“Do you agree that agile ways of working is not suitable for the new remote working mode? “
This was the message from my old waterfall nemesis, referring to the forced remote work by many of the knowledge workers across the world. He was referring to the “co-located” principle from the agile manifesto — the most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.
My response was a suggestion to look at the intent behind the principles and not treat them as axioms. The intent is — teams require high communication bandwidth to be effective . As we enter the “new new ways of working” mode, maintaining a high #communication bandwidth within the team and outside is critical.
Perhaps, we need to take step back and rethink the way we work and live in the time of a pandemic. Most of us are in uncharted waters and coaches are not different either! As coaches , we are used to being present physically where work happens, to be able to guide and help people on the adoption of new ways of working. Influencing people in teams , leaders , processes , operating models etc — all without authority has been the core job description.
The existential question for coaches is — How can we continue to help and influence people to be more agile and respond better in this new new way of working ?
I believe the world needs more agile mindset than before to be able to respond quickly to changing situation
- Team members need to help each other on the work front as some of us struggle on the personal front due to a number of reasons — childcare responsibilities , health etc.
- It is also time for ruthless prioritisation of work to focus on true value and business outcomes— prioritisation is more important than before!
- It is not about new features but more about stability and continuity
- For technology teams , this can be an opportunity to work on those technical debt work items they have postponed for a long time or learn new skills that will help
- It is very tempting for leaders to return to a command and control world — effectively negating any progress their organisations may have made towards modern ways of working
What can you as a coach do at a practical level ?
As coaches we can
- redefine the coaching services that we offer — the way we can help teams by wearing different hats of facilitation, risk management , servant leadership …
- help teams focus on reiterating the value of trust
- encouraging leaders to delegate more!
- get teams to be more transparent about work and work patterns
- help teams acknowledge different needs of fellow team members
- get teams to use asynchronous communication platforms such as #slack #msteams
- get teams to just communicate more frequently
- help teams to agree on a set of explicit communication and ways of working policies