self-management

Every organization has only one goal: build a value chain that leads to success.

Agile methods have helped companies around the world to improve their ability to adapt to the regular changes they go through and deliver value for the benefit of their customers.

Before the implementation of agile methods, the organization focused primarily on people who mastered their areas of expertise and who carried out their missions efficiently and quickly.

Is it the death of silos operating and the hierarchical approach ?

let’s put some context to that 🧐

What is operating in silos ?

Operating in silos means that each department works on its specific area without worrying about other departments.

Let’s take the example of a commercial center in a company in which four departments coexist : purchasing, sales, logistics and customer service.

Any company operating in silos will consider that each of these services has :

• Its management style
• Its directives
• Its own significant results
• Its own difficulties and concerns.

This mode of operation not only creates a relational difficulty between the services, it especially prevents the production of a final quality customer experience.

However, all studies show that the customer’s experience in consuming a product or service is much better with entities working hand in hand.

So why are we complicating our lives ? 🙄

but the organization in silos has no positive point ?

According to the supporters of the organization in silos, they explain that operating in silos helps companies to:

• Better structure the tasks of each employee
• Give relevant information to a specific person, not “pollute” an employee’s work environment so that they can concentrate on their tasks.
• Control information especially in large companies.

Operating in silos needs a hierarchical system and pyramid management.

Stay focused 🤓 let’s come back to the subject .

The two magic concepts : multidisciplinarity & self-management

Adopting agile methods is not implementing Scrum and Kanban frameworks or hiring a Scrum Master PSM certified or Product Owner PSPO certified , adopting agile methods means adapting the agile culture and breaking down the silos mode and vertical skills besides building teams whose first skill is multidisciplinarity and cross functional .

The team is made up of all the skills necessary to deliver its missions and provide the expected added value.

I would even say the team creates this value relying on multidisciplinarity.

By constituting multidisciplinary teams, a team dynamic takes place and contributes to the rise in collective skills first and secondly individual skills.

You ask yourself now , but how we promote the upgrade in technical skills by using cross-functional approach ?

→ Let’s think about it together !

In the daily practice of my professional missions I always notice that the agile ceremonies (retro , stand-up meeting , review etc….) separately of the fact that it brings establishment and it incorporates the values ​​of agility, they promote the exchange of information, communication, courage, sharing and mutual support to overcome blockages.

If employees feel confident, free, and share their opinions naturally, not only they will feel valued in the team but in addition they will improve their skills and share their learning.

Supported by self-organization according to the 2017 guide and self-management according to the 2020 guide, these cermonies promote the emergence of ideas, innovation, a belonging feeling and the implementation of good practices such as pair-programming. , Test driven development or even technical meetings and guidelines.

This helps to improve both the quality of what is delivered as well as the level of skills of the collective and the individual work.

Team empowerment through self-management will allow team members to help each other, collaborate and maintain the cross-functional capabilities.

By adopting agile methods, companies transform an organization in silos with vertical skills to an organization in self-managed and multidisciplinary teams with general competency.

Everyone becomes a “general expert”, they have in-depth expertise while having knowledge on other subjects which creates more value and versatility of the team while providing the necessary confidence to each team’s member in ordre to a skill improvement .

By exploring the agile value “people and their interactions before processes and tools”, agility is truly at the service of a continuously skills development fed by the collective effort ,which will allow managers to capture hidden talents as a coach or trainer deeply embed in the team.

Conclusion

Agile working brings many advantages in focused and rapid delivery through learning and iteration.

However, we need to make sure that this focus doesn’t lead us into creating new “agile silos”.

We’ll see tomorrow when it’s too late

let’s see some cases :

• Managers being reluctant to change the priorities of Agile teams in their areas when the business priorities have changed significantly
• Implement an agile approach in a company with a hierarchical skeleton without supporting the change at the top level
• A HR member of an agile team refusing to support a global functional initiative because the tasks were not on his agile team’s burn down list
• An organization insisting that all agile teams need to be collocated — leading to a lack of representation of different local cultures, talent and experience in their new centralized product development

Are you seeing agile approaches leading to more silo behaviour in your teams?

To be continued !