Backlog Prioritization Affects Developer Morale

If you read Scrum literature, you may get the idea that the Product Owner is a kind of dictator of the product backlog, in that he or she unilaterally decides the priority of work remaining on a product and passes this order down to the development team.

Author of All About Agile, Kelly Waters, has this to say:

Anyone can add anything to the Product Backlog. Anyone. The Scrum process, and agile development principles generally, are collaborative and inclusive.

But… very importantly – only the Product Owner can prioritize the Product Backlog.

As I mentioned in my last post, there is a ton of writing out there about Scrum and Agile methodologies, and it is definitely possible for someone to come to Scrum with preconceived ideas about how software should be made, and then find justifications in the writing.

I want to make the point here about the importance of development team input into backlog priority.

In particular it’s very easy for a Product Owner to dismiss technical debt or other concerns that typically only the developers grumble about as less “sexy” than delivering another feature to end users.

When the decision comes down to fitting one more new feature into a sprint or paying off some debt on code quality, the decision usually goes to the former. But as the authors of Peopleware discuss, managers need to keep in mind the importance of quality to makers, above and beyond just immediate market concerns:

We all tend to tie our self-esteem strongly to the quality of the product we produce—not the quantity of product, but the quality. (For some reason, there is little satisfaction in turning out huge amounts of mediocre stuff, although that may be just what’s required for a given situation.) Any step you take that may jeopardize the quality of the product is likely to set the emotions of your staff directly against you.

The hard-nosed, real-world manager part of you has an answer to all this: “Some of my folks would tinker forever with a task, all in the name of ‘Quality.’ But the market doesn’t give a damn about that much quality—it’s screaming for the product to be delivered yesterday and will accept it even in a quick-and-dirty state.” In many cases, you may be right about the market, but the decision to pressure people into delivering a product that doesn’t measure up to their own quality standards is almost always a mistake.

Scrum expert, Mike Cohn, also discusses times when developers should be given leeway to decide their own priorities, including when they just need a break from the same old same old:

On some projects, teams occasionally hit a streak of product backlog items that are, shall we say, less than exciting. Letting the team slide slightly ahead sometimes just to have some variety in what they’re doing can be good for the morale of the team. And that will be good for product owners.

Product owners, please remember to incorporate the feedback of your development team into prioritization, as it has real effects on their morale. And unhappy developers will tend to leave your project for greener pastures.

If You Don’t Buy the Philosophy, Don’t Bother with the Practices

I used to roll my eyes when proponents of a certain methodology, when confronted with failures of projects using that methodology, would say things like, “You’re doing it wrong! If you would just perfectly execute every suggestion in this book I’m selling, you wouldn’t be failing.” After a while you start to wonder if it’s so hard to do it The Right Way then maybe there’s a problem with the methodology itself.

Lately, I’m come across several posts from writers I respect criticizing Scrum and “Agile” methodologies as micromanagement and as ways for authoritarian managers to assert themselves over development teams

Scrum's standups are designed to counteract an old tradition of overly long, onerous, dull meetings. However, at both these companies, they replaced that ancient tradition with a new tradition of overly long, onerous, dull meetings where management got to sit down, and everybody else had to stand. Scrum's attempt at creating a more egalitarian process backfired, twice, in each case creating something more authoritarian instead.

- Giles Bowkett

My personal experiences with “Agile” teams have generally been good. By the time I entered the industry in 2005, Agile ideas had spread considerably and I can’t say that I’ve ever been in a software organization that was doing Waterfall.

But, I have seen dedicated micro-managers when required to “do Scrum” turn that daily standup right back into their familiar morning status meeting where the team one by one turns to the highest ranking person in the room and reports their status directly to that person. What I won’t do though is ascribe this phenomenon as a failure of Scrum as a methodology.

Just like any large body of literature, one can essentially read anything they want into it. As I said in a previous post, I believe that Agile is a philosophy akin to egalitarianism. And at its core it’s about self-organization.

In Succeeding with Agile, there’s a good quote from Jean Tabaka:

I work primarily with Scrum teams, and those that struggle the most typically have a command-and-control project manager or a decision-oriented technical lead as ScrumMaster. Without a facilitative, servant-leader mode of team guidance, the agile adoption will be only a thin veneer over non-empowered, demoralized teams.

One of the saddest things to see is a software organization where people at the top have convinced themselves that what matters about the methodology du jour they have cast upon their people is the list of practices associated with the methodology. “If I see my people doing these practices, then I’ll know they’re embracing the methodology.”

But the practices mean nothing without the philosophy. A team can do planning poker sessions until they’re blue in the face, but if they’re working under a manager that believes he knows better than the developers how long their work will take, the whole exercise is pointless. Any practice can be letter-of-the-lawed and still give you no benefit.

Author of the popular book The Art of Agile Development, James Shore, explains in a post from his blog:

Agile development isn't just about good engineering practices. It's also about acknowledging the importance of people in software development, forming cross-functional teams, obtaining high-bandwidth communication, constantly reflecting and improving, delivering value, and changing plans to take advantage of opportunities.

Scrum includes these other points. It says that the team should be cross-functional and recommends collocating the team in a shared workspace. It says the team should deliver a valuable, shippable product at the end of every Sprint, and that the team should self-organize, discover impediments, and remove them.

Oh, and it also has a few mechanical things about a monthly Sprint and daily Scrum. Trivial stuff compared to the rest. But guess which part people adopt? That's right--Sprints and Scrums. Rapid cycles, but none of the good stuff that makes rapid cycles sustainable.

If you want to benefit from a particular methodology, whatever it may be, people must buy into the philosophy first, or don’t bother.