We Live in a Glass House

One of the biggest benefits agile provides is crystal clear visibility into a variety of items including

• What it takes to actually develop working software
• The quality of the people involved in the development process
• The issues and impediments that arise from execution

Visibility is a great thing. It allows you to take risk, experience minor failures and adjust without truly failing. With the proper leaders in place, poor performers are quickly transitioned into other roles were they may perform better or if appropriate out of the organization altogether.

     

Visibility is a great thing. Don’t fear it. Don’t run from it – embrace it. That’s what I have always believed in and that’s what makes sense in a truly agile embracing environment. So simple yet so powerful.

     

Unfortunately I was wrong. Along the way, I learned that visibility isn’t always a good thing. When you introduce agility into a culture that isn’t accustomed to visibility, it’s even more powerful yet extremely dangerous if not managed well. 

     

Take waterfall development for example. The true consequences of a major / critical failure are often realized after it’s too late to make a difference. When the event occurs, 10s of people are involved in trying to salvage the situation. Alerts notify executives and everything possible is done to correct the situation. Sometimes it works… Sometimes it doesn’t… The key  take away is that it’s a major event and executives, project management groups, release management groups, everyone is in the know.

     

With agility, the simplest mistake – a missed story in an iteration critical to a product owner is quickly identified and usually fixed in the following iteration. Course is corrected and everyone is happy.

     

Unfortunately, theory isn’t reality in this situation. The simplest mistake becomes the same catastrophic event described in the waterfall example. All of a sudden, the simplest mistake is misinterpreted for the major failure and the world reins in to solve the problem. Every executive, project manager and hero arrives to take control. All of a sudden… visibility is not a great thing.

      

Instinctively, eliminating visibility sounds like the right answer. It’s NOT.  Falling into this trap will ultimately lead you away from agility. For now, we have focused on helping others understand that small failures are OK. It still causes frustration more often than not but we are slowly making progress towards eliminating the false “alert” behavior. While I can’t state I have found the perfect solution yet, I can say that I still believe in visibility. It is a great thing and it’s a key tenant of agility.