Sidia
Sidia
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Agile methodologies have taken hold as a model to be followed in software industry. Among them, Scrum is one of the most used frameworks and has a high level of acceptance among a large range of organizations. The underlying premise of Scrum is that by implementing an iterative and incremental process of development, an organization can become more efficient in coping with unpredictability, thus, increasing the chances of delivering business value. In this paper we use the context of SIDIA, an R&D center based in Manaus (Brazil), to look at how Scrum is practiced, by following Post-its notes, which are commonly used in agile landscapes.
Following previous work on the idea of thinking through things (instead of thinking about things) as an analytic method to account for the ethnographic experience (Henare, 2006), the purpose here is to draw out the capacity of these objects to re-conceive the workplace. We argue that somehow the extensive use of post-its in this specific context helps to reify the core values of scrum and the agile mindset, at the same time that it shapes much of its practices and discourses.
Although we use a specific context as a case-study to articulate the argument, we are less interested in bringing the specifics of the case, than in throwing light on the current perception of agile methodologies as a site of organizational promise, through an object-oriented approach.
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INTRODUCTION
In the last years, agile systems development methods have been widely adopted in many organizations. At the core of this model lays the premise that organizational agility brings value to companies (Pham, 2012; Barton, 2009), understanding agility as a responsiveness to change. Collaborative and incremental software development started around late 1950 but the term Scrum was popularized after an article by Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka (1986) in the Harvard Business Review. Here the authors compared and demonstrated the advantage of incremental development over sequential development, that is, between agile and waterfall models of development. Later, in 2009, the first version of the Scrum guidelines was published, in which the roles, ceremonies and terms of Scrum were clearly summarized and defined (Schwaber & Sutherland, 2009).
One key notion in Scrum is agility, although – beyond this generic inclination to change and adaptation – the notion of agility remains ambiguous to a large extent (Iivari, 2011). A precise analysis of the concept is presented by Conboy (2009), who defines it as:
‘‘The readiness of an (agile) method to rapidly or inherently create change, proactively or reactively embrace change, and learn from change while contributing to perceived customer value (economy, quality, and simplicity), through its collective components and relationships with its environment’’ [Conboy, 2009: 340].
As Iivari argues, it follows from this definition that agility is an emergent property of systems in which a certain method is employed. However, it is not conclusive about the techniques and principles through which this is done, and indeed, it leaves room for different approaches as to how to make agility emerge at the level of the whole method (Iivari, 2011). Another well-known source that tackles this notion is the Agile Manifesto (http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html) which gives a list of features that an agile method should involve, but again, these principles are still very much open to interpretation.
Also, more or less explicitly, the idea of speed lies in agile approaches. Successful agile methods imply not only readiness to change but a rapid and promptly response. In this regard the rhetoric of speed has been extensively appropriated by the field of organizational management, in which time-based strategies are now emphasized as a competitive advantage, and techniques to enhance speed are largely been employed and experimented with among many organizations (Inman, 2010).
In this regard, speed and agility, thus, do not come uncomplicated. A question can be raised about what it is gained and what is missed by adhering to these models. In this work, we problematize the notion of agility, by bringing together a series of ‘vignettes’ that stem from the implementation of Scrum in a specific context. In doing so, we seek to illustrate how the notion of agility is materialized, specifically through the use Post-It notes and, at the same time, how those very things flesh out the specific scope and contours of what agility can be.
THEORETICAL APPROACH
This work draws on different contributions within anthropology which spans actor-network theory, material cultural studies and ontological approaches. The thread opened by Science and Technology Studies (STS), through the so-called “laboratory studies” brought ethnography into the very settings where science is produced through direct observation of the practices and processes along which scientific knowledge is articulated. In this same light, we use ethnography to look at how Scrum is implemented within a particular corporate workplace. To enter our object of study we focus on the materiality of post-it notes, as things that are extensively mobilized throughout the practice of Scrum. By placing these objects at the center of our analysis, we aim to read back from the objects themselves a characterization of the workplace from which such objects emerge. In doing so, we also want to raise a question concerning the rhetoric of speed and movement that usually underlie agile practices.
Anthropology at home
Since the 1970s ethnographic studies were strongly incorporated into STS, an approach that redefined science studies around the notion of social construction (Knorr-Cetina, 1983a), as a means to open the black box of scientific practices. This approach was then enshrined through the work of authors such as Bruno Latour, Michael Lynch or Steve Woolgar by focusing on the social contexts in which scientific praxis happens. For anthropologists, this involved leaving their traditional field sites and entering contexts in which they were no more exogenous observers. A new kind of “anthropology at home” emerged to deal with subjects whose practices were inserted in the same traditions as those of the researcher, thus, problematizing the very premises and practices of ethnographic research (Holmes, D. & Marcus, G., 2008). In a similar move, more recently ethnographers have “entered the corporation” under the idea that anthropology too can influence organizations’ understandings, effectiveness and profits (Cefkin, 2010). Urban & Koh (2012) present a comprehensive background of this phenomenon and contextualizes ethnographic practice within corporations, distinguishing between “in-corporation research” -developed by anthropologists generally based on academia but whose object of study is the corporation- and “for-corporation research”, that is, ethnography by employed anthropologists in companies, usually aiming to produce effects or bring about an improvement within the company.
