I was at a conference not that long ago speaking and sharing on various agile topics. As often happens, a young man stopped me to ask a few questions after one of my presentations. We struck up a nice conversation that eventually slipped out into the hotel corridors.
We started talking about sprint dynamics within Scrum teams and I happened to mention that I usually coach teams towards declaring their sprints a success… or pause for meaningful effect… a failure. That we do this as part of the teams’ Sprint Review, with the Product Owner being the final determinant basing it on whether the team achieved their Sprint Goal(s).
He was visibly upset with my view. He said that they (he was working at a well-known Atlanta company) had never failed a sprint. Never! They could not nor would not use that WORD in their culture. I asked him point-blank – have you ever failed a sprint? He said of course they had. Many times. But instead of using the term fail, they used the term ‘challenged’. That way, stakeholders wouldn’t get the wrong idea and question the skills or motives of the team.
We went round-and-round for another 10-15 minutes in our discussion, but we never really settled our differences. We simply agreed to disagree. Although it wasn’t a terribly wide chasm between us, I distinctly remember walking back to my room shaking my head. I simply didn’t understand the big deal about failure. About using the word. About a team saying… we failed. In my coaching practice and in my “day jobs”, I’ve been able to steer and evolve our views so that failure is not a bad word. I.e. failure is good. Failure is ok. Failure leads to improvement. Failure is a part of life.
So in this post, I want to discuss failure from a few perspectives. The discussion isn’t intended to be exhaustive. Instead, I just want to share some thoughts and to get you thinking about failure… how you view it in your organization, what is your tolerance for it, and re-considering your normal reactions to it. I also think this leads you towards your risk handling as well, because I think the two are inextricably linked.
Coaching to Avoid Failure
In his blog post from June 20, 2011, entitled Coaching is Not Letting Your Teams Fail, Giora Morein makes the case that agile coaches should be leading or guiding their teams away from failure. He brings up the analogy of a Sherpa guiding mountaineers. And yes, in the mountain climbing example I will have to agree that failure is probably not the result we want.
However, in the non-life threatening cases I think I disagree with Giora. I wholeheartedly believe that failure can actually be good for a team. I also think the role of the coach is to help a team look at their performance through two lenses. The easier of the two is the success-lens. This is the lens where you give the team positive feedback; where you tell them that they need to repeat those practices that work for them. Indeed, what practices they need to amplify and do “more of” so as to achieve greater and greater results.
These conversations are clearly easier.
But what about the failure lens? As a coach, do you provide constructive criticism? Do you show a team where they miss-stepped? Both individually and as a team? I think so. But certainly not in a malicious or heavy-handed manner. I think if you’re effectively coaching a team you must explore their errors & mistakes with equal passion and energy to how you handle their successes.
And I don’t think you do this quietly, hiding behind doors and not externally acknowledging their challenges. No. I think you approach it in a completely transparent and matter-of-fact manner. Laying the groundwork that failure is appreciated and welcome. That from it, your teams look for improvement possibilities and move forward quickly towards delivering improved results.
Agile Exposure
In agile teams, there are two key ceremonies that are focused towards success & failure results from a team. In Scrum, that is the Sprint Review (demo) and the Sprint Retrospective (lessons learned). Typically, the sprint review is exposed to the world, so you might want to be careful in how you couch your failures – so that stakeholders don’t misconstrue the impact or the effort the team is putting forth. Nonetheless, I believe you should declare sprints either a success or failure as part of the introduction to the teams review.
Comments