I recently helped a client as they endeavored to change their organization to adopt Agile methodologies. In our previous post, we discussed the importance of Agile especially for small businesses. Agile is defined as the principle of generating customer satisfaction by delivering early, continuous customer value. But how does a small business actually put this into play in their operating model?
My client operated firmly in the ‘expert model,’ relying exclusively on a few experts to take part in every important project. These were the ‘A’ team players, and the expectation was that if you had an urgent, high priority project, it wouldn’t succeed without them. Not only was this structure highly inefficient because teams had to wait for their turn with an A player, but it was demoralizing for those that were not part of the A team. To add insult to injury, the more the A players participated in different projects, the more their expertise grew while their supposed B player colleagues stayed stagnant. A-players worked 12 hour days while their peers struggled to fill their days with mundane, busy work. The model is unsustainable yet I see it again and again, curbing the effectiveness of organizations and the engagement of their employees.
Redesigning the A Team
Agile provides a different approach. In an Agile business, the focus of the organization is on project teams and the people that make up those teams. A team is formed to service the customer, who has a specific business need. It is naturally cross-functional, made up of a mix of people from marketing, development, operations, etc. Compare this to traditional businesses, where teams are comprised of employees from the same function. Agile breaks that model.
We’ve all seen cross-functional teams formed to tackle projects; that’s nothing new. A project is identified, a team is created to complete the project, and we bring in someone from each of the different functions. But this is just the expert model again in different clothes. The function that has to be on every team becomes the bottle neck for the organization, and the people on the team assigned to the project wait until that function frees up a person. Wait time equals frustration for team members and organizational inefficiency.
The Power of Agile
With Agile the difference is that the team stays together across projects. Instead of breaking up a team, a project is broken up into smaller pieces. Instead of the team waiting until that key player becomes available, the project waits in a backlog until the team is available. The team stays together, shifting between projects based on business priorities.
With Agile, the team stays together across projects
At first blush this may seem ineffective especially for complex projects that require expertise. And certainly when assigning a team to a project, their expertise from past project work needs to come into play. But in Agile, the value of an employee is less about their expertise and more about their contribution as a member of the team. So it’s the team’s expertise that is sought after instead of the individual’s. It takes time and effort to figure out how to work as an effective team. Skill development is continuous, and everyone is expected to learn, not just the experts. While this is hard work, it certainly benefits the previously thought of B players.
There is an added business benefit to this approach that gets to the heart of employee engagement. Once a team is formed and establishes their working rhythm, they become extremely capable customer problem solvers. Instead of management analyzing customer needs and providing a solution for the team to implement, the team is presented with the customer needs and they work together to design and implement the solution. This means the creative energy of the entire team is applied to solving those customer problems, leading to more innovative solutions. And because individuals on an established team feel safe bringing their ideas to the table, they are more engaged and happier in their work than with the old model. It’s a win-win for the organization and transforms the notion of the former, outdated A team.
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