You have a strange feeling as you walk down the dim hallway. Something doesn’t seem quite right. No matter how much you try, you can’t seem to remember anything about the team you are looking for. They were formed months ago, you are sure of it, but despite all the progress updates and planning meetings, you can’t seem to remember anything about them. Nevermind that now, the deadline is up, and you have to get an update.
As you approach the door to their lair the light flickers and dies above you. You sense movement just outside of your field of vision, but when you look, nothing is there. The hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. You place your hand on the doorknob and open the door. A dark room lit only by a half dozen screens opens up in front of you.
You step inside and see six empty desks. The monitors are still on and unlocked, but you are struck more by what you don’t see than what you do. No one is here. The room is completely empty. A mouse dangles off the edge of a desk by its wire. It’s still swinging. Someone was here only moments ago. A shadow within the shadows catches your attention. It seems to have shape. You lean in to get a closer look. It seems to have depth, a presence. Just when the shadow begins to climb from the uncanny valley into real, it shoots across the room. You shriek in terror.
“Wait! I saw you. I need to know where you are with the messenger project. It’s been months and we don’t have anything. What’s going on?” You shout at the figure.
The shape slowly emerges from the darkness. The shadow pulls away to reveal pasty white skin. The lips pull back to reveal rows of teeth. It speaks.
“Oh yeah, I was getting all that together for you. We are about 80% done. We should have good news soon. Come see me after lunch, and I’ll have more for you then.” Says the grinning wraith.
Who Cares? We Should be Iterative Anyway.
As an Agile practitioner, I will always promote an iterative approach whenever it is feasible. Doing something small and building off of it guided by frequent feedback is simply the least wasteful, least risky, highest value promoting way to develop software. I say this because there will be a lot of status and project talk, which often signals a more traditional approach where people march to a deadline. The thing is, most people are not ready to go directly to an iterative model. In most organizations, organizational structure, budgeting, strategic planning, basic expectations, and more get in the way. An iterative model is often a long term goal, and not a starting point.
What Hides in the Dark?
Whew! Glad that’s out of the way. Now, what’s all this shadow monster business all about? It’s about transparency. Have you ever had a team that for some reason or another, just disappears like a phantasm. You can’t ever seem to get a handle on what they are actually doing. Despite reports, reviews, or updates, you seem to be just as in the dark as when you started. I have. In fact, I have contributed to this myself. In the name of giving the teams space to grow, I have maybe not drawn as much attention to things I should have. Some of you may be feeling a bit seen right now. Maybe you’ve done this before, or maybe you are doing this right now. Let me be very clear. This is a massive mistake. Whatever trust you might be gaining with the team and whatever you may be building will pale in comparison to the trust you are breaking with the team’s partners, not to mention their leadership. This is also only if your efforts are not immediately undone in the wake of your breach of trust, which it almost certainly will be. Transparency is always the best policy.
We have gotten very good at hiding our shame. We live in a society. Most of us have a lifetime of practice hiding our flaws and avoiding scrutiny. This talent translates creepily well to the workplace. So, how do we combat this? What can we do to ensure truth reigns supreme?
Start Shining A Light Right Away
Start early. There are a lot of things that you should do right away to foster an environment of transparency. Firstly, something that is frequently missed is setting a baseline. Find out what the goals of your teams and their business are, find the metrics that would inform those goals, and baseline. Even if the baseline is nothing, start measuring right away, and measure regularly. These metrics should help to shine a light in the dark. Always seek to paint a picture with them. There are some caveats to this. Firstly, I like to tell my teams that metrics can start a conversation, but they cannot tell a story. They are indicators only. True understanding only comes when you go see it for yourself. Also, metrics can be gamed. Be careful to help your teams and the organization they are part of to understand the importance of maintaining integrity in the metrics. Remember Goodhart’s Law.
“When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” ~Charles Goodhart
Leave No Place to Hide
Part of helping teams avoid gaming their metrics and improve transparency is fostering a culture of transparency. Elephant in the room, culture change is hard and takes forever. It is not impossible. Here are some things that you can do to help. Start with leadership. Often, in Agile transformations, management is left to wonder what their role is. Agile teams are frequently expected to self-organize, leaving the command and control structure hanging. So, it’s a good idea to meet with these people early on so you can help guide them on how to best reinvest the energy they once used to direct their teams. Show them their role as support for the teams. Teach them that when a team shows trouble or struggle that it’s their job to step in, remove impediments, offer aid, and generally encourage an environment of continuous improvement. This can go a long way to exercise a spirit of fear within a team, especially if said spirit is a specter of past trauma.
Another thing that aids in building a culture of transparency is creating and demonstrating a safe place to fail. Training the leadership as before helps with this. When a team falls short of a deadline or has a suffering metric, it is infinitely more productive to ask what you can do to help than to instill terror for them not meeting their marks. Look for ways you can prove this. When necessary, coach leaders to approach struggles more constructively, coach team members to be more transparent, and lead by example. One of the most powerful things you can do to promote transparency is to seek out your own faults, draw attention to them, and show that they do not spell disaster. Show the virtue in admitting you need help.
Results Speak Louder than Words
This last bit of advice may seem obvious, but I have not been part of an organization that did not need to learn this lesson. Released product is how a team shows progress. Even if your team is not as iterative as it should be, they should be regularly and predictably producing. A huge red flag for teams that are struggling is having nothing to show for a release. At best, it’s a risky move, as even a well meaning team is stacking potential for defects the more they build without releasing.
How do we prevent this? The best way I have found is to ask the team for their commitment for each sprint or release. It’s important to note that this does not have to be beforehand. In fact, prior commitments without delivery are exactly the problem, right? When the release or sprint comes around, see what they are delivering, and if they have nothing, ask why. This sets an expectation that every time a release or sprint comes around, something must be shown for their efforts. It also gives you opportunity to build an environment of trust that breeds a culture of transparency. When you ask why early on, the team will almost certainly point to problems in the CI/CD pipeline. These are things that leadership are often uniquely suited to fix.
While the subject of promoting transparency can not be limited to a single post, single book, or even a library, there are a few simple things that can help guide you. Never let transparency and honesty be punished. Never let information be hidden. Find all the dark corners and find ways to shine light on them.