Agile Brevity

When working within an Agile context, there is an emphasis on getting work done and meeting the outcomes of the customer needs. The work is typically structured around various Agile ceremonies depending on the methodology or process a team is using. Key to these ceremonies is to keep them concise. In order to do this, often timeboxing is introduced. However, timeboxing is only as effective as the people’s abilities to keep their discussions concise. I call this technique “agile brevity”.

What is agile brevity?  It is a speaking technique that is both art and skill focused on keeping one’s comments as clear, concise, and value-added within the context of the session at hand. This means that the brain must be hyper-focused on the context and purpose of the session and speaking with agile brevity within that context.  It then means that the person must consider what is the most important thing of value to say that will help progress move forward. This leads to more productive and collaborative working sessions. 

Consider the Daily Stand-up. It is meant to be applied at a team level (~7 people) and take no more than 15 minutes. This means that each person has approximately 2 minutes to communicate progress and impediments. Teams new to the stand-up usually takes much longer than 15 minutes to get through their progress as they don’t yet have experience of being brief. Agile brevity means that they must consider what is the highest value information to communication the progress from yesterday, the highest value information that focuses on the work today for potential collaboration, and the specifics of any impediments so others understand it enough to potentially help, all within a very timely manner.  

Agile brevity also applies to Refinement and Sprint Planning ceremonies. Within the context of these ceremonies, there is typically a timebox on how long is spent on each user story. As there is less structure in refinement or planning ceremonies than a daily stand-up, the hyper-focus of crisply asking the right questions to understand the user story is even more important.  The other attribute of agile brevity is determining if your question or information is of greater value than another person’s question or information. In other words, many factors should be quickly swirling in your head before you speak. 

Agile brevity is a combination of art and skill keeping one’s comments or questions as clear, concise, and value-added on the topic at hand as possible. It keeps people mentally focused, keeps working sessions tight and to the point, and ensures the highest value information and questions get discussed. While its called “agile brevity”, it isn’t specific to Agile and can be used to make any ways of working more efficient, effective, and value-added. If you find your working sessions often running long, consider trying this technique.   

Applying the Pair Protocol beyond Programming

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Pairing isn't just for programming, it can be advantageous to have two people pairing on any type of work. Have you ever had to pair up with someone on a piece of work?  Have you ever launched into the work only to realize that you haven't discussed how to pair up or realized that you aren’t really working well together? There are dozens of different ways to work as a pair so it is important to have protocol on how to work together through a piece of work.  I call this the Pair Protocol.  This is a guideline on how two (or more) people engage together in a piece of work to have the maximum alignment and productivity. The objective is to get two people to work as one. 

Setting the stage 

You need a piece of work, team of people, and the right pairing mindset. The piece of work can be a feature, a user story, a requirement, an increment, or similar that has been refined so the work ahead is clear.  This forms the basis for what you pair around.  You need people who are coming together for a common purpose, know the context around the work, and are willing to work together.  You also need a mindset of “we” and “us” over “I” and “me” as pairing implies that all collaborators of the work in harmony and get the credit together.   

Pairing up 

The first step is for two people to volunteer to do the work together.  This implies each person is ready, willing, and able to do the work. It also means they can self-organize around the work (e.g., to have the option to volunteer for the work and have the ownership to determine how to do the work).  This typically occurs in a session where the work has been discussed and it's time for people to volunteer to do the work. This could be in a form of a planning session (e.g., for Scrum it would be Sprint Planning, for Kanban it would be the Queue Replenishment, and in traditional approaches, it would be a project planning session. The outcome is that two people (aka, the pair) have willingly volunteered for a piece of work.

Working together

Once the pair has been created and the planning is done, the first step of beginning the work is aligning on how the pair will work together. The pair will briefly meet to re-familiarize themselves of the work (e.g., discuss the “why”, acceptance criteria, etc.) and then discuss how they will navigate through the piece of work (e.g., through task decomposition). This includes an agreement and commitment on who will do which tasks, how they will do the tasks, and when they will do the tasks. As this is pairing, there may be tasks where the pair works together. If so, discuss and gain agreement on how this will occur (e.g., working session, etc.).

Capturing Discussion

As you pair through the sprint, increment, or time period, you should capture important conversions and decisions where the work definition (e.g., user story, etc.) is recorded. There may be ‘discussion’ functionality that can be used that allows the pair to remind themselves of the discussion. 

Incorporating Feedback 

It is important to agree on how you will notify each other when a task is complete and what types of feedback loops you will use with each other and with those outside the pair to gain feedback to ensure the work is moving in the direction of value. There should be an agreement on what feedback loops will be used (e.g., review sessions, etc.) and how will feedback be incorporated back into the work. This information can be recorded in the work definition (e.g., user story details, etc.). If the planning or backlog management tool has a “follow” feature, then activating this will help keep each other aligned with the progress.     

Sharing Results

As the work comes to a conclusion, there needs to be a way to agree that it is completed and meet the acceptance criteria. This should occur prior to sharing the results with the greater team or those outside the pair. Sharing results include identifying the venue where the outcome of the work can be shared and discussed. If you are using Agile or Scrum, the Sprint Review or demo can provide the venue for sharing the work and gaining any additional feedback. The pair should also discuss who would demo the work, collaborate on what type of feedback they are looking for during the demo, then jointly agree on whether they’ve met the acceptance criteria of the work, and what are the next steps (if any). 

Psychological Safety leads to High-Performing Agile Teams

There are two types of safety that factor into a healthy and productive enterprise environment and high-performing teams.  The first is physical safety. This is where employees have an environment where they are free from physical hazards and can focus on the work at hand. This type of safety should be part of the standard workplace promoted by company and government regulations.

The second is psychological safety that is core to enterprise effectiveness. According to Google research, high performing teams always display psychological safety.  This phenomenon has two aspects.  The first is where there is a shared belief that the team is safe to take interpersonal risks and be vulnerable in front of each other.  The second is how this type of safety along with increased accountability leads to increased employee productivity and ergo high-performing teams. 

Psychological safety helps establish Agile in that it promotes a safe space for employees to share their ideas, discuss options, take methodical risks, and become productive.  An Agile mindset promotes self-organizing teams around the work, taking ownership and accountability, and creating an environment for learning what is customer value through the discovery mindset, divergent thinking, and feedback loops. Agile with psychological safety can be a powerful pairing toward high-performing teams.   

However, accountability without psychological safety, leads to great anxiety.  This is why there is a need to move away from a negative mindset when results aren’t positive or new ideas are seen as different. If this occurs, employees are less willing to share ideas and take risks.  Instead consider ways to build psychological safety paired with team ownership and accountability of the work. This can lead to high performing teams. 

Everyone has a role to play in establishing a psychologically safe environment.  Agile Coaches and ScrumMasters can help you evolve to an enterprise where psychological safety and accountability are paired. Leadership has a strong role to play to provide awareness of the importance of a safe environment, provide education on this topic, and build positive patterns in the way they respond to results of risk taking by teams.  Team members must adopt an open, divergent, and positive mindset that is focused on accepting differences and coaching each other for better business outcomes.  Employees at all levels must be aware of the attitudes and mindset they bring.