Improving Our Way of Working

The first core value is to Improve beyond the limits of today’s processes. Whether a product or project, it makes sense that we have a goal in how we work that includes a measurable and definable plan to improve our way of working. While it takes some thoughtful consideration and planning to improve how we work, in Disciplined Agile we call this process goal Evolving our Way of Working or Evolving our WoW (for short) (Ambler, Lines, 2019).

Let us examine a bit more on the “why” before we discuss the “what”. The community of practice is a great forum to share learnings across the company. Sharing our learning is a great DevOps mindset goal and core value because:

1. Every team is different, approaching how they work and what they solve differently. If the world was run by Automaton or robots, we all might work the same. However, as this is not the case and people are unique, how we configure things, where we work from and other variables add to the complexities of life, some of which are self-inflicted. Being unique gives our world colour and character. It is because of this that we need to tailor how we work to the team and since we never get this right the first time; we must continuously evolve how we work.
2. We are always learning. As soon as our brains form, we are “wired” to learn. Life and work challenges may require new skills and approaches, so we need to be open to learning in order to solve these challenges.
3. We must adapt and evolve. DevOps and Agile require teamwork, so why not join your team’s evolution or revolution.
4. Everything around us is evolving; our environment,
5. People need a place to work, whether virtually or physically, that accommodates and evolves with us.
6. People need (and like) tools and tooling are necessary when making teams effective, including digital and physical toolsets.
7. How we work and evolve is beyond the team and DevOps, so improve your processes beyond today and the team, really building on the DevOps mindset.

The goal, Evolving Your Wow, is a lengthy group of decisions and options, which can be found in the Choose your WoW book (Ambler, Lines, 2019). Choosing & evolving our WoW over time might look something like the process in Figure 45 in the book, and shown below:

How we get there depends on our ability to guide our individuals, teams and divisions.  Without good guidance such as an Agile Coach with DevOps experience may impede or worse yet negatively impact the value, speed and acceptance of our approach.  The subject of Guided Continuous Improvement is throughout our book and another specific topic I shall bring out in another blog.

Agent 77 at Tactec uses the following Decisions based on working with DevOps teams throughout any agile lifecycle they choose.