It’s about doing things just a little better everyday
I was in a meeting a few weeks ago where we were discussing the role of an Interation Manager (IM) and whether we needed one. Right now, the role is split between the tech lead and the BA. One of the BAs on the team stated that what we had right now was working and she didn’t understand why we were having the meeting.
This really rubbed me the wrong way. Agile is not about what works today, it is about making things better tomorrow. It is about identifying that little, or big, thing today that we can do just a little better tomorrow and implementing the change. If it works, we then find the next thing to improve and if it doesn’t work, then we try and figure out why and implemented the idea differently.
When it comes to the processes and practices we use everyday, “but it works fine now”, is simply unacceptable. It means that we have stopped moving forwards and have stagnated as a team. Regardless of how good things may seem, we always need to be asking how we can make thing better tomorrow.
True that we should always be looking for continuous improvement but it’s possible that discussing why an expected role is missing is starting with a solution instead of starting with a problem.
Granted.
The particular pain point we were discussing was a comment made by one of the tech leads that he felt like a third leg. He was so busy with meetings and administrative things that he felt like he wasn’t doing any tech lead stuff and, in fact, he wasn’t even sure what a tech lead should do. This lead, in a very round about way, to a discussion of the role of an iteration manager and whether that would relive some of the pain the tech lead was feeling.
So in a round about way, I think we did start with a problem. We never did arrive at any solutions though beyond management saying there was no budget for an IM and that was that.