster cultural understanding” (Masey 2015).
That, however, poses the question of the efficiency of remote collaboration, communication, and learning. Will I be able to sustain the pace and apply the newly acquired skills and knowledge to my practice, if I don’t get to communicate with my teachers and peers on a daily basis? At the same time, when agile ideas are applied poorly, the team’s efficiency suffers even more: from failing to pivot to failing to deliver.
Refreshing my knowledge and learning new things of the Agile practices helped me identify two challenges.
First, how might I use the foundational principles of Agile to establish a better communication between my team members and empower them to learn, grow, and flourish? Second, how do I resist the temptation to pre–define the requirements for my personal endeavours, like Waterfall demands, and tolerate sudden changes?
I believe I could reach the first through establishing a proper culture of sharing and exchanging knowledge. Agile abhors rigidity, so instead of enforcing the policies and practices, I should attempt to create a safe space for my colleagues to share their ideas, thoughts, and knowledge; use reflective practices to improve.
As for the personal “agility”, I believe a step towards that could be ensuring that the initial goals are not granular enough to allow flexibility. This way, I should be able to turn the “Iron Triangle” upside down.
References
‘Principles behind the Agile Manifesto’. Accessed 18 September 2021. https://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html.
BABB, Jeffry, Rashina HODA and Jacob NØRBJERG. 2014. ‘Embedding Reflection and Learning into Agile Software Development’. IEEE Software 31(4), 51–7.
MEASEY, Peter. Agile Foundations : Principles, practices and frameworks, edited by Peter Measey, BCS Learning & Development Limited, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/falmouth-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1759633.
HOFSTEDE, Geert, Gert Jan HOFSTEDE and Michael MINKOV. 2010. Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind, Third Edition. 3rd edition. New York: McGraw-Hill Education.