Agile for Everybody

Chapter 4. Agile Means That We Collaborate Early and Often

The idea of working in small, cross-functional teams is central to several Agile methodologies. But, as with many other Agile practices, it is much easier to approach this as an operational change than as a cultural change. In far too many cases, organizations simply add a few dotted lines to the org chart or implement an open-office plan without really thinking through why cross-functional collaboration is valuable to the organization and its customers, and what has impeded it in the past.

And therein lies the greatest challenge of this guiding principle: just because people are on a team together or in a meeting together does not necessarily mean that they are collaborating. True collaboration requires openness, vulnerability, and the willingness to share ownership over ideas. It requires asking a question before you know the answer and being prepared to receive an answer you did not expect. It is something that does not come easily for most organizations, no matter how much time people spend in meetings.

This is why our second guiding principle is to collaborate early and often, both within and beyond our teams. Collaborating early means that we collaborate during upfront strategic conversations as well as downstream tactical ones, opening up the possibility of discovering new and unseen solutions. Collaborating often ...