This Jan Wischweh piece surveying the recent literature on the the so-called “agile crisis” is a bit of a slog, but these bits caught my attention:

One striking symptom of the Agile Crisis is the impositions of Agile on teams, which seems to be a common practice today. If Agile is so great and really gives more power and autonomy to the developers, why is it commonly imposed by upper management?

And:

Trust is the basis for any good communication. But Trust cannot be demanded. It needs to be earned. This Problem is highly related to Agile as trust is essential for any Agile team. But it can never be imposed.

And the issue of trust cannot be addressed without looking at the problem of power. Agile, especially Scrum, is more about efficiency than about empowering developers and it is not a shift away from Taylorism. On closer inspection, this will be visible in every single conflict within companies trying to transform towards Agile. Quite the opposite is true: it makes people more replaceable and controllable and is a modern and competitive form of Management.

Indeed, management’s focus on process and reproducibility (as in Taylorism) often drives the adoption of agile development processes. But truly autonomous agile teams must be empowered to make their own decisions. That means inviting them to adopt agile practices, rather than imposing those practices on them, and it means trusting teams to make decisions.

In other words, unilaterally determining team composition, deciding that they’ll do “agile” or “scrum” or “kanban”, and reserving the power to override their decisions perpetuates a traditional focus on repetitive tasks and control, rather than autonomy and craft. It demonstrates a lack of trust in the team, and without that trust, the team won’t trust management, either — an untenable, potentially catastrophic situation. No wonder “Agile” fails so often that we now have an “agile crisis”.

I keep coming back to the fundamental idea that teams are made out of people, and management should always support, promote, and empower the people in the company with the autonomy to excel and to do their best work. People over process.

Jennifer Kim, in a Medium post based on her Twitter thread:

#1 rule: No one should ever be surprised with a “you’re fired.” That’s how you create disgruntled employees, embarrassing Glassdoor reviews, dip in team morale, etc. An out-of-the-blue firing is a failing on the manager’s part, not the employees.

So how do you do that? The most important bit:

3. Give them a fair shot to improve. As a leader, it’s your job to try to make it work, each employee is owed that.

Practice listening skills. Demonstrate that you believe in them, and you want to see them improve. Commit to giving a LOT more feedback (specific & documented).

If you have little faith that the employee will be able to improve, taking these and the other steps Jennifer recommends might feel like a waste of time. But unless the employee’s actions involve violence, harassment, fraud, etc., you need to give them every chance possible for not only their benefit, but the benefit of their coworkers. Of course you don’t mention it to your other employees, but people talk, they know what’s going on, and they all need to know that if they step out of line, you’ll support them as much as you can.

In other words, a firing should never come as a surprise to either the employee getting the sack nor their coworkers. Because worse than negative Glassdoor reviews is the erosion of trust among the people you continue to work with after the event.

Terrific talk by Sacha Judd:

Trust and psychological safety are core elements of high performing teams.

Trust is the willingness of a party to be vulnerable someone else. Trust implies that you respect your teammates abilities and you respect their intentions. Psychological safety builds on trust and is more about how you feel about the team dynamics. What are the risks of blame if you try something and fail.

Trust is about individuals and psychological safety is about the team. And when we build teams that have that trust, where people feel like they can be their whole selves, and they feel safe enough to raise their hand, to offer contradicting opinions, to think differently and work differently and contribute in their own way. That’s when we get a high-performing team.

(Via Adrian Howard)