Using a Combat Metaphor to Apply Agile Principles to the Company

by Israel Gat, Senior Consultant, Cutter Consortium

Much of the agile literature deals with applying agile principles to software development, project management, program management, and (possibly) portfolio management. To succeed with applications in these disciplines, employees must first be won over to wholeheartedly adopt agile. Unfortunately, the "harvest" of years of globalization, offshoring, outsourcing, and layoffs often manifests itself in strained relationships between companies and their employees. Given this sorry state of affairs, applying agile principles, such as "people over process," to employee policy must precede application to development, project management, and program management, or at least go hand in hand.

To better understand the issue, consider the example of Army combat units. Just like agile teams, combat units depend on collaboration, empowerment, and the willingness to take risks. Both also need to cope with casualties. For the combat unit, the prospect of wounded and dead comrades is always detrimental to the ability of the team to function as a unit and to cope with the emotional stress. For the agile team, the loss of team members due to layoffs has quite similar effects -- precious institutional knowledge is lost, the pain of losing team members is debilitating, and everyone freezes as a result of the natural fear: "Am I next in line to be laid off?"

In war, it is almost impossible to get soldiers to go "over the top" {1} if they suspect that they might be left behind on the battlefield should they get wounded or killed. Hence, armies, including Israel's, have made "no casualties left behind" a sacred policy. The Israeli Army cannot guarantee that a soldier will not be hit by a bullet. It does, however, guarantee the best possible medical treatment and evacuation under battle conditions and, should all else fail, guarantees decent burial.

The agile team goes through psychodynamics similar to those of the combat unit when it expects "casualties" in the form of forthcoming layoffs {2}. A record-breaking Scrum implementation 12 months down the road is not too meaningful for an employee who suspects he or she might not be with the company in six months. Under such circumstances, you must satisfactorily answer the question on the minds of employees, "What is in this agile rollout for me?!" Agile team dynamics are likely to be jeopardized unless this question is answered.

What is needed under such circumstances is a reconstituted social contract between employers and employees. Without a working social contract, the friction and antagonism can bring down a system. For example, in 1942, the turning-point year of WWII, 833,000 person-days of coal mining were lost due to strikes in the UK coal industry {3}. Even a world war in which the UK was fighting for its life could not compensate for a broken social contract.

The social contract I developed and used during the 2004-2008 agile rollout at BMC Software read as follows:

Team, my overarching organizational objective is to preserve our team and its institutional knowledge for our corporation and its customers for years to come. We will achieve this goal by enhancing our software engineering prowess to the level that the resultant benefits will outweigh the repercussions of the current financial crisis. The state of the Agile art should enable us to attain hyperproductivity, which will serve as the best antidote to layoffs. In the event that we fail to accomplish hyperproductivity and our assignments fade away, you will find the Agile skills you developed much in demand in the market. Whether you will or will not be with the company in the future, I acknowledge your need to develop professionally as Agile practitioners and commit to invest in your education/training.

Applying such a social contract produces the following four favorable effects:

1. It legitimizes discussions of a taboo topic (layoffs).

2. It reduces fear while increasing hope.

3. It focuses the team on becoming better at agile.

4. It is a hard proof point to the folks in the trenches that the executive in charge is one of them. This is a most critical aspect in the executive-employee relationship in software companies.

I welcome your comments on this issue of the Cutter Edge and encourage you to send your insights on the market in general to comments@cutter.com.

-- Israel Gat, Senior Consultant, Cutter Consortium

Notes

1. "Going 'over the top' is a military phrase derived from trench warfare of the First World War.... Attacks starting from trenches required infantry to climb over the top of the parapet before they could cross no man's land to attack the enemy trenches." (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Going_over_the_top.)

2. Various military studies indicate replacements for casualties lose their effectiveness altogether once 50% of the original combat strength of a unit has been lost in a series of battles. The 50% threshold is independent of the number of replacements sent over time to the combat unit. Implications for companies that carry out layoffs one year after another are mind-boggling.

3. Barnett, Corelli. The Audit of War. Macmillan, March 1986.