Efficiency seems like an important word. Other words like productivity, specialization, capacity, utilization and standardization also sound pretty impressive. These words are important words for optimizing (another word!) repetitive processes. The problem is that these words are not as important when it comes to creative work or problem-solving.
People don't think of complex work like software, human resources, or even marketing as creative, but it is. People who work in these fields are knowledge workers who are hired to apply their knowledge to figure things out. This is a creative endeavor, not a repetitive one. Each problem is different, and each solution is unique.
When senior leaders look at an organization, of course, they want to set their teams up for success. In the name of impressive words like efficiency, they take people who work in complex fields like software development and break them into Scrum teams that are based on specialization. The problem is that this makes it harder for teams to communicate and work together.
"Organizations which design systems... are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations."
— Melvin E. Conway,
Conway's law, above, speaks to the fact that the way people work together impacts the product that they will deliver. If you break teams into four groups to deliver a software compiler, you'll get a compiler that has four processes. So, before an organization thinks about how their teams should be organized, they should take a step back and ask what product they should be delivering.
It seems obvious, so why don't organizations let people with different skill sets work together to deliver value?
I think it comes down to a lack of trust.
When management doesn’t trust teams to deliver value and tries to control them with silos, it destroys that trust. Teams that are trusted to figure out how to maximize value will deliver it faster and better than teams forced into rigid structures. Management’s fears about inefficiency and people not being busy enough are actually causing the problem, not solving it.
So, what should management do instead? Focus on the product. Bring together the people with the skills needed to deliver that product, and empower them to work together. Make sure the Product Owner sets clear goals that align with business objectives, and then remove the roadblocks that get in the way. And most importantly, measure what really matters: customer outcomes.
Stop worrying about how busy each person is and start focusing on whether or not the team is delivering real value. After all, the purpose of a company isn’t to keep people busy—it’s to deliver value.
Contact Rebel Scrum to help set your teams up for success.