What I find more interesting is that organizations will rigorously
implement requirements traceability while the relationship between
behavioral practices, principles and values receives little or no
attention. We end up blindly follow practices that are not aligned to
stated principles or values. The practice of requirements traceability
itself may be the poster child for such unconscious lemming practices,
but I'll save that rant for another article.
Principles Expose the Intent of the Values
To bring consciousness to this chain, we need to think about intent.
Intent is the thread that strings practices to principles and principles
to values. Understanding our intent keeps us from deceiving ourselves
as to whether we are living by our stated principles and values or not.
The Team Operating Agreement is the mechanism for being explicit about
our intent and alignment.
When people experiment with and develop new behaviors -- let's take
implementing Agile for instance -- the first thing they learn is all the
process oriented practices and rules. They practice the rituals learned
in a class or through coaching. They learn the mechanics of iteration
planning, the daily stand ups, iteration reviews, and iteration
retrospectives, and then try to replicate success by copying all those
practices exactly as they were taught. The problem with this rudimentary
approach is that for the practices to really be effective, they need to
grow out of the Agile values and principles.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting that these practices are not
good or even "best practices." I'm just pointing out that if they are
not initiated from and aligned with understood principles and values,
they will quickly become hollow. Without the tie back to the
foundational purpose, the practices can become subject to the whims of
the situation. Agile coaches euphemistically refer to these behavioral
misalignments as "scrum-butts." (We do Scrum, but we don't . . . .)
Why Should I Care?
For any behavior change, people learn first by practicing, and then
learn to relate their practices back to principles and values. Without
this relationship, the behaviors will never be self-sustaining. Without
internal alignment, practices will have to be monitored by an outside
party to ensure compliance. Since these external governance processes
are designed to maintain the status quo, the practices will lag behind
as situations and environments change. Traditional process-heavy
methodologies exemplify this situation.
However, you can't just mindlessly emulate a few practices that are
working for others. Every team, every organization, is different. Unless
you understand the values and principles of Agile, you will struggle to
adapt practices to suit your team's unique circumstances. Most of the
benefit of Agile comes from its ability to help teams work effectively
and efficiently regardless of all the differences. Agile is adaptable.
That's where our skills as coaches and practitioners of Agile become
critical: providing the blend of value-based, principle-guided,
practice-grounded leadership where organizations and project teams can
learn to create their own dynamic and self-sustaining principled
practices.
Principled Parenting
Several years ago I authored the Agile Parenting Manifesto.
It has five values and 12 principles. I wrote this manifesto because I
wanted to be intentional and explicit about how I tied the values and
principles to my practices as a parent. I wanted to hold myself
accountable to behavioral traceability. If you have read any of my prior
articles on parenthood, you know that being explicit and intentional
are big themes for me, so it's no surprise that they are woven into this
discussion on principled practices too.
The first principle of the Agile Parenting Manifesto states: Consistent
traceability of practices to purposes assures integrity of word and
deed. We practice what we preach and preach what we value, and our
children observe this. This principle ties back to one of the basic values: Goals and Purpose over rules and processes.
If we examine our practices as parents, project managers, or team
members through the lens of this one principle, we could exhibit many
different worthwhile practices, some that may not even be commonly
thought of as "best practices."
I know that I have not always made the best decisions as a project
manager or a parent, and God knows I have often strayed from many
commonly held "best practices." But I would like to think that, right or
wrong, I made those decisions consciously and with intentional purpose.
In the long run, it has served me well. I know it will serve you well, too.
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