Psychology
In the last part of Dr. Deming’s System of Profound Knowledge (SoPK), he called to Quality practitioners and leaders to look into the strangest area which seems out of place. Psychology is the field that we usually not comfortable dwell into. This is true because studying human behavior and group dynamics requires a whole lot of focus and discipline in scientific endeavor. Nonetheless, understanding how people behave backed by scientific observation and theory will give Quality leaders a different perspective and insight on tapping the potential of the organization as a whole complex system.
Our behavior inside the system can be observed mostly through psychology rationale. In the software development context, where the inventory of the system is information, people are the processing point that enriches or transform it into another form of inventory. How the information processed directly ties to the human aspects. Aspects such as motivation, ego, bias, experience, etc, will function as filters to digest and redistribute this information. Together with the collective psychological structure, the information passed within the system will be greatly affected by these aspects.
Successful Scrum implementation according to Scrum Guide depends on the people. In this case, all of the Scrum components should be focused on creating a supportive environment for the people inside the system. There are two complete paragraphs in the Scrum Guide related to this.
When the values of commitment, courage, focus, openness and respect are embodied and lived by the Scrum Team, the Scrum pillars of transparency, inspection, and adaptation come to life and build trust for everyone. The Scrum Team members learn and explore those values as they work with the Scrum events, roles and artifacts. — Scrum Guide 2017
Successful use of Scrum depends on people becoming more proficient in living these five values. People personally commit to achieving the goals of the Scrum Team. The Scrum Team members have courage to do the right thing and work on tough problems. Everyone focuses on the work of the Sprint and the goals of the Scrum Team. The Scrum Team and its stakeholders agree to be open about all the work and the challenges with performing the work. Scrum Team members respect each other to be capable, independent people. — Scrum Guide 2017
Scrum promotes the environment where psychological safety is present. This environment will encourage people to expose flaws in the assumption that we use when we develop software. Collaboration is the main medium for this information exchange. The absent of cooperation and motivation of the people that made up this system will produce ineffective information processing.
The sum of the behavior of the component within the system is what we know simply as the organization’s culture. There are inherent challenges when we observe the culture of an organization. This is closely related to how the authority shaped the organization as a complex whole system. Even in a system where collaboration is its primary mode of operation, people can still intentionally or unintentionally seek to advance their personal or departmental agenda over the system agenda. According to Deming, it can happen because it is permissible and legalize by the suboptimization of one or more parts of the system. For example, with the intention of maintaining quality, the QA’s function and incentive are measured by the number of defects that they found. While the intention is great, however, it can be certainly abused by making non-important or conspired findings to be reported as defects, hence adding synthetic results into the variation of the number of defects.
Scrum tries to answer this challenge by promoting transparency. Purpose, identity, process, artifacts, results are among them. The transparency of significant aspects of the system will serve as the container to identify this waste caused by the suboptimal improvement. Transparency will also function as deterrence for unwanted behavior that may cause harm to the system.
Scrum relies on transparency. Decisions to optimize value and control risk are made based on the perceived state of the artifacts. To the extent that transparency is complete, these decisions have a sound basis. To the extent that the artifacts are incompletely transparent, these decisions can be flawed, value may diminish and risk may increase. — Scrum Guide 2017
Deming argued that by their own, people inside the system are in a disadvantaged position. People inside the system will be having a hard time to relate, commit and support the system’s purpose. To cope with this, Deming argued that management should be the one responsible to constantly reminding people of the purpose and the identity of the system.
Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service, with the aim to become competitive and stay in business, and to provide jobs. — Deming’s 14 points of management
In Scrum, this sense of purpose should be manifested perpetually in the form of the Sprint Goal.
The Sprint Goal is an objective that will be met within the Sprint through the implementation of the Product Backlog, and it provides guidance to the Development Team on why it is building the Increment. — Scrum Guide 2017
In psychology, the limbic system is part of the brain that is being studied extensively. Amygdala and Hippocampus are parts of the limbic that is responsible, among other things, for storing and accessing memory. The way information stored in our brain is said to be affected by emotional stimuli. The way our biology system work corresponds nicely with the necessity of having a collective goal. The sense of purpose serves as the main emotional stimulus for everyone inside the system. With the presence of a shared goal, personal alignment and motivation can be nurtured and rationalized accordingly. With the increase of buy-in, the system will, in turn, effectively function the way it is intended.
This thinking, of course, can be acquired when we understand and appreciate the system that we operate on. The system, that is composed of human as one of its core components, is bound to be observed and improved upon by the psychology lense. Preparing the supporting environment based on the notion that the people will do their best when given trust is a challenging aspect of both Deming’s System of Profound Knowledge and Scrum.
This is especially true in the advent of Industry 4.0, the competence needed for a person will significantly different than before. Repetitive work will partially or fully be replaced by machines. It becomes more important than ever for people to inspect themselves and learn more to work as a collective in collaborative space that doesn’t necessarily demand hard labor.
