Too Many Options

Teams collaborate to create high-quality products, and in order to collaborate they need many discussions… but how much discussion is too much?

Why do teams need to have discussions at all? Wouldn’t it be quicker if someone created a series of tasks and then the team just implement them? Well, it may be quicker to release something if everyone just did as they were told, but there are so many problems with this approach that I don’t have time to list them all! Some of the biggest issues are that it’s a single person’s understanding of the problem and the rest of the team probably don’t understand what they’re doing or why, which leads to a sub-optimal solution which the team can’t support without that one person’s involvement… but the “hero” of that project has no doubt been moved on to something new, set to repeat the “success” of that rapid release.

Instead of relying on a single person (who I’m trying to refrain from calling a single point of failure) Agile teams collaborate on all aspects of their work, sharing their knowledge. User stories focus on the Who, What and Why, leaving the team to work out How. The Product Owner sets the scene, explaining the business aspects; the development team should seek to understand their customer, how this story will impact them and what benefits it is expected to deliver. This discussion may take a while, but it’s usually the next step that takes…