I am sure that you have seen at least one of those movies, in which a guy or a girl masters a martial art. You know, like Karate Kid. Or Kickboxer. They start off with the main character being, well, not the top notch fighter. Then they find a master. Music start playing, while you see them practicing in the sunset. After a few minutes music stops, and our hero ends up invincible, kicking down a concrete column.
I also thought that growth, personal and as a team, is something accompanied by music and it happens overnight. You read the manual, get the certificate, visit a seminar, you bread in and out, and you are changed. You fall asleep as a baby without any teeth, and wake up with all of them fully grown.
Many have the same expectation about agile. Once you start doing it, it will not only solve all the problems you had before, but will make you grow and improve almost overnight.
I have a good news for you. Agile actually does offer the possibility for you and your team to grow. To grow your technical, and your social skills. To grow your understanding of the business. It even offers space to improve the understanding of yourself.
But I also have another news: It comes with a price. When babies grow their teeth, they don’t think it is fun while it’s happening. Also they take time to grow. And worst of all, there will be no music playing in the background, unless you play some. While teeth grow by themselves, growth in an agile is not going to happen by itself. Just like in those cut sequences, you will have to punch, to bleed, to fall, to get yourself up again, and again and again. You really have to want it and fight for it.
When your team makes first steps in agile, you will feel excited. Your first few iterations my be very harmonious. Only when the sunshine starts fading away, the growth starts happening. People start opening up and conflicts occur. And this is where you have to start using agile tools and need some very capable, empathic and experienced scrum masters.
Don’t worry about conflicts. As already said, they are a sign of growth, just like the pain, while teeth grow. Facing tough problems is good for the team. It releases a new energy inside the team and individuals. Use this energy in the retrospectives to channel it into creative solutions. Allow conflicts to be resolved in an ordered manner. Protect the integrity of the team members and the team itself, while allowing the core of the problems and conflicts to be constructively discussed. Provide clear guidance to the team and enable them to create solutions. They are very intelligent people and they will find their way.
Just like for any other skill, you will need patience to reach mastery in retrospectives. Things will take time. And then some more. And once you know all the moves, once the team finds their groove, you can’t stop practicing. Your knuckles will not bleed anymore, but you still have to punch that board at the end of every iteration. The board will not get softer, but you and your team will get stronger.
Retrospectives are not the only way to help your team. Use your successes to celebrate them. Together. Make every successful iteration a visible achievement. Celebrate the team and the effort. This will raise the spirits, and for the long way in front of you, you will need that.
Don’t allow the team to shut off from the experience and knowledge of other teams and other areas of knowledge and expertise, even if under pressure focusing might look like a way to go. The team will be focused on solving the problem, becoming a team, but allow them to move their focus away from that. Let their minds wonder in different directions and let them bring these fresh thoughts back into the melting pot. Allow every team member a few hours a week or even a whole day to work on their own projects, research and develop a skill. Even if it has nothing to the with the subject of the matter of the project. They will be able change the perspective easier, when solving impossibly complex problems. And this again, will make the solutions less complex. And we all know how important that is.
Use the loops to hone the individual qualities of the team members and allow people to influence each other in the best way possible, even if this means going through conflicts and using unorthodox approaches. Agile framework allows this growth to happen. But you will have still have to do the heavy lifting. The struggle will be real. It will be long. And it will be worth it. The new you and the team at the end of the process will thank you. You will probably not end up being invincible, but able to get up stronger whenever you have fall. And the growth and change process will never end. What else can you wish for?
Once you look back, after maybe a year has passed, things might seem like you watch them in the movies. Good memories will flashback in front of your eyes, and it will feel as it if your grew overnight. Now, all you need is some fine music and a sunset you can ride off into.