Scrum and Agile are wonderful team organizational systems. It’s been easy to see the benefits, but over time, we’ve started to see some issues appear. Since the benefits are measurable and the battle to get Agile accepted has been hard-fought, those that have suggested there may be improvements to the system have been treated with suspicion. No one wants to go back to the mistakes of the past.
Guilds are rarely discussed now, except as anachronisms. However, this morning I got a little jolt that there are some similarities here that make Scrum teams operate like MicroGuilds.
Wikipedia Says:
A guild (or gild) is an association of craftsmen in a particular trade. The earliest guilds were formed as confraternities of workers.
They are organized in a manner something between a trade union, a cartel and a secret society. They often depended on grants of letters patent by an authority or monarch to enforce the flow of trade to their self-employed members, and to retain ownership of tools and the supply of materials.
-- Wikipedia - Guild
This entry’s tense shifts betray that we not sure if guilds are past tense.
I would argue that much of this applies to our agile teams. Groups are formed that have power as a collective organization, this is in terms of bargaining, information sharing, information hoarding, goal attainment, etc. This is not a bad thing and it is by design. Agile seeks to leverage the individual value and the collective value-add.
They are certainly associations of “persons of craft”.
Let’s look at a few traits for a Scrum team when viewed as a Micro Guild.
Project Focused and Goal Oriented – The original guilds were built to control an industry. Scrum teams are built to control a project. Both are goal oriented. A Scrum team is more likely to be focused on a feature set than on an entire industry.
Ad Hoc and Coworking – Agile teams can be quickly formed and quickly disbanded. Some agile techniques, like peer rotation, rely on this even within the team itself. This is obviously a major departure from a classic guild which made its social capital from permanence.
Insular and Communities of Practice – Guilds and agile teams both work by creating a definable group and sharing vital information within the group. Agile teams quickly morph from project teams to communities of practice as they refine the original goal into a series of steps to create a product. Like guilds, most of this information is captured not in documents, but in tacit knowledge that team members pass from person to person. The only way to benefit from the knowledge of the group is to be accepted into the group and be educated through conversations and through doing.
Vitality – These traits combine, when done correctly, to create a vital working environment. Guilds were initially highly vital organizations that were filled with expansive thinking and innovation. People get together, work towards a common and (hopefully) well defined goal. They exchange information rapidly and effectively, building a team that is learning and improving. They can quickly add or lose staff members because this dynamic is inclusive.
The Warning
Insular, vital and focused teams tend to become very inwardly focused. Within an organization they operate to achieve a goal – but can become defensive of that goal. The rest of the organization can quickly become alienated from the project. Then value-misalignment takes hold rapidly.
Microguilds needs to have a society in which to operate. When an agile team is not having constant communication with the rest of the organization, they will become isolated, they will go off track, and value will be destroyed.
Blogged at Modus Cooperandi in Seattle.
Photo by Claudio
