The Post-Pandemic World is More Agile
The global pandemic might have just taught us all some of the basics of the Agile Manifesto
The values and principles enshrined in the Agile Manifesto 20 years ago have become more relevant today than ever. As Agile has been preaching all along – we’re now actually more prone to responding to change rather than following a plan. We’re putting individuals and interactions over processes or tools. We’re motivating individuals by giving them the environment and support they need and trusting them to get the job done. Let’s look at some of these in more detail, as they are some of the famous values and principles behind the Agile Manifesto.
Responding to change over following a plan
Forget “The Plan”. In the post-Covid world, it’s all about responding to change over following “The Plan”. What’s your timeframe of certainty today? How far ahead are you willing to plan? By current measures, even our governments are only confident about the next one to four weeks. It took more than two decades for Scrum Masters to preach this way of thinking. Now it’s the default state of mind without the added effort of Scrum Masters.
With that said – planning is not forgotten. Eisenhower’s saying that “plans are useless, but planning is indispensable” – has been reborn in the global pandemic context. In one of the companies I worked for – Fidel API, like many companies – we adopted the OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) framework for annual strategic planning. In fact, we did it for the first time in 2020 – right in the middle of the pandemic. Looking back at the OKRs of the Engineering and Product teams, it’s clear that the discussion around the objectives and their key results are valid. It fine-tuned our mindset at Fidel API and we continued to refine the OKR planning framework in the upcoming years.
The pandemic experience added a touch of reality to Fidel API’s strategic planning. Our Engineering and Product key results experienced multiple thunderstorms, exacerbated by the pandemic. We had to refocus – on enabling our existing customer base and providing custom solutions to some of our big strategic partners. In a nutshell, our key results were regularly changing in response to our customers’ shifting needs in light of the global pandemic.
Changing the key results during the year might not sound like a textbook approach. The global health crisis helped everyone look at these decisions from a more grounded, down-to-earth, rational standpoint. We saw that remaining focused on irrelevant key results was a greater risk than responding to change by adjusting our key results in flight. Equally, this has been the way for building great products by Agile teams – responding to change rather than following a plan. However, reality has helped us to scale this approach to the strategic planning level of Fidel.
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
In response to the global lockdown, most industries have experimented with and adopted some brands of online communication and collaboration tools. It doesn’t really matter which one, it’s always about enhancing interaction rather than the specific combination of processes or tools you’re using.
For example, at Fidel API we started to run the traditional Scrum events shortly before the lockdowns kicked in. However, their importance as a binding structure became apparent as the year progressed – people needed structure in their ‘work-from-home’ life. The structure provides predictability, which is subconsciously linked with the feeling of security and safety.
Our engineers knew that after the current Sprint, there’ll always be a next Sprint. They knew when we’ll have a dedicated time to close this Sprint, discuss lessons learnt, and plan the next Sprint; engineers also knew that the scope for the 2 weeks of the Sprint will be largely fixed; finally, everyone was aware that we’ll have a chance to discuss any obstacles for reaching the Sprint Goal during the Daily Standup calls. This predictability created peace of mind – a feeling that one’s work life is steady and structured. A feeling we were all craving during the pandemic.
Growing the Fidel API by 100% during the global pandemic meant that we had to add more interactions on top of the Agile structures – just to learn more about each other. I started to run short quizzes (two truths and a lie) before each Retrospective to help us learn more about each other. Many of our product teams started to run weekly coffee calls (20-30 min) with a single rule that you’re not allowed to talk about work on that call. We set up a monthly engineering call to discuss the latest happenings, where they might be relevant to other Fidel API teams.
Since many people at Fidel were hired during lockdown – most of us had never met in person. Therefore, additional opportunities to interact were important. On top of the weekly company-wide meetings, we introduced self-run Zoom fitness classes, game nights and a happy hour. Oh yes – we did fear death-by-too-many-meetings, so we agreed on a ‘no-meetings-Tuesday’ for product teams. Tuesdays were reserved for focussed work without ANY calls.
Provide a supportive environment and trust
What do you do as a manager when all your employees are working from home? You learn to trust them. You have no other option but to completely trust them if you want to keep the lights on. You want to motivate them and support them in creating the online and offline environment they need to get the job done – entirely virtually.
Early on in the pandemic, Fidel API supported employees in improving their work environment at home. We allowed everyone to bring any of their office equipment home, as well as a generous allowance to purchase any additional equipment for a productive work environment.
However, later we all learned that it was not just the physical environment that was important for long-lasting high performance. It’s also about psychological well-being and time to decompress and relax. Our CEO spent significant time sharing his personal experiences managing his mental health. All the company received a subscription to the Headspace app. On the week of World Mental Health Day, we even took a mandatory day off for the entire company to rest busy minds.
More Agile Not Less
Before the global pandemic, we had a rather poor recognition of Agile values and principles outside the Engineering world. However, now – in the post-pandemic world – it looks like the past 20 years were just warming up – preparing the grounds for wider recognition of Agile values and principles.
The global pandemic has created conditions for a fantastic stress test to the resilience of Agile values, principles and structures. Agile not only passed this test but proved that it’s more relevant to a wider audience than we had ever imagined. My hope is that the world’s desire to come back to “normal” after the global pandemic might just mean that we come to a “more Agile world” as the new default instead.
