What does it mean to be accountable?


Define accountability


What does it mean to be accountable in an agile environment? 
Meriam Webster defines it as the quality or state of being accountable, of being able to answer.
 When something goes wrong, for example in production, in some organizations being accountable means having to defend oneself potentially to keep from getting fired. In an agile organization being accountable means being required to answer two questions.
  1. Why did the event with negative impact occur?
  2. What will be done to ensure that it doesn't occur again?
The first question is about discovering the root cause of the issue. There are many methods that can be used to perform root cause analysis. The key is getting to the factors that caused the issue. Without this information it is not possible to start to formulate an answer to the second question. Once we know why an event occurred we can plan how to prevent it from happening again. The plan must address the class of issues, not just the specific issue that occurred.

 Depending on the magnitude of the event and the depth of the hierarchy of the organization there are often multiple levels in the organization that need to answer those two questions. These people form an accountability chain, in which the people farther along the chain report to the people earlier in the chain. The people earlier in the chain will need the answers from the levels which report to them to be able to extend those answers. It is important to note that all individuals in the accountability chain are accountable for answering those two questions to improve the organization, as opposed to place blame for the incident.

We have answered the two questions, now what?

It is the responsibility of the individuals in the accountability chain to ensure that changes are made to ensure that the event doesn't occur again. They will do this by altering the company's best practices, perhaps at multiple levels. An organization should start with industry best practices and alter them to be specific to the organization via what is learned from answering the two questions.

Best practices, by definition, give better results than those achieved via other methods. Best practices are not static, they must evolve/improve as the organization grows and learns. An organization's best practices must be deeply embedded in the organization's processes to ensure that everyone in the organization knows and practices them. A potential pitfall is when an organization does not consistently follow its best practices, this is a management issue that must be addressed.

 For an organization to improve its best practices the organization must determine how, and how not, to experiment with their best practices. This in itself is a best practice. Experiments must be done in a way that doesn't harm the organization as a whole. What is learned from these experiments is then used to add to or update the existing best practices. Continuous improvement includes continuously looking for ways to improve best practices.

 Being accountable to answer the two questions, implementing changes to improve the organization, and constantly looking for ways to improve best practices are all steps on the path to building a learning organization, one that constantly strives to improve. Learning organizations understand that learning and improving are continuous efforts, the accountability chain is one piece of that puzzle.

 Stay Agile.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Five Dysfunctions and Tuckman's Stages

No, this is not a post about a new band, it is about understand Scrum team growth . In my  previous post I discussed The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni and how the dysfunctions in that book apply not only to management teams as described in the book but to Scrum teams as well. In 1965 Bruce Tuckman proposed his model of team development. While you may not be familiar with Tuckman’s name, you have probably heard of the stages of his model, forming, storming, norming and performing. Forming - The team is coming together for the first time. Team members behave independently, they are on their best behavior and very focused on themselves. To move out of this stage, team members must be willing to risk the possibility of conflict Storming - The team members are learning each others strengths and weaknesses and learning to trust each other. Some of the teams disagreements are passionate, but also can tend to lean toward personal attacks as opposed to healthy confl
Read more

How many dysfunctions does your Scrum team exhibit?

Image
If you say your team does not exhibit any dysfunctions I have to ask you to revisit your thoughts again as that is so very highly unlikely. Most if not all teams exhibit some dysfunction some of the time, if not all of the time.  Merriam Webster defines dysfunction as  impaired or abnormal functioning or abnormal or unhealthy interpersonal behavior or interaction within a group I think both of those definitions work well with regards to a Scrum team. In Patrick Lencioni's book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team he tells a tale about the five dysfunctions that a team typically struggles with followed by a discussion of how to address them. As a scrum master it is well worth the time to read it. As far as I know the author was focusing on management teams when he wrote it, but without very much tweaking, all the same dysfunctions and corrective actions apply to a Scrum team as well.  The five dysfunctions are laid out in a pyramid. The reason for the pyramid is that
Read more

Feedback - Skills Relevant in the Torah and Today

There is a story in the Old Testament known as the Waters of Strife . It occurs when the Jews were wandering in the desert. They complain to Moses that there was no water and that they were going to die. Moses prays to G-d, the response is to talk to a rock and tell it to give water. Instead of talking to the rock, Moses hits the rock and water comes out. Aaron was punished after this incident. Reading the text in the original Hebrew, Aaron wasn't given any instructions other than to accompany Moses, which he did. What did Aaron do wrong? Why was he punished? At this point if you are still with me, you are probably wondering what this has to do with agility or Scrum. It was Rabbi Yehuda Meyers that gave me the answer to both of those questions, both what Aaron did wrong and what does this have to do with Scrum. Aaron's mistake was a simple and a common one, unfortunately one made on many Scrum teams.  First, a bit of background is needed. This event occurs right after Mo
Read more