Agility and predictability — the pillars of Agile
As I see it, Agile is about people and interactions and not about processes and tools. This is the first line of the Agile Manifesto and the reason I was drawn to Agile in the first place. So why is it we end up talking only about processes and tools and not about people and interactions? Let’s talk about one of the things that happen between people: unpredictability. Unpredictability is one of the reasons Agile ways of working exist. Managing unpredictability is one of the goals of Agile ways of working.
Optimize predictability
We all know Agile ways of working are incremental. We all know sprints or iterations. But why do Agile ways of working employ an iterative, incremental approach? It is a way to deal with unpredictability. The Scrum Guide tell us this:
“Scrum employs an iterative, incremental approach to optimize predictability and to control risk.” — Source: https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html
Turn unpredictability into predictability
Most people don’t like unpredictability. Unpredictability is a theme that captured my personal interest a little over a year ago. I found myself in a workshop in which participants were asked to provide 4 positive and 1 negative aspect of each other. I got unpredictability back as a negative from a couple of people. At first I thought it was a joke, a hack of the excersice to name a negative that is actually a positive. I was working at a design agency and in my belief system there is no creativity without unpredictability. Creativity and predictability were the opposite for me. But is was no joke and my perceived unpredictability became a serious problem in the remainder of this particular project.
Things are easiest and therefore cheapest and fastest if things are predictable. Problem is that life is not predictable. Or maybe I should say: if you pretend life is predictable, you miss out on a lot of opportunities. Predictability is doing things like you have always done them. That is calm and easy but it also prevents you from learning, from discovering. It kills curiosity. Most of the systems we have in place in our society are designed to create predictability. But in my experience, life is most interesting when things are unpredictable. Predictability is death. Life becomes stagnant, boring, you learn nothing and experience nothing. With the courage to embrace unpredictability, life becomes an adventure.
But okay, let’s not get too dramatic about it. The bottom line is that unpredictability is something that needs to be managed, especially in a business context. Unpredictability means you don’t know what you are going to get. Unpredictability is risk and risk needs to be managed. In Agile, the art is to find the right balance between agility and predictability. Predictabilty is a metric to evaluate the performance of an Agile team. In a sense, the job of the Agile team is to transform unpredictability into predictability.
Goals of Agile for the people in the team
To deal with unpredictability, people need a couple of skills. The Scrum Guide defines a couple of skills that it aims to elevate in people in Scrum teams: commitment, focus, openness, respect, and courage.
“Successful use of Scrum depends on people becoming more proficient in living five values: Commitment, Focus, Openness, Respect, and Courage.” — Source: https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html
Three of those skills are directly related to managing unpredictability. Commitment and focus are about getting results but openness, respect, and courage are all about managing unpredictability.
Become more courageous
It all starts courage. If things are unpredictable, if outcomes are uncertain, courage is needed to take the jump. The unknown invokes fear. Courage is doing things even though you are afraid. Fear is normal, it comes with uncertainty and unpredictability, and courage is the the way through this. It is powerful that the Scrum Guide mentions this skill, this quality, and has it as a goal to increase courage in people. The more courage you have, the less predictable you have to make things, the more curious you can be, the more chances you have of discovering new solutions. One of the ways to develop courage is just to sit with your fear and see that nothing happens. Fear doesn’t hurt you. Letting people experience that taking a jump, taking a risk, is not the end of the world, increases courage. Even if you fuck up, you win because you have learned something and new doors will open. Celebrating failure is a path to more courage.
Become more open
Openness is about curiosity. If you are afraid, you are closed. If you fear unpredictability, you are closed. It takes courage to be open. You have to willing to have your views challenged. Openness towards new ideas and other people will increase the creativity of the team. Dealing with unpredictability requires openness. You have to step outside the box. You have to open up your box.
Cultivate more respect
Respect is the alpha and omega of everything in life. Everyone has their own limits when it comes to dealing with unpredictability. The team becomes more effective and creative if these limits are pushed but this has to be done with respect. Respect is also openness towards others. Some people in the team might be more coureageous or open than others. Respect goes two ways. All have to respect the place the others are in.
Empiricism to the rescue
Developing skills in the team is important when dealing with unpredictability. But there is something baked into the Agile ways of working: a process to deal with unpredictability. Take small steps and experiment. If you chop the risk up into smaller pieces, it becomes easier to manage and requires less courage. Hence the sprints or iterations. And if you try out things, you learn and that reduces the uncertainty. The more you learn, the lower the uncertainty about the situation that seems unpredictable. The best way to learn is to do. That is why Agile ways of working are based on empiricism. The Scrum Guide tells us:
“Scrum is founded on empiricism and lean thinking. Empiricism asserts that knowledge comes from experience and making decisions based on what is observed. Lean thinking reduces waste and focuses on the essentials.” — Source: https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html
Empiricism requires you to do and learn from that. It’s about action. Learn by doing. Start with a hypothesis, set up an experiment, learn. That is the only way to explore uncertain situations. You can think about it all you want, but you can only reduce uncertainty by doing. Most situations are too complex to solve with thinking. We are filled with assumptions that need to be tested. Doing it is the only way. If you do this in sprints or iterations, you create the opportunity to learn and adjust if necessary for each little step. Then you only need to courage to take one small step and needn’t worry about the big change.
That is what it is about: change. Agile ways of working are used in contexts where there needs to be change. If no change is needed, Agile is also not needed and there is also no unpredictability and no need for courage. Agility is needed to navigate change. Change is unpredictable because you don’t know what you will end up with and how you will get there. Agile is designed to manage unpredictability. That is why we have sprints. But that is process and Agile is not about processes and tools but about people and interactions. People need courage, respect and openness. This makes the interactions more effective, more creative, and last but not least, let’s not forget: more human. That is what Agile should be about. Let’s talk about that and see the process and tools of Agile for what they are: tools to make the interactions between people better.
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