Rigour and Discipline
Rigour and Discipline is the flip side of Team Autonomy. Autonomy allows teams to self-organise, Rigour and Discipline requires teams to execute their work to the highest possible standards. Discipline is following a set of rules that you have created to achieve something. Disciplines are our guides. Rigour is the level of care you commit to carrying out those disciplines.
In a nutshell: One of the fundamentals of Agile is people and teams operating in self-organising and self-supporting ways. In place of traditional management practices (imposed from the outside) the team requires its own internal management capability. To do this, the team can develop disciplines that help direct their attention, focus their work and improve their performance. The more rigorously these disciplines are followed, the better the disciplines will enable the team to manage itself.
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Rigour is the extent to which we apply ourselves to the disciplines we have created.
As an example, by applying the right level of rigour to developing user stories, we are able to create something that truly reflects the ‘need’ of the end user. If we don’t, we potentially get something that looks more like a task on a to-do list. If the user story looks more like a task, we may complete the task but not achieve the value the user demands.
Critics of Agile argue that ‘creating user stories doesn’t work’. However, the problem really reflects the lack of rigour that many teams bring to the preparation and refinement of user stories.
The issue of rigour was raised during an interesting piece of work carried out by Ryan Lockyard. He interviewed a number of the authors of the Agile Manifesto and their frustration at the lack of rigour was clear to see. One of the standout quotes was from Andy Hunt who said: “Agile now means, we do half of Scrum poorly and use JIRA.” To see more, take a look at his Slide Share presentation: Secrets from the Agile Manifesto Authors on Flow
So, discipline and rigour go hand in hand - there is no point putting in place a discipline if we do not apply ourselves to it. If we do however, the discipline is more likely to guide us towards higher levels of self-organisation and high value, sustainable delivery.
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Putting in place a set of disciplines can help organise the team and guide them towards delivering sustainable results. Disciplines could include the way we define our roles, the practices we use, our definition of ‘done’, the way we engage with customers and the delivery cycles we set for ourselves. Disciplines help the team to develop. The better we master the disciplines, the better we become at organising ourselves.
As the team develops, disciplines can also help the team to scale its activities. When this happens, other teams might adopt our disciplines, as we adopt theirs, and agile gets the chance to scale throughout the organisation.
So, discipline and rigour go hand in hand - there is no point putting in place a discipline if we do not apply ourselves to it. If we do however, the discipline is more likely to guide us towards higher levels of self-organisation and high value, sustainable delivery.
Customer Focus
Our relationship with the customer is founded on mutual trust and commitment. We commit to deliver work to the customer in a way that is predictable and that embodies the quality needs of the customer. Our customer commits to a degree of stability in the requirements for work and their relative priorities.
Team Focus
The more we understand what ‘done’ looks like, the more we are able to understand what time and resources will be required to achieve our goal. We are also likely to be better informed about what might hold us back and what might accelerate our progress. Conversely, if we don’t have a clear idea of what done looks like, we are likely to over or underestimate the task ahead of us.
Outcomes and outputs are both measures of what has been achieved. However they have two very different values. Achieving an output is an indication that a task has been completed. Achieving an outcome is an indication that a level of value has been created for the end user. When we focus on outcomes we get an idea of the outputs that will need to be achieved. However, if we focus purely on outputs, we can fail to deliver the necessary outcomes.
In Agile, we separate out our estimate of the size of a piece of work from its duration and cost. We start with sizing and let that inform the other two.
Because sizing comes first, and informs other variables, it is important we apply a level of rigour and discipline to ensuring our sizing is as accurate as we can make it. However we also have to assess the appropriate level of rigour and discipline that needs to be applied.
The idea behind gathering people together to work in teams is that we are stronger together - we are able to pool our combined strengths and are therefore likely to achieve more together than we would do apart. But that is not always the case as we sometimes produce better results working apart than together and, when we do come together, there are likely to be things that hold us back from functioning affectively as team.
The team’s culture will influence how they work, particularly the practices and behaviours they adopt and their adherence to them. Culture works for us to enable success or works against us to hamper success. We promote a team culture that will foster the behaviours that will enable the team to be successful.
Transparency demonstrates openness and honesty. It shows that we are continually growing and open to feedback. A lack of transparency breeds mistrust and suspicion and appears unassertive. A reluctance to be transparent suggests the presence of fear.
However, not everyone needs to know everything all the time. Let’s look at how to get the balance right.
When thinking about prioritising our efforts in line with customer needs we need to ask ourselves three questions: Are we solving their most important need? Is each release or cycle of time (sprint, month, quarter) leading towards a better quality product or service? Are we investing our time and skills on activities we stand the best chance of delivering?
Contextual Focus
A fundamental measure of success in Agile is the value that we deliver to our customers. Rigour and discipline therefore needs to be applied to the way in which we manage our product portfolios. This applies to our selection of new products, our management of in-process products and our continued investment into products under management.
The culture of the organisation is likely to affect the way teams operate and particularly the disciplines they adopt and the rigour to which these disciplines are followed. The organisational culture will either act for or against the adoption of agile ways of working. If it acts against, then the likelihood of teams being agile diminishes.
Organisations need to understand the influence they have on the long-term sustainability of their products and apply rigour and discipline in their support of them. Here we discuss the factors most likely to determine the long-term sustainability of products and then look at the responsibilities of organisational leaders and product managers in supporting the sustainability of their products
One of the main propositions of the agile manifesto is that the team is in the best place to make decisions on what can be achieved by when. The team therefore requires the autonomy to make these decisions.
Leaders need to be able to assess the team’s ability to manage themselves autonomously, to guide when required and also step back. organisations also need to understand what supports team autonomy and what constrains it.
Supporting Principles
We validate our work and our ways of working by seeking frequent feedback from customers, leaders, and other stakeholders. We respond rapidly and transparently to requests for feedback from others. Frequent feedback gives many opportunities to adjust requirements, priorities, and ways of working to better need stakeholder needs.
High performance is the expected norm for all teams. High performance is encouraged by a culture that emphasises the importance of Mastery, Autonomy and Purpose for everyone in the organisation. High performance is manifested through the rigour and discipline of teams and individuals and through the imperative to improve continuously.
There is a difference between Change and Transition. Here’s a model to help you think about that difference.