Taking your own journey

Each Sunday morning, I LOVE to read the business section of the local paper. And by "business section" my wife knows that this means the Sunday Comics. 

Now I read almost all of the comic strips, but one that keeps popping back up in my memory, is The Family Circus by Bil and Jeff Keane. It's a great strip of a family and all their antics.  A recurring panel is the son Billy, and his inability to go directly to anyplace, and rather seems to take a route that might include a slide, petting a dog, climbing a tree and more. This particular comic is the one that really struck home: 

I'm reminded of this cartoon often when people ask me about my career path. I am pretty sure that Billy is me. 

In looking back at all the roles I've had, the list is very large.  In my lifetime, I have probably had 35 jobs, and some of those jobs I had gone through 5-7 different roles within those jobs) I've been working for 43 years, and some of my jobs I've had 30+ years, another 9, and another 15.   Rarely did I do just one thing.  Matter of fact, my entire work life except for the last 5 years, I've had 2-3 ventures going at the same time. Needless to say, my path has not been a straight one. 

I was recently asked about career advice, because this person wanted to become an agile coach. They wanted to know which courses to take in order to reach that goal. My advice for this person, and for most any role, would look more like Billy's path.  

Take roles that you've never done before

Most people follow a straight path and only take roles where they have expertise and experience. They stay in the exact same field/industry and climb a corporate ladder, rung by rung. What can result is a person that is engrained within one company/one mindset.   

For the employer, this is great because they reduce employee turnover, but for the employee it likely will leave them in a position where they can never leave. Once a person has been within a narrow career field/company for a decade or more, changing careers is incredibly risky and difficult. A varied background, from different industries and roles, can give you perspective beyond your years. It helps you become a potential valuable player in most any work environment.  Being in one organization for decades can reinforce a mindset and language from within that organization that may not translate to other organizations. Also, the next thing you take may not be a job at all. 

Recently I've left a role to take time away, which is something I have never done before. To hike, breathe, rest, read, and reflect. These past months may likely be some of the most formative moments in my career. 

Take roles that challenge you

Almost every role I have ever taken, I had no real previous experience in doing that role.  And if you were to have looked at my past experience, it might not have crystal clear as to how or why this next role made sense.  And that is what made it fun, and interesting, and challenging. 

The easy path, is for someone to take their next role as something fairly easy and comfortable for you, something almost exactly like you've done before but just at a different company. This can offer you some diversification because each organization works in slightly different ways. But I'd encourage you to take something that challenges you, and makes you a bit nervous.  

New roles should stretch you a bit, but not too much. Don't take roles where you are clearly not capable. ( I'm not going to be taking any brain surgeon roles anytime soon.) One thing that comes to my memory for each new role I've taken is "I haven't ever done this before, but I know I can figure it out!" 

Take roles based on your passion, not income

Nothing is worse than working for an organization where you don't feel like you are aligned with their mission and purpose. Sadly, I've seen many people take roles where they know they aren't aligned due to more income. 

Taking a role in a new organization only because it pays a lot more money never seems to work out well.  You will end up doing your time there, but will feel empty and unfulfilled. Some of the best career moves I've made were ones where I purposely chose to make less money to pursue passion. We are creatures of passion, and do our best work when we are engaged in something that excited us.  

I heard a quote before, and I'm not sure where it originated, but it went something like this:  " The best alarm clock is work you are passionate about."   Work you are excited for and passionate about wakes up up each day, with ideas and optimism for a bold future.  When you find yourself dreading the work day on a consistent basis, it's likely a sign of a lack of passion. And maybe, a time to make a change. 

Wrapping up. 

Your journey is YOUR journey. It's a series of choices that you make that can shape your career. Never abdicate your journey to an employer and expect them to create a path that fits you.  The world is a world of abundance.  According to Statista, there are over 11 million job openings available in the US alone, so what are you waiting for?

Good luck on creating a far more interesting journey. 

Does agile at scale need to be cookie cutter?

Recently, my wife and I (and our two little dogs) made a road trip across Kansas, Colorado, parts of Wyoming, South Dakota, a portion of Iowa and back through Missouri. We had an immensely enjoyable time stopping at National Parks and State Parks as well as kitschy roadside attractions. And while I was driving all those miles, it struck me that the diverse topography of these states had a lesson to teach us about agility.

The United States shows remarkable environmental diversity, even within a relatively small radius. Take, as an example the 3 photos below: All of these photos were taken within a 30 min drive of each other, and all in South Dakota

Badlands National Park, South Dakota

Black Hills National Forest, South Dakota 

Custer State Park, South Dakota

All three of these photos were taken within a 30 min drive of each other, and all in South Dakota. The top is in Badlands National Park all stark and dry, and looks like a scene from an alien planet. The second is in the Black Hills National Forest -Lush and rocky, mountainous with tall trees and clear streams. The third photo is within Custer State Park - a high plains meadow that supports huge herds of native buffalo and other wild game.  All three of these regions play an integral part in the ecosystems of our country. I think you'll agree it would be boring if all of the United States looked exactly the same. 

Sadly - many organizations want cookie cutter "sameness" of agility across the entire company.  

If you look at many efforts to "scale agility" across an organization, it seems to be a bit more about making sure everyone is using the same terminology, normalizing story points ( ugh), and falling in line. Scaling tends to be more in the form of compliance than about agility.  

Scaling agility isn't about conformity. So let's just stop it - ok?

Creating an environment for agile to thrive throughout an organization starts with three key activities: encourage unity, celebrate differences, and establish guard rails

Encourage Unity 

Agile teams do need to be united both in how they work together and in how they align to organizational strategy. But that doesn't mean they have to be the same. Strategic goals should drive deliverables, yet allow flexibility for discovery along the way. Each agile team will likely discover something new to delight the customer in the process of delivering towards those strategic goals

Celebrate Differences

The way one team works will be different from another–and this can be a powerful tool for learning in your organization. Good agile leaders highlight and celebrate these differences so that the whole organization can grow. Creating a learning organization depends upon these differences becoming shared openly, without fear of reprisal.

Establish Guardrails

Encouraging agile teams to "uncover better ways of working" isn't without risk.  As an organization you should have clear guardrails of what is in bounds and out of bounds for a team.  Without guard rails, teams could feel "anything goes"which can lead to disastrous results.  Co-creating these guardrails can be a powerful exercise where teams learn the bounds within which they can play, and can free up their collective creativity to deliver amazing value. 

Scaling Doesn’t Require Conformance

Turning agile teams loose to meet customers’ needs is powerful. At the same time, though, to quote Uncle Ben in the Spiderman comic series, "With great power comes great responsibility." 

Leaders can feel confident in giving teams freedom to make decisions by creating clear organizational goals that ensure teams are rowing in the same direction, allowing different approaches room to grow and learn, and setting clear boundaries where teams can uncover better ways of working. 

None of this is easy.

None of this is without risk.

But ultimately, empowering differences within a unified ecosystem not only brings humanity to the workplace, it also produces better products.

Will hyper-specialization and the gig economy effect agile as we know it?

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.