Avoidance of Accountability - The Death Knell of Teamwork

Avoidance of Accountability

Track and Analyze

When a company first decides to initiate change and move towards the Agile methodology, it is inevitable that grumblings about it being yet another process change raise to the surface.

Companies that choose to use the Scrum framework within Agile face a similar situation.  This usually arises from what the developers feel is management watching them more closely.  This stems from the insistence of gathering metrics from the developers, i.e. daily hour reporting – or the like.

Their first instinct is to fear that management will be looking at the individual performance of the developers.  A hurdle faced by an Agile Coach and Scrum Master is to alleviate this fear.  Even though the matrices are there for management to do just that, I have yet to see the numbers used in that fashion.

They are watching me!

I was asked once if I could provide such numbers to management, I said I could but I explained that the numbers would be entirely out of context.  When asked to explain I indicated that the numbers will be a black and white description of hours worked only.  I went on to say that the work performed by individuals is quite different from developer to developer.  Developer A and B can indeed be developers that can devote 100% of their time to development.  But developer B is an SME and spends a good portion of the day helping other developers or attending meeting to help support development.  Most developers fall into some varying degree of time allotment spent on other tasks not directly associated with the current Sprint. Therefore it would be negligent to compare one developer to another.

Back to accountability.  Even though the developer’s fear of being tracked more closely is unfounded, the avoidance of accountability is very real.  In Patrick Lencioni’s book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, he explains that the team’s "lack of real commitment and buy-in" creates an environment in which the team does not want to be held accountable.  He goes on to say, "without committing to a clear plan of action, even the most focused and driven people often hesitate to call their peers on actions and behaviors that seem counterproductive to the good of the team."

"Just the facts, Ma'am."

It has been my experience that once I can make the teams feel less paranoid about being watched and assuring them the metrics are being used to track team progress, not individual, it becomes easier for them to trust the system.  Over time I show them how the metrics are being used.  For example, the velocity of a team is important.  Without that the team cannot determine how much work to plan for in each Sprint.  Without the Burndown Chart it is hard for the team to know if they are on track during the Sprint.  Finally, without the Burnup Chart is hard for the teams to know if they are completing the work in a timely manner.  Ideally the Burndown and Burnup chart is a mirror image of one another.

Having accountability at all levels is very important.  Do not try to avoid it.