Case Study 1: Impact to Individuals

When I first started practicing and advocating for Agile, I was hooked by the promise of individual empowerment. The idea of highly-collaborative, autonomous, cross-functional teams taking on challenging, stimulating, opportunities together was intuitively a much more engaging approach to work than waiting downstream in a long chain of far-removed discussions and power dynamics.

The greatest benefits from Agile practices are NOT the structural or process components. Those are easy to implement are more often a rearrangement of tasks and flows that are required to occur in any functional work environment. Yes, I appreciate how they are designed to promote other values of Agile (like people and interactions over processes and tools). Yet, I have seen so many teams think they are Agile because they have introduced process ceremonies that Agile popularized, but they are not behaving in the spirit of Agile.

Many of us have seen it. (sarcasm) Yay. I have standup now. Gotta go check out until my name is called. Yay. I have a retrospective now. Gotta go pretend that our experiences matter for an hour. Go Agile!

If the goal is to build and support empowered teams, it starts with creating an environment for empowered individuals.

The first thing I look for when meeting teams is how its members physically and behaviorally carry themselves. It is disappointingly common to find teams that feel worn down, disempowered, voiceless, stuck, or generally forced to follow along, rather than push. To many, it just doesn’t feel worth it to try to influence anything beyond what crosses their desk or is assigned to them in Jira (or Rally, or Trello, or Asana, or whatever you use).

When I start to ask people one-on-one about the deflated energy I observe, they often share personal stories that would make any people-aware manager want to start advocating immediately. Yet, these stories are often kept close and the people responsible for the development and workplace-wellbeing of the team members are left wearing blank expressions, wondering why the team seems to be struggling.

It’s about helping people choose to use their voice.

If you expect Agile to deliver high-quality, highly-predictable, sustainable work, you had better pay close attention to the experience of individuals. No amount of sticky notes or planning sessions will change people’s experiences and lives the way it does to help people feel heard, seen, understood, and valued.

One organization I was helping had the same macro challenge I see all the time: Chronic Overcommitment. Quarter after quarter, they would proudly and confidently tell the stakeholders in the room all the great things they intended to accomplish. Then they would consistently under-deliver those promises and damage the reputation and perceptions of the capabilities of the entire department. One stakeholder told me, “I don’t even know why I ask for these things anymore. I know I’ll never see them.”

Ouch.

For everyone involved.

There was no incentive for anyone to take a risk or even name the challenges people were experiencing. Yet, nobody was thrilled with what was happening. So, I decided that I had seen enough dodging and skirting. It was time to get it all out.

We filled whiteboards with hunches, bottlenecks, responsibility matrices, and status quo facts. Then, at the end of a session, a reserved senior employee decided to “just say it.”

“I don’t feel respected.”

I turned toward her and said, “I just heard something real. We should celebrate that.” And the room erupted in applause.

That one moment of risk-taking and vulnerability showed the room that it’s ok and essential to move out of the mechanical, logical headspace of problem-solving and step into the rich, colorful, shifting, emotional space of lived experiences.

That moment was made possible by removing power from the room. No supervisors were allowed to participate. It was made possible by a repeated history of small actions that demonstrated that I cared about the person in the role and their perspectives more than great delivery metrics. It was made possible by giving people a platform to openly express and share, then find the truth in the story.

When people feel that their experiences matter, they share them.

When people feel that their ideas are appreciated, they share them.

When we give people permission to act, they might.

Agile doesn’t make that happen. You do.

So, what happened?!

It was an opportunity to focus individuals on their contribution to the lack of trust and respect that many people felt from their stakeholders. There was a clear mismatch between the pride people shared about their work and the perceived value being delivered.

We clearly demonstrated the problem of over-commitment at the department level and connected to the emotions of being let down. We connected the department misses to individuals’ daily habits around considering and agreeing to work. People liked feeling helpful and they saw ways to use their skills to be helpful. They naturally empathized with the struggle of the stakeholders and users.

They didn’t want to say no.

We created a very clear goal: keep our promises to re-gain trust.

We started using empowered language to describe decision-making opportunities. We brought simple data visualizations at the individual level to help people consider personal capacity and make trade-off decisions in the context of the promises they already made.

And it started to work. We gave people the data, script, and safety to say what was reasonable and what they needed to be successful. We could anticipate and articulate backsliding behaviors from the data and have trade-off discussions earlier.

It was almost magical to see individuals confidently say, “I don’t think that will work unless we do this first.” Or, “I think we need to talk to the other team and see what sort of help they can offer.” And, my favorite, “That won’t fit unless we take something out. We can’t say yes to this as-is.”

Dang – what a proud Agilist!