- Experiment: Diagnose Your Team Together
- Increase Cross-Functionality with a Skill Matrix
- Share an Impediment Newsletter Throughout the Organization
- Make the Cost of Low Autonomy Transparent with Permission Tokens
- Find Actions That Boost Both Integration and Autonomy
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Make the Cost of Low Autonomy Transparent with Permission Tokens
The autonomy of teams decreases as their dependencies on external people increase. Some dependencies are explicit, such as when a Scrum Team needs someone outside the team to do something for them. Other dependencies are more implicit. Having to ask for permission or approval from someone outside the team in order to proceed is a good example. This experiment is about making transparent where and how often permission is required (see Figure 12.1).
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Effort/Impact Ratio
Effort |
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This experiment requires only a jar, some tokens, and a few minutes during your Sprint Review. |
Impact on survival |
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Even in the most zombified environments, regaining some sense of control makes people sigh with relief. |
Steps
To try this experiment, do the following:
Find an empty jar, or another container, and place it in the team room. Somewhere near the Sprint Backlog is the best spot.
Give everyone on your team a bunch of permission tokens. You can use marbles, LEGO bricks, magnets, or stickies. Use different colors for the various permission categories. For example, the permission to release something, to move an item to another column on your Scrum Board, or to change your tools or environment. We recommend a limit of five categories to keep things simple.
During the Sprint, put an approval token in the jar every time someone on the Scrum Team has to ask permission from someone outside the team. For example, put a token in the jar when an external architect needs to approve that an item is done. Or when the Product Owner has to vet an item with an external manager. Put a token in the jar when you need permission from office management to purchase stickies. And put a token in the jar when you need a configuration to be changed by an external administrator. Aside from requests for permission, also add a token every time you need someone outside the team to perform a specific action as well.
During the Sprint Review, and with stakeholders present, share the number of tokens in the jar. Ask: “How does this affect our ability to quickly adapt in the moment and do what is the most valuable? Where can we simplify things?” Invite people to first consider this question for themselves and in silence, then in pairs for two minutes, and then paired with another pair for four more minutes. Capture the most salient improvements with the whole group. The Sprint Retrospective is a great opportunity for digging into potential improvements.
Our Findings
For another perspective, you can use different colors for everyone on your team. This allows you to identify who is most often in need of permission.
If you want to focus on the amount of organizational bureaucracy, don’t add permission tokens for requests from direct stakeholders such as customers, users, or people who otherwise invest significant money or time in your product.
The experiment “Break the Rules!” elsewhere in this chapter is great to test where asking for permission matters, and where it just gets in the way of doing the right thing.