Why Managers Misdiagnose Team Issues: A Survival Guide
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Understanding the Misguided Focus on Teams
I've often pondered why managers, myself included, tend to fall into the habit of trying to enhance efficiency by zeroing in on team performance. There's a prevalent belief that if teams could only boost their efficiency or productivity, all our challenges would vanish. While it's true that teams can sometimes contribute to problems, the reality is that they are rarely the main issue.
This is the fourth installment in our series. If you haven't yet read the previous articles, you can start with the first one here.
The Flawed Emphasis on Teams
At home, I’ve taken up the hobby of cultivating chili plants, which require abundant watering. When they begin to wilt, my immediate response is to give them more water—a solution that works wonders for them. However, I also have an Aloe vera plant. As I diligently watered the chili plants daily, I inadvertently overwatered the Aloe, which soon showed signs of distress and began to rot. Seeking advice from ChatGPT, I learned that I needed to let the Aloe dry out completely to save it.
The key lesson here is that different plants require different care. Yet, in the corporate arena, the instinct often leans towards "watering" all teams the same way—imposing a standardized approach.
Managers frequently strive to enhance team effectiveness using a universal formula across the organization. I believe this approach often channels efforts in the wrong direction.
Scaling up introduces significant challenges, primarily because organizations tend to apply a one-size-fits-all strategy to all teams. Managers have come to associate standardization with efficiency. However, as we scale, we often create dependencies between teams, leading to waste in processes, such as handoffs, delays, and backlogs—issues we initially resolved with multi-skilled teams capable of managing their tasks independently.
Instead of striving to improve teams, which are already functioning well, managers should focus on transforming the system to facilitate efficient teamwork.
Identifying Systemic Issues
The truth is that, in many instances, teams resemble healthy plants with the potential to flourish but are hindered by systemic obstacles beyond their control. To illustrate this, let’s revisit John and his ongoing challenges.
John's Ongoing Challenges
John's teams were facing difficulties. Despite their dedication, they struggled to meet deadlines, which affected morale. The managers concluded that the problem lay with the teams and organized workshops aimed at boosting productivity. However, no amount of team-building exercises could rectify the fact that the real issues were systemic.
One day, John observed his teams gathered around the program board, grappling with a tangled mess of red yarn that represented their dependencies. Teams often found themselves unable to complete their features because they had to wait for another team's inputs, which might not arrive until the next Sprint. This led to a backlog of unfinished work and delays. When defects were discovered and sent back to another team, they had to refocus and recall what they had worked on weeks prior, resulting in constant interruptions.
As they reconvened around the board, Ted, the Scrum Master, proposed, "Why don’t we focus on eliminating the constraints instead of just marking them with red yarn and constantly firefighting?" The team regarded Ted's suggestion as brilliant. They began to explore the theory of constraints, aiming to remove the most significant bottlenecks to enhance their workflow.
Systemic Challenges in SAFe Environments
John realized that pinpointing constraints was often a daunting task. Waste was pervasive, obstructing the flow of work like an invisible net. One day, a developer introduced John to Poppendieck's seven wastes of software development, which included handovers, over-engineering, and incomplete tasks. Recognizing these wastes empowered the teams to eliminate inefficiencies.
As the teams worked to remove constraints, they informed John that while some were straightforward to address—like automating their deployment processes—others were much more complicated. The intricate structure, rules, and policies of the large organization, along with the complex dependencies among products, created formidable barriers. In these situations, SAFe’s coordination and planning methods often appeared to be an appealing workaround.
The Scrum Masters urged John to create a more conducive environment for the teams. Ted noted that autonomy could be enhanced if the teams had architecture that supported independence. They also expressed the need for the capability to conduct certain tests, such as security assessments, on their own, instead of waiting six weeks for availability from the PenTest team. Additionally, they sought assistance in managing technical debt by establishing a standard of 80% test coverage and improving tools for a better developer experience. John committed to doing his utmost to support them.
The Role of Management in System Improvement
From my experience, we often find ourselves drawn to heroic efforts in addressing immediate problems, yet we rarely address the underlying system. Agile teams frequently lack the authority or conditions necessary to implement system changes. All too often, there’s a reliance on the mechanics of frameworks for achieving success.
For instance, if one views Scrum primarily through the lens of its events and mechanics, they may never challenge or modify them. In my observation, few teams feel empowered to question the system. Retrospectives seldom address issues beyond the team's immediate scope. The factors that hinder teams typically stem from constraints, waste, or dependencies that lie outside their control.
Thus, we must focus on transforming the system rather than the team itself.
It's disheartening that when teams propose changes to their workflow, organizations often resist. Many organizations hold the belief that work processes should be standardized, assuming that uniformity will enhance efficiency by minimizing variance and streamlining tasks. This approach may work well for simple, repetitive tasks but falls short in fostering autonomy, creativity, and innovation.
Strategies for Enhancing Workflow
To achieve better workflow, consider the following recommendations:
Avoid:
- Workarounds for Dependencies: Instead of planning around dependencies, focus on resolving them. Aim for systemic solutions that eliminate constraints.
- Waste: Identifying waste in processes can be challenging, yet it’s critical. Ignoring waste leads to harder work without smarter results. Eliminating waste is essential for maintaining flow.
- Underpowered Teams: Teams lacking authority, tools, or skills create bottlenecks and frustrations. Empower teams with resources and autonomy to perform their tasks effectively.
Try:
- Learn to Identify Waste: Familiarize yourself with the types of waste (overproduction, waiting, transporting, inappropriate processing, unnecessary inventory, unnecessary motion, and defects) relevant to software development. Eliminating waste can significantly enhance flow and reduce cycle times.
- Theory of Constraints: This management philosophy aids in systematically identifying the most significant limiting factor (constraint). Once resolved, continue identifying subsequent constraints to improve flow over time.
- Automate as Much as Possible: Automation fosters consistency, reliability, and efficiency, reducing human error and freeing valuable developer time.
- Architecture Supporting Independence: Design systems that promote autonomy, allowing teams to develop, test, and deploy with minimal inter-team dependencies, thereby enhancing workflow.
- Address Technical Debt: Manage technical debt proactively to avoid slowdowns in development. Implement automated checks in your pipelines to ensure that no code with less than 80% test coverage, failing SAST tests, or problematic code gets through.
Conclusion
It is crucial to shift the focus from "fixing" teams to improving the environments in which they operate. As illustrated through John's experiences, the core issues often reside in systemic constraints and management practices. By tackling these root causes, we can cultivate a more productive, agile, and satisfied workforce.
Consider a relay race: the goal is not for each runner to sprint at maximum speed throughout but to ensure that the baton is passed smoothly from one runner to the next. The success of the team relies on the efficiency of these handovers. If each runner concentrates solely on speed without considering the timing and technique of the baton pass, the team risks dropping the baton, leading to delays or disqualification.
In a similar vein, in a scaled agile environment, the emphasis should be on ensuring seamless handovers and collaboration between teams rather than pushing each team to operate at full capacity in isolation. This approach mitigates bottlenecks and enhances the overall flow of work within the system.
To conclude, let’s reflect on a quote from Deming:
"Everyone is already doing their best; the problems are with the system… only management can change the system."
In the next installment of our SAFe Survival Guide, we will examine the pitfalls of a Big Bang implementation and discuss what we would have done differently if given the chance to start anew. Stay tuned!
The video title is "Stuck in survival mode as a manager? This could be why." This video discusses common challenges faced by managers and how to overcome them to foster a more effective team environment.