Let Go Of The Reports, Stop the Judgement

I have worked in many teams where there seems to be continuous pressure to create reports and holding meeting to provide status reports on progress. For this article I will be focusing on the ‘Mid-Sprint Review’ as it came up not too long ago. We could replace this context with any status reporting meeting that currently exists in your team.

I want to explore the following:

Mid-Sprint Review: What are we trying to achieve with this?

Frequency: Moving from a point in time to in the moment

Objective, Subjective: Having the information in the space where it really adds value

The Mid-Sprint Review

I have worked with teams in the past where the topic of a ‘Mid-Sprint Review’ has come up. For this area, I often like to go back back to the beginning and to understand why this is important and how this will enable greater success moving forward. The most typical responses to this I have experienced are:

“To understand if we are going to complete all the stories we said we would”
“To understand if we are still on track for our goal.”
“To highlight any major concerns that could impact the sprints delivery.”
and more along the same lines…

When this is shared, I usually follow this up with another question…

“Where else might this information already be surfaced/discussed.”

Some of the responses to this have been…

“During the daily standup, the team will share and get a feeling of whether the goal is on track or not”
“During the daily standup, the team share any concerns/blockers that have come up.”
“The team have point in time huddles to swarm around any issues that arise.”

There have been two path’s that are usually taken here that I have seen. The first path is that there is a realisation that the team already have this information being surfaced and adding in a mid-sprint review will only serve to create waste for them. They realise that the true ‘Feeling of Progress’ is felt much more in what already exists in the team.

The other path is where you have leadership saying…

“No — We need to have this review to ensure we are on track”

In my experience, it usually happens because of a few reasons:

• Team Connection: The leader is not as connected to the team as they should be. They spend their time away from the team and have lost the pulse of what is going on and what’s important.
• Control: The leader wants to have more layers of control in so they can tell the team what to do, instead of setting a clear direction and goals and allowing the team to head towards it.
• Lack of Trust: The leader doesn’t trust that the team are making the best decisions with the information they have, and they know for themselves what the best choice is.
• Ego & Hierarchy: The leader’s ego around their status may be telling them they should know everything and be telling the team what to do.

This first stage of building awareness around what is currently going on and the thought process behind wanting this status meeting is critical. It helps to not only allow me to create awareness for myself but also helps others gain greater awareness as well.

Frequency

To begin, we would start to look at what frequency we would like to check-in as a team and what format could serve us best for those check-ins. Given the organisations I support are ones focused on gaining agility, we have several opportunities to do this, including:

• Reflection(review): An opportunity at the end of a given period(1,2,4 weeks, etc.) to reflect, look at the journey, what was achieved, and what was learnt along the way.
• Retrospective: An opportunity at the end of a given period(1,2,4 weeks etc.) for a team to look at their ways of working and relationships and how they would like this to evolve in the future.
• Daily Syncs: A daily opportunity for the team to understand what is going on, to make decisions on how to move forward and support each other.
• Huddles: A quick get together of a majority of the team to make a decision or ask a question which will help the team move in the right direction. This happens as and when the team needs it.
• Piaring/2 Perspectives: This is where more than one perspective is used to make a decision and adjust the direction of travel. The principle being “two perspectives are better than one”

As we look at the above, we move from “point in time(Reflection)” to “in the moment(Pairing/2 perspectives)” check-ins and decision making. As we get closer to point in time check-ins they happen on an “As Needed” basis and its the subjective feeling of needing to do so and the empowerment of the people to allow them to do it.

What I do tend to see a lot is that even when some teams do have ‘In the Moment’ approaches like huddles and pairing, they can tend to not walk away with a real decision being made that they can instantly move forward with. This can be due to …

• Lack of Empowerment: They are not truly empowered to make a decision and decide what is best. Instead, it must go through someone else, e.g. Tech Lead, Delivery Lead, Project Manager, Product Owner. The Product Owner one is controversial here, and I believe they should let the teams make those decisions as long as it doesn’t stray from what the Vision and Goals are for the customer. If they do believe another direction would be best, the Product Owner should listen and explore.
• Lack of Belief: If there is an environment of low trust then I have seen people start to lose belief in themselves and their own decisions, and again they end up leaving without any real decisions or a way forward.
• Fear: If the environment is one of blame and shame for things that go wrong that impact how willing people are to step up and make decisions that have an element of risk.

I would suggest tackling the above if they exist as these will be real disablers for the success of the team moving forward. Also, with Agility being a key driver for a lot of organisations, the closer you can get to point in time decision making and readjustment the higher the level of agility you will have as a team.

Objective, Subjective

Here I would first like to explore what the Objective view or assessment of this status information may or may not give us in this situation…

To keep this simple, I will try to look at what benefit this objective approach might bring and also the potential risks to it. So let’s start with what might be the benefits of an objective approach:

• Perspective: It is sometimes useful to add a new and fresh perspective in the mix. As people get so embedded in a system, their field of view can narrow, and a new perspective can help to expand this again.
• Knowledge/Information: It can be useful to inject some new information and knowledge into the system to open up new possibilities that were not there before.

Ok, so I struggled with benefits for objectively focusing on progress. So what are the potential risks that I have seen?

• Judgment: These objective views are used to judge the progress of what is happening, which is very unproductive, e.g. you have only completed 20 story points, and you should have done 30 by now.
• Context: Looking from the outside in you don’t have all the context as you were not there when it was created. It can be especially dangerous; if it’s used to tell a story higher up in the organisation or to make a decision or judgement.
• Waste: I have seen a lot of time and effort go into these meeting and reports and most of the time it adds little to no real value. Just remember every time you do this, you are taking value away from your customers.
• Trust: The more layers of objective views and assessments you put in the higher the likelihood of the trust within that environment eroding. How would you feel if someone is continuously objectively viewing and assessing what you are doing? Why might they be doing this?

I am sure there are more; however, these stand out for me. Now I wonder how the subjective approach might look.

Again let us start with what might be the benefits of a subjective approach:

• Real Empowerment: Empowerment is a big buzz word at the moment. However, if you were to allow the team and the people within it to make decisions from a subjective viewpoint without having to objectively report upwards first, this would be empowering for them.
• At Source: Keep the feeling of progress and decisions to adjust close to the source of what is being delivered as possible. The more it is abstracted away, the more you will need to translate, explain, justify etc.
• High Agility: Being able to make those decisions and adjust in the moment creates a high agility environment allowing the tea to change direction at any point of the day.
• Efficient: Staying at the subjective level helps to minimise wastes, including human potential, time and effort, waiting etc.
• Strengthens Innovation: With people in the team being able to think for themselves and choose a direction of travel opens up the space for innovation in those moments as well.
• Stronger Commitment: If direction and decisions are coming from the subjective level, the commitment to proceed and achieve those go up as its something born from within the system and not applied to it.

There are more, but these are the ones that stand out for me. Now what might be the risks in the subjective space:

• Isolation: If the team and the people only remain within their subjective space, they could be isolated from the rest of the wider system. It could cause problems at some point if the wider system then forces them to come back in.
• Disconnection: If they only remain in the subjective space, they could become disconnected with the people around them and lose the strength of that relationship.

I genuinely believe that there should be a balance here to achieve sustainable team success. However, I have experienced and understand that weighting should be heavily on the subjective side.

It’s important to remember that reports, decks, status reports etc. are objective views of something subjectively happening. As soon as they are created the subject has already moved. The best way to get a real feeling of what is happening is to immerse yourself with the subject. Let’s try a little of #goseeleadership for a change

I would love to hear thoughts around this as these are just my own based on my experiences. What’s going on in the teams and leadership where you work?