Get (it) together!
The first Athletic Standard touches the main reason why projects and professional relationships are challenged or get compromised: The inability or unwillingness to engage in continuous personal interaction between professionals.
1. “Get together”
— regardless of background, culture, education, department, organisation, profession, pre-existing roles, current distance, titles, hierarchies, relationships, processes or tools.
“Everyone must work together continuously. The most efficient and effective method of collaboration is direct interaction.
So what does ‘working together’, as an Athletic Standard, actually imply? why make this a principle statement?
By working together we imply, ‘face-to-face’; not ‘facetime-to-facetime’. By ‘working’, we imply ‘collaboration’; not ‘meeting’. By ‘together’ we imply a ‘common purpose’, a ‘shared responsibility’.
This Athletic principle chooses co-location over distribution. Much is said, researched, and discussed on this topic; for example this article by Martin Fowler. There are too many potential contexts to determine which is most effective when. How to balance direct/indirect/digital collaborations will vary per situation.
It must be said that the Athletic standards don’t apply to all situations; neither do we imply that all members should be in the room together throughout its mission all the time without exception.
Colocation
There may be many reasons (and excuses) not to work together face-to-face in the same room, but in general, the following statement applies:
The value of a co-located team is greater then the effort to co-locate.
— All players need to be on the same field!
Proximity matters, be it mental or physical. ‘Increased productivity’ and ‘reduction of costs’ don’t necessarily result in better outcomes or better partnerships in professional relations. People can be very ‘productive’ (be really damn busy and produce a lot of output) and still produce little of value. Naturally, “you can’t pack a bunch of obnoxious jerks into a room and expect great results” too.
If the commitment to achieving a goal is there, and the value of having a co-located team outweighs the effort to co-locate, then you can get a team to work as a team: from one location. Even internationally, the costs and organizational effort involved with transport and accommodations don’t outweigh the value of working co-located for bigger quests, such as ones that require prolonged collaboration. In fact, especially when working with various specialists from different (cultural) backgrounds over an extended period of time, it’s crucial they connect personally frequently in person.
People are more open, trusting and friendlier when interacting personally rather then remotely.
This proximity to one another has other incredible benefits such as the ability to (subconsciously) pick up on background information.
“We had four people doing pair programming. The boss walked in and asked my partner a question. I started answering it, but gave the wrong name of a module. Nancy, programming with Neil, corrected me, without Neil ever noticing that she had spoken or that a question had been asked.” — Alistair Cockburn on ‘osmotic communication’.
So, if you have a shared goal, stop hiding behind these invisible walls; excuses called departments, organizations, job-profiles, offices, and borders.
The Coalition
All players need to be on the same field. In Athletic Development, this location is called an ‘Arena’. So get your team together so they can work together.
This ‘coming together’ in Athletic Development is called a formation. And the resulting team is called a coalition:
“The word coalition connotes a coming together to achieve a goal.”
An Athletic Coalition, once formed, departs from any pre-existing titles, roles and organization for the duration of the mission. The client is no longer the client, nor the vendor the vendor. Every member represents the team and reports to the team! The team reports only to itself. There can be no hierarchies or subteams.
If the effort to form this coalition is considered too damn high, the budget too flippin’ low… the stakes just aren’t there and Athletic Development is not the right approach.
No one works on anything alone.
We don’t divide and assign tasks by skill set. We continuously invest in developing our skills through collaborative practice.
Sure, there will be this guy, or that girl who we can trust to do something right single-handedly… but that creates dependencies. Those dependencies are ticking time-bombs;
The long-term, might turn into short-term in too short of a term.
Does putting put two (or more) people on a single person’s job make sense? It sounds inefficient, I know… BUT …. it’s also an excellent opportunity to train others, increase quality and reduce dependencies. It’s what’s required to become a real team!
So, in Athletic Development, we build together, we learn together; we help each other along the way. When challenged, we recover fast together.
This is how we continuously improve, reduce dependencies, increase transparency, and guarantee quality.
Read next: “Continuous Alignment”.
