Topic Teasers Vol. 36: Streamlining Agile Queues

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  Agile   Manufacturing  

We’re agile, but we make additions and fixes to our existing database rather than create exciting new software. Our response time pleases neither management nor the internal customers, but we are constantly pulled in many directions by cascading changes from multiple department managers. Scrum practices don’t seem to have a chapter on this scene from reality. What can we do?

A. You are paid to do what you are told. Each time a department official uses his power to move you to his own needs, e-mail the other department managers that their colleague is the reason for the delay in their own requests.

B.  Discuss how frustrating this is in the team retrospective. It won’t change reality, but the ability to vent will relieve some of the emotion attached to constant failure.

C. Ask your IT manager to come up with a solution to this issue and address the problem with his or her fellow managers. Only he has the formal authority to make changes to your work processes.

D. When the team is placed in an impossible situation, it is up to the team to come up with a solution and find a way to implement it, even if they don’t have any formal authority over the queue.

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Answer: D. When the team is placed in an impossible situation, it is …

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