The Art of Agile Development, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Autonomy

Optimizing fluency is fairly rare, but it’s not because the Optimizing zone represents a big change in Agile practices. On the contrary: Optimizing is mostly an application of the practices found throughout the rest of this book. Optimizing fluency isn’t rare because it’s hard; it’s rare because it requires a level of team autonomy most organizations aren’t ready to support.

Everybody knows Agile teams are supposed to be autonomous, but organizations with Optimizing teams really mean it. For them, autonomy is more than just enabling teams to work independently. They give their teams full responsibility for their finances and product plans, too.

Business Expertise

Of course, for your team to own its financial and product decisions, the team needs to have the ability to make good decisions. A whole team consisting of both business and development expertise has always been the goal, but many organizations short-change the business side of their teams. They assign a product manager who can participate only a few hours a week, or assign product “owners” who have no real decision-making authority. Some teams get the worst of both worlds: product owners who are spread too thin and have no decision-making authority.

Optimizing teams have real business authority and expertise. It’s not siloed behind a single person, either. Everybody on the team takes an interest in producing value. Some more than others, of course, but there’s no jealous hoarding of responsibility. ...