As I learn and grow my agile experience, I continue to find value and power in the notion of transparency. It’s one of the softer of the agile tenets and one that gets mentioned, but rarely emphasized as a critical success factor.
So what is transparency? Let me give you an example. In many agile instances teams and structure don’t simply come into being. Usually functional managers or other leaders put some serious thought into the composition of teams:
- What should be the team size?
- What is the most effective ratio of skills, for example developers to testers?
- How much experience does the team need? Specific leaders?
- How many developers of what sort (Front-end, Back-end, Middle-tier) should be on each team?
- Does the team have the requisite skills to get their work (as defined in the Product Backlog) done?
being a sample of typical considerations that are made.
Usually team composition involves trade-offs. For example, some team members simply don’t want to work on or in some areas. Individual strengths come into play—as do their professional and personal preferences. Some of the trade-offs might even be considered private or confidential.
When you expose this team composition to the organization, explaining your rationale and trade-offs, you’re practicing transparency. Why do it? First, it serves to expose things to the much broader team. It forces you to articulate your rationale and field questions or challenges. You’ll also field suggestions and alternatives—which will encourage you to consider them in your thinking.
Two resulting advantages are that decisions are made out in the open—subject to wider-team scrutiny. It also provides feedback on alternatives, which usually creates or fosters stronger decisions—in this case on eventual team composition.
But…There’s a Danger
Your level of transparency is dependent on the level of maturity of the receiving organization. In a perfect world, you want to be fully, 100% transparent. But what if you live in an organization that, to use Jack Nicholson’s words – “Can’t Handle the Truth!”?
Or what if your colleagues in other functional groups don’t reciprocate the same level of transparency that you do? Now you’ve exposed the inner workings of your organization and decision-making processes or the real reasons behind things, but others still remain opaque. Worse—they take advantage of your transparency in challenging your decisions or poking holes in your logic or using the information against you in open debate.
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