Sitting on a plane waiting to take off for my destination. A lady sitting next to me. People seated across the aisle to the right, in front and behind me. We’re all passengers for the duration of the flight. Our role as a passenger has a set of common responsibilities. These include stowing our luggage, taking our seats, fastening our seat belts, following instructions from the flight crew, sitting back and enjoying the flight.
When we arrive at our destination, we slowly shed our passenger role as we exit the plane and re-assume our individual life roles, professional and personal. Each of us with a unique set of responsibilities and capabilities. My fellow passengers may have included engineers, marketers, doctors, mothers, fathers, sons and daughters. But, the role we all had in common for the moment was passenger headed towards a single destination.
All the best high performing teams I’ve ever been part of shared that same pattern.
We each had our individual positions or roles that we excelled at. However, we were all willing to set those aside and take on a common set of responsibilities and aspirations towards a single common goal.
My teammates and I were willing to do and be anything so that we could achieve our common goal. The needs of the overall team became greater than our individual needs in that moment.
However, in that same moment, there’s a fine line between trying to do too much because you feel you can or trusting your teammates to do their part so that you don’t end up doing it for them.
That momentary lack of trust within the team has been the undoing of many otherwise high performing teams. Just think about sports teams and the superstar player that tries to be everywhere and everything at once. Only to fail miserably playing everyone else’s position except their own! In the end, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
So, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that one of the hardest impediments to overcome within teams is role clarity.
Knowing when to stay in your lane and when to let go of role certainty and to accept role fluidity.
Knowing the difference between when teammates truly need your help and when they don’t, preferring instead to struggle on their own in order to learn.
So, when it comes to role clarity for agile roles, think Venn diagrams rather than pigeonholes.
Venn diagrams overlap.
Pigeonholes don’t.
Venn diagrams account for a person’s unique skills and experiences.
Pigeonholes don’t.
The degree of overlap in a Venn diagram is a unique function of each individuals’ experiences and aspirations.
There’s a reason why the Scrum Guide is brief in its description of Scrum Team roles. It enables the individuals assuming those roles to bring their unique and entire self to those roles. No two Scrum Masters or Product Owners or Developers will be alike.
Looking at role clarity through the lens of a Venn diagram invites and unlocks powerful conversations between individuals. A level of open, honest dialogue that would otherwise go unheeded with standard pigeonholed roles.
Looking at role clarity through the lens of a Venn diagram creates roles that honour each individual’s unique skills, capabilities, experiences and aspirations.
Looking at role clarity through the lens of a Venn diagram means every Chief Product Owner, Product Owner, Scrum Master, Developer or Release Train Engineer role will be uniquely defined to fit each individual.
What implications will this have for agile teams?
- We can define ourselves by our vanilla roles and titles or by our capabilities. Which do you prefer?
- Our mindset shifts from fixed to growth.
- A false sense of security embedded in RACI charts and their illusion of clarity.
- Uni-directional career ladders evolving into multi-directional career matrices.
- From “Whose responsibility ls it?” to “We’re collectively responsible”.
A little fuzziness in standard agile roles can go a long way towards unleashing a lot of clarity in each individual’s unique set of capabilities.
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