Its been couple of years, that I have had the opportunity to write & share something. I hope I am not that rusty!
It was early 2010s when we started hearing and discussing about Agile in larger audience. Especially in Pakistan. Initially people thought, it’s a ploy to remove testing resources altogether, as there is slump in markets and companies can’t afford to have “freeloaders”.
I remember, having multiple discussions with my friends and telling them, relax man, we are here to stay. But deep down, I had an itch, what is this “new way of development” where no testing, or documentation is required.
Let’s back up a little bit. In traditional software development lifecycles, there was always a Testing Face, and the biggest question was QA v QC or Verification v Validation. But we knew whatever the distribution, but we will have our time for each project, where we will be working on the application/software as per our own understanding of the requirements. We (some of us thought) were too good in business side of things, so we only knew what client wanted and devs where there to only put blocks together).
By having, ”our time” (in other words testing time or cycles) there was a clear divide, it was Testing vs development.
It was then, and presumably with more common understanding / knowledge of Agile Methodologies, with mantra being one team, one would assume that this would have gone. But no, it hasn’t we still keep fighting the battles, we still have battle lines drawn.
I have been scratching my head and trying to find out the root cause. And up till today morning, I was thinking we need more coaching for our team members. But something clicked, and that is, we the dinosaurs need to change first. We still keep fighting the “Us v Them” battles. Even though our resources have been put in same teams, but we the “Managers” are still holding the rope tight. We still keep on believing that they are our resources. We keep on encouraging “our” resources only. In reviews we try to find faults with resource from “other” team. Try to hide the issues of one’s own resources.
But we must realize, as soon as you step in to world of Agile, the resource managers are not managers, they are parents, that have to let their children decide their own path, and to quote a windows phrase “Sit Back and Relax”. Let them make mistakes and learn from them. Help them if asked, don’t go running to find the issues. The more you let them be on their own the more they will learn.
So agile coaches, please sit together and sort us out. Make sure we believe in one team concept, rather than preach only.
I have done my Manager (Traditional Manager) to Manager (Agile Coach) Journey, have you? More on this in my next blog.
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