Changing Software Development: Learning to Become Agile

9.2. Slack in Action: Make Time and Space for Learning and Change

For change to happen, people need to have both time and space to actually change. As we observed in Chapter 5, organizations need to provide slack. Without time, resources and physical space, people won't be able to reflect on what they're doing, try new ideas, experiment and fail.

Giving time and space to discussions, change and experiments has a direct effect: it allows people to make sense of change and internalize the change. It also has a second, equally important, function: it sends a message that such discussion and changes are valued, that we aren't in a constant break-neck environment.

Doing something differently means not doing it the way you've been doing it, which means that it's going to be more difficult to know how long something will take – and it probably means that the first time you do it differently will take longer than when you were doing it in the old way.

For example, a team adopting Test-driven Development (TDD) practices will undoubtedly find that it can't give an accurate estimate of how long it will take.

It may, or may not, be able to give an accurate estimate based on the old way, but certainly using a new approach will take a different amount of time.

At first, everything may take longer, but as the team becomes more familiar with the techniques, as it learns the new way of working, things will speed up and the time taken will reduce.

However, if the team is to improve, it needs time ...