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Agile & life
The power dynamics when holocracy applies in Agile
On how to avoid the common pitfalls of a team that tries to achieve Agile yet fails all the same.
- For the most part Agile frameworks promote a collegial decision making
- But when it's misunderstood it tends to favor the few that either know how to use it or stand in a position of corporate power
- What can we learn from identifying the sources of power?
Everything in the Agile Manifesto is geared towards a better inclusion of the team in both the product and the process decision making. No democratic power stands up to its name without the doubt of being dismissed by the people that enforced it in the first place. Let's explore the difference between feedbacks and votes. Power dynamics in an organization refers to the relationships between people, both formal and informal.
Holocracy in Agile
A holacracy is a form of organizational governance in which (as opposed to a hierarchy) there are no leaders or subordinates. Terms like "position" or "employee" are replaced with the term "role". Each role has a defined purpose, its domains of influence, and accountabilities. When acting out a specific role, an employee is authorized to make independent decisions that ensure and improve how that role is fulfilled.
Identifying the power and the counter-powers
For all political systems have their apparent and subdued power figures, Agile teams do not escape this rule as they are capacity and vision management structures in a nutshell, politics care about the city, Agile care about the product and the team, and everything in between.
Let's take it to a small team level in a scrum configuration and let's compare where responsibilities lie and how they are distributed:
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Product vision
Compared to a waterfall both the source the power and its delegations tend to be clearer, albeit it depends greatly from one project to another. The product owner (and by extension the product manager when the term applies) is responsible for the the product vision, yet Scrum shines by including at almost every stage of the product definition the whole team, either by providing a direct recommendation on new features, often driven by a new tech the product owner is not familiar with, or by nudging the product direction with proven indications of technical limitations.
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Sprints
Voting instances
No democratic power stands up to its name without the doubt of being dismissed by the people that enforced it in the first place. Let's explore the difference between feedbacks and votes.
Endnote
#TODO