The software development process might just work. Or it might constantly adapt to an ever-changing world, improving its efficiency.
An excellent example of a very conservative process is scrum, where Scrum master must ensure the scrum process is done exactly as written in the guide:
The Scrum Master is accountable for establishing Scrum as defined in the Scrum Guide
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Ensuring that all Scrum events take place and are positive, productive, and kept within the timebox.
The process must stay immutable at all costs.
But what happens if Scrum fits the company no more?
Should scrum master, in that case, help the team realise that Scrum is an impediment and then, together with the team, remove this impediment?
Anyway, it seems that a conservative ‘set-in-stone’ process framework might at some point become unfit — when the amount of change in the market gets bigger than the current organisational structure and process allowed to address.
A good example of this occasion is Nokia’s case, where they had a very rigid and conservative scrum. The world changed; the firm, being so strictly tied to the conservative process, couldn’t respond and lost its dominance.
Certainly, getting rid of the rigid conservative process won’t be enough to ensure company survival, but to me, it seems obvious that:
1. Process change and adaptation is a prerequisite for the company being able to better survive market change.
By definition, an adaptive process can change whenever its current state doesn’t fit the changed reality.
Consider a case where the firm’s work culture is developed to the Kaizen state — where innovations constantly emerge and get implemented — and the team provides rational explanation that regular retrospective meetings are not needed as reflection and adaptation is being done all the time, constantly, without a need to wait for week or two to end.
If the pointless meeting is canceled, time is saved, everyone can be more productive.
The main prerequisite for the process to be able to become adaptive — constant flow of the information on how the system is working in the constantly changing conditions.
Basically, we need to understand what’s going OK and what’s not, and what can be improved/adapted and how.
Engineers are the source of information.
As information and its analysis are valued and welcomed by every member of the development process:
- people must not be afraid to bring information
- people need to be able to bring information
2. the information flow is a prerequisite for the process change and adaptation
1. process change and adaptation is a prerequisite for the company being able to better survive market change.
If a person feels guilt for any mistake or error they caused or produced at work, they will avoid taking action altogether.
As soon as the manager starts provoking feelings of guilt or fear, negative social dynamics emerge almost instantly — people start feeling in this ‘risk zone’ or — even worse — exclude the ‘guilty’ employees from the team (trying to conform with the manager).
Once a person feels guilt or fear, they will try to avoid actions (see ‘avoidance behavior’ in psychology).
Consider a scenario: an employee figured out that they had made a mistake during system design, which means that a significant part of the system will have to be rewritten.
It’s the first time a mistake like that occurred, and our responsible employee tells their manager about this mistake.
The manager scolded the employee for the mistake.
The chances are that this employee will think thrice before bringing any information about a mistake to their manager ever again.
‘Avoidance behavior’ is provoked by a thoughtless manager’s action — the more the manager scolds, the less information on the issues and mistakes they will receive, more and more effort the manager will have to obtain the information.
The less information the manager has, the lesser informed actions can be taken, the lesser their efficiency is.
Now think of the opposite scenario:
The employee brings information on the mistake. The manager praises the employee for the information and decides on investing time and money in teaching the employee or changing the system to withstand or quickly recover from mistakes like that.
3. The atmosphere of psychological safety is a prerequisite for the information flow
2. the information flow is a prerequisite for the process change and adaptation
1. process change and adaptation is a prerequisite for the company being able to better survive market change
If people are willing to provide information, information is likely to flow.
This information needs to be processed.
Imagine the situation when everyone brings every bit of information to discuss. Chaos? It certainly is.
It seems that every bit of information (or a problem report) should be somehow prepared for analysis.
I suggest simple guidance (or a thought model, not sure how to call it better) — a ‘rationalized approach.’
Consider a scenario:
An employee brings up two problems: one stating that ‘tests are getting flaky’ and another stating that ‘daily standups are useless’.
This manner of bringing up problems has a few drawbacks:
- it requires the team or the team leader (depending on the team structure) to spend time with the person who brought the issue
- people might have different opinion on the problem severity
These two drawbacks usually cause the whole team to struggle while discussing the issue — as people tend to be irrational sometimes and discussions might need facilitation or even moderation.
Now consider this scenario:
An employee brings up two problems with the proper analysis of the cause, effect and a potential solution to problems.
The team (or the team leader) just has to validate or discuss if the analysis and synthesis was done properly, and there can be pretty much no heated discussion of opinions.
In Russian labour culture we have so-called ‘technical and economical rationalisation’ [RUS] concept, which in the West is called ‘feasibility study’.
4. culture of rational change is a prerequisite for the atmosphere of psychological safety
3. The atmosphere of psychological safety is a prerequisite for the information flow
2. the information flow is a prerequisite for the process change and adaptation
1. process change and adaptation is a prerequisite for the company being able to better survive market change
References:
- Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams.
- Whitener, E. M., Brodt, S. E., Korsgaard, M. A., & Werner, J. M. (1998). Managers as initiators of trust: An exchange relationship framework for understanding managerial trustworthy behavior.
- Kahn, William A. 1990. "Psychological Conditions of Personal Engagement and Disengagement at Work."