One of the things I like about agile ways of working is that it encourages you to find the right level of structure for your team, in your context. That might be almost none where something like experimentation or discovery is valued, or it might be more if outcomes like predictability or a robust audit trail are needed.

Problems appear if you try to use the wrong approach in the wrong context. Often when someone is trying to force an approach without considering context.

If you think about structure as scaffolding, something you can adapt frequently and make it fit to the work you’re doing, rather than a mould that casts your work into a set shape, you’ll end up spending more time focusing on delivering value and less time Shaving Yaks.

I was reminded of this recently when I was asked to write a report for an oversight committee with a couple of days notice. It was to be about how well prepared we were if something in the news developed into a more serious situation. Being honest, it was something we were aware of but hadn’t felt there was any reason to do more so far. There was some debate on whether to write something or give a verbal update, and what level of detail it should go into. But at the same time I got on wrote the report in a couple of hours, because the incident response framework I’ve built has the right level of detail to support this.

It’s designed as a template for responding to any kind of disruptive incident, regardless of what the cause is. It has guides for how escalation decisions are made, broad questions to act as a checklist/reminders, and guidance for steps to take at different points in time. This meant that all I had to do was double check the data to show why we hadn’t put any specific plans in place, and then a brief section on how our framework provided enough guidance for if the situation does escalate to give some peace of mind.

It was well received, and that fact that I could quickly produce a report with the right level of detail, and show how we’ve used successfully it in the past, builds confidence.

We don’t need, and couldn’t justify the time producing, response plans for every disruptive situation that could come up. By focusing on outcomes we’d want in any situation, and having a framework that enables good decisions to be made, we’re able to pay attention to what’s important.

The same applies to day to day work, frameworks for task management, decision making, change logs, retrospectives etc help guide us, but the trick is to make sure you’re paying attention to whether these rules are helping, or whether your just going through the motions. Think about the intent behind them, understand how that helps you in your context, and update them when you need to.

Photo by Alain Pham on Unsplash