Agile Principles - Individuals & Interactions

Agile methodology is founded based on four values (https://www.agilevisionist.com/post/is-agile-manifesto-still-a-guide) and twelve principles (https://www.agilevisionist.com/post/agile-principles-customer-satisfaction-continuous-delivery)

This topic covers the next four principles which details the impact of individuals and interactions on deliverables

5. Build Projects Around Motivated Individuals

Trust is the foundation on which the project's success is built upon. The team needs to be trusted to deliver their work. In other words, micro management needs to be avoided, instead monitoring the progress is required to measure the roadmap.

Micro management leads to frustration causing disaster in team's ability to deliver value. An Agile team is founded based on self-organized individuals with values like commitment, focus, openness, respect & courage, so the end result is dependant on individuals with values.

* The hygiene factors must be present, when they are not, they just work as a de-motivator. Examples of these factors are: pleasant working environment, availability of good working equipment (hardware, software and network), the possibility for taking vacation, possibility for training, stable organisation, job security and salary. When these factors are not present (e.g. due to tight scheduling without time for vacation or training, massive reorganisation and possible outsourcing the IT department to India) you can imagine what this will do to the motivation. Of course the PM has no influence on all of these factors.

* Motivators. Examples of these are challenging work, getting recognition and responsibility. Your team members must be challenged in the work they are doing, give them responsibility for the way they want to do it and give them the recognition for doing it

6. Promote Face-to-Face Conversations

Collaborating with team using any tool, digital communication platforms like audio or video calls and ensuring the conversation is agreed by sending a formal mail across stakeholders is perfect way to ensure agreement amongst team members. However, the best way to get the work done swiftly is following up with the individual, rather than waiting for their reply. If not for virtual situation now, the recommended way of working is to meet the stakeholder in person and get the work flowing.

The difference between face-to-face conversation and any other medium of communication is simple_ no distractions allowed -Alexandra Petri

Be it personal or professional relationship, it is always safe to connect with people in person to avoid mishaps. Unfortunately, in digital era, it is getting nearly impossible due to multiple reasons. So, the least to do is to communicate in any form and be there throughout.

With our team, we’ll continue to use digital tools in the sense of agile working, but we’ll relish the face-to-face work and in-person meetings, team brainstorms, monthly all-hands and socials, that help us stay connected and collaborative at work. There are benefits of face-to-face communication that are hard to ignore.

Moving forward, many more businesses might embrace a more agile way of working, and digital tools that have been used during this time will still be used a lot in future. “We’ll definitely see some shifts in attitudes and workplace culture that will ultimately result in organizations being more flexible and accommodating of different work styles,” says Chris Kozup, CEO of Aruba.

7. Working Software Is the Primary Measure of Progress

There’s often a huge difference between working software and complete software. In agile, nothing is ever really complete, and working software doesn’t have to be fully finished to bring value to the end user.

A lot of time in agile, you’re not going to complete a whole piece of functionality within a sprint. By incrementally delivering working software, end users have the ability to provide more regular feedback, which will allow the development team to make necessary changes without building unnecessary features and functionality.

So what is working software? In most cases, working software provides value to the end user, has limited bugs, and is high performance. If we can provide additional value to the end user after each sprint, then we’re showing strong signs of progress.

In order to know what value the software is meant to bring the end user, it’s important that the development team and customer agree on requirements and acceptance criteria. What is delivered should work well and should be tested by the end user. Once the customer has tested and approved your working software, then you can move onto the next sprint.

The best metric to measure progress is delivering committed value which is the working software. There is a lot of misconception, like system design, plan or prototype considered as measure of team's progress is a major deviation from sprint goal. An increment is a value delivered to client that needs to be working condition and not a dummy plan.

8. Agile Processes Promote Sustainable Development

In Agile Software Development, ‘Sustainable Pace’ practice refers to the consistent and sustainable software development through a longer period. This sustainability in development should be maintained continuously until completion of product development with the consistent endeavours to improve the rate of software delivery maintaining the quality output. Originated from the Extreme Programming methodology, and having specially mentioned in Agile Manifesto; the practice has been widely accepted into Agile Software Development. It’s applicable to all kinds of development projects, for both at small and large teams at scaled agile.

The phrase ‘Sustainable Pace’ was coined to denote that the team works daily for the same number of hours so that their pace of development remains consistently same or improve slowly without draining teams performance; making them fatigue or raising their frustration level such that they lose interests.

“In the long run, sustainable pace of development is the fastest way to deliver the quality software.”

Although keeping the sprint length shorter ( 2 to 4 weeks) , ensures adaptability to change, there is yet another critical reason to consider i.e. the team's capacity to stretch. Working for longer period, obviously takes a hit on the productivity, therefore maintaining a constant pace by working on agreed time period, the team grows together in a sustainable way.

Agile is all about team work, so it is indeed critical to include team's capacity and effectiveness to deliver quality work.

The next set of four principles are about individuals and sustainable development.