Organizations and individuals are moving and shifting. Maybe what we call " agile" should too.
In this article, we’ll inspect some background around the gig economy and hyper-specialization. As an agilist, I’ve identified two things that are in conflict with those concepts – long lived teams and team size – to remind us that in addition to inspecting what’s happening in the real world, we’ll need to adapt the way we engage and work with people / organizations moving forward.
Agilist need to inspect
For a bit of background, I thought I'd share a little on the gig economy and on hyper-specialization
According to the Pew Research Groups study in 2021, 16% of Americans have earned money from online gig platforms. The study seemed to focus in on gig work like Uber, Grub Hub, DoorDash, etc. In the paper I didn't see anything about technology work - Design work, software programming, Marketing,-which surprised me. Sites like Fiverr, Upwork, and Freelancer seem to be growing rapidly, and each have tens of thousands of people ready to work in this new gig economy. The gig economy is growing and seems to be creeping its way into organizations of all size. It provides a way to pull in skilled workers only when you need them. And for the skilled worker, this provides a freedom that conventional employment just can't match. In a podcast I listened to a few weeks ago ( I can't seem to find the reference at this time) an investment group mentioned that renting a home vs purchasing was on a rapid rise, as it provided a lifestyle that consumers wanted - freedom from repairs and strings -which is a further indication to me that things are shifting. I think the gig economy is that as well, and it is on the rise.
Harvard Business Review wrote about Hyper specialization in 2011 and Inc. magazine wrote Welcome the era of hyperspecialization in 2013. The list of articles is growing, and the specializations are getting narrower and narrower. As an example, in the field of marketing you have SEO expertise, content marketing, social networking, email campaign, and many more. In software, it's no longer just divided any by Jr or Sr Developer, or by language, but into UI/UX,Database, Architecture, Front end/back end , and even down to specializations on specific front-end web development platforms. As our skills increase and the needs grow, people are choosing a much more narrow field in which they want to specialize in for work. This only makes sense as we've seen this hyper-specialization occur in many other fields. ( thank goodness we aren't still relying on barber surgeons for our healthcare)
While you may not work in a gig economy today, and you may now be on a long lived team, the organization where you are working is likely looking for people with these skills to augment future growth.
So here is where these two things will likely be in conflict with agile as we know it.
Long Lived Teams:
High performing team based work is predicated on long lived teams. The longer a team is together, the better they are at communicating with each other and the better the work product can become. New teams, tend to start in the "forming & storming " phases of Tuckmans Model . As employers start leveraging short term expertise with the gig economy, teams may never get to a state of high performance or flow. Also, the allure of the gig economy will likely push many of an organizations more talented people to leave their current employment- adding fuel to the great resignation.
Team Size:
For teams to be really high performing, they also need to be small. Matter of fact, the smaller the better as long as you have all the skills needed to accomplish the goal. Scrum helps us all know that a team should be no more that 7-9 people big, and those individuals having " T shaped skills" ( meaning they may have a deep knowledge in one thing but have a diverse ability to assist in lots of other types of areas) Hyper-specialization means there will be fewer and fewer individuals with T shaped skills, and to get the needed skills on a team to deliver a product in a increment you'd need far more than the recommended 7-9 people. More people equals more lines of communication and more complexity in completing work. Consider this: at 5 people there are 10 lines of communication, at 9 people there are 36 lines of communication, at 14 there are 91 lines of communication. I think this illustration from Lighthouse makes an excellent visualization of why smaller teams can move more quickly than larger teams.
Combine these two items with a remote-first world of work post COVID, and I think you can see where this might be heading. So, what should we do?
Agilist need to adapt
Gone should be the days of people saying: " We can't, because the Scrum Guide says _______". Going forward we need to realize the world of work is forever changing, and adapting - and we agilists need to as well. We need to meet people and organizations needs within their existing constraints and help them prepare to deliver value in what may come. Can you imagine a future of really large agile teams made up of people with I-shaped skills that are all working within a gig economy? Or maybe a future structure without teams all together? I can. And I've no idea exactly how it might work, but I realize that our understanding of what is "best practices" today, likely won't work. The very first line of the Agile Manifesto says " We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it." and maybe it's time for us to really embrace it.
The world of work is constantly evolving and shifting, and so should how we imagine being more agile in the way we work.
In this article, we’ve inspected some background around the gig economy and hyper-specialization. As an agilist, you’ve learned two things that are in conflict with those concepts – long lived teams and team size – to remind us that in addition to inspecting what’s happening in the real world. We need to both inspect and adapt the way we engage and work with people / organizations moving forward.
