Agile Development Blog

Okay, that wasn’t exactly how it was said. However, the title of this post reflects a comment I overheard recently while facilitating an operations and architecture team’s retrospective.

We first looked at basic facts about how their quarter had “gone”: what events stuck out in their minds, what the basic acts and information were that surrounded their day-to-day work. Just the facts. From there we checked out the impact of those facts, that information, those events, on them. Was this a good thing? Was that a bad thing? Were these helpful things or challenging things? We were seeking reflection on the quarter to then help draw out some insights into trends or recurring issues and themes.

After this, I asked the group of 8 people: “What still puzzles you?”

No one had ever asked them that before. They leaped at the opportunity to express frustration about where they sit (or don’t sit) in the Agile development approach. Did they have “a seat at the Agile table” or not? Here they were, the operational experts. They held grave concerns about the operational scaffolding upon which prioritized features were being built across the multiple application teams. And yet they felt that the collective Product Owners could not see this. ‘Tis a puzzle.

Once the group had aired their puzzles and concerns, I then asked for their recommendations. And that is when, verbatim, one of the team members said, “Well, we need to push it up their backlog!” Now, as a facilitator, I am asked to write what is spoken and also to not comment. But this was priceless!

In any case, how DO we push something up someone’s backlog? And why is PUSH even considered the only way to get onto a backlog or backlogs. Here are some ideas that then swarmed around in my head:

• how do we articulate the value of operational and architectural items?

• who do we articulate this value to?

• how do we convey that value across multiple teams’ backlogs (i.e. influencing multiple Product Owners)?

• how do we then coordinate operational items being completed for the next major release across all backlogs?

So, maybe pain is the only sometimes way to help articulate the value of operational work: “It will cost our customers this much pain if we don’t do this.”

The moral of this story: Pushing things up your (or someone else’s) backlog sounds painful; find another way.