Things as concepts
Attempts to enter a territory by way of the objects is certainly not new in anthropology. In the field of material cultural studies, the work of Appadurai (1986) was foundational in exploring the multiple ways in which objects are invested with meaning, function and power. Since then, many others have employed different theoretical strategies to argue in favor of the mutually constitutive nature of the relationship between subjects and the objects they create (Ingold 2000; Miller, 1998).
Taking this project a step further, some authors have begun to use the method of more radically turning to ‘things’ as they present themselves in the field, in an attempt to sidestep the very analytic distinction between concepts and things with which fieldwork is habitually approached (Henare, 2006). According to Marilyn Strathern (1990), modern anthropology has traditionally taken as its task to unveil the social and cultural contexts, as frameworks in relation to which social life is elucidated. Under this approach, things, artifacts and materiality appear as mere illustrators or reflections of meanings which can only be derived from the framework itself. However, the more radical approach these authors employ, questions the enduring premise that meanings and things (their material manifestations) are fundamentally different and tests the limits of such assumption within their own ethnographic material. As a result, by refusing the separation between things and meanings, they turn their focus on how the material itself enunciate meanings (Henare, 2006). This shift in perspective allows to look at the physical environment as if it were another informant in ethnographic practice, for as the material can be now seen as a locus of inquiry in itself (Reichenbach & Wesolkowska, 2008).
Our work sits in line with this approach by following a specific object, that is, Post-It notes, as encountered in our fieldwork, so as to allow them to carve out the terms of their own analysis. As Henare argues (2006) this entails a different mode of analytical disclosure altogether: if things are concepts as much as they are ‘physical’, the question we would like to raise here is: what world -or workplace in our case- does attending to post-its allow us to conceive? -understanding conceive here in the two-fold sense of ‘engendering offspring’ and ‘apprehending mentally.
In this regard, we use Post-its as a thing that lies at the interface of the material and immaterial. This means not merely that they are material instances of a practice that carry within specific traits of a cultural or social context, as instruments that would, thus, illustrate, cultural characteristics. What we argue is that these things have in themselves a generative potential, which derives not from its instrumental or cognitive value, but from their distinctive properties as a thing in itself.
Slowness
Another point we want to raise concerns the rhetoric of speed and mobility that narratives of agility entail. Given the extent to which calls to fast deliverings and rapid cycles of progression lay at the center of agile frameworks, it seems relevant to ask how this practice is informed by the very choice of a specific medium of expression, and also to raise the question of which other possible paths are thus left behind.
Certainly, critiques to this modern inclination towards speed and movement are not new (See, for instance, Andrews, 2008, on the Slow Food Movement; or Hartmut, 2013, a critic of social acceleration under the logic of modernity). Lutz Koepnick (2014) brings several of these manifestations by revisiting the work of various modern artists and intellectuals from a perspective that does not reduce the notion of “slowness” to a mere reverse of “speed.” Instead of this, Koepnick brings new shades and layers of complexity into the work of these authors, that serve to overcome reductionists approaches which simply split the questions into the two poles of modernity = acceleration versus anti modernity = deceleration. Wondering whether slowness can be seen as something else than a banner for deceleration under a nostalgic view of a preindustrial past that does not exist anymore, he pictures it as an opportunity to re-signify the very concept of mobility and growth. From this view, the rhetoric of slowness would not be merely the reverse of acceleration, but this invitation to transform dominant understandings of movement and change. The work of Amazonian author Paes Loureiro (2015) offers an interesting counterpoint to the notions of progress and advancement that lie at the normative center of these rhetoric. The poetic attitude, which he defines as an essential feature of Amazonian identity, brings forth a notion of temporality and movement that move away from the sense of direction, speed and progress characteristic of modernity. His is a notion of time measured in intensity rather than velocity and a notion of space that is flesh out with intermingled narratives, visions and temporalities.
Based on the argument that the material bases of any practice inform its process of meaning-making, we suggest that the untapping of the possibilities that Post-it notes give rise to can also reveal which other modes of thinking, knowing and doing remained untried.
The remaining of this paper gives an overview of common practices within the Scrum framework and then offers an assemblage of images taken during fieldwork accompanied by a short descriptive sketch, aimed to bring to the front some aspects of the sort of epistemic culture that agile involves. Both the pictures and the vignettes are based on in-corporation anthropological research carried out at SIDIA, a Research and Development Institute located in Manaus, Brazil, during the first quarter of 2019.
Through this approach we aim to depict Scrum as a cluster of things, literally affecting and being affected between them, with Post-its being at the center of it. Instead of trying to answer the question of ‘what these things are”, we ask ‘what it is that Post-its make (us and others) do”.
Things in Scrum
It all starts with a text, a document that lists all the features of the software in order of priority. This document is called the backlog. The backlog is solved in short cycles of development called Sprints. One sprint follows another, at the end of each one there is a deliverable, a small piece of software that correspond to some stories of the backlog. Each story is composed by description, acceptance criteria and ratings. Description is what should be delivered by the team, acceptance criteria is what defines that the story is done and the rating is an abstraction of the effort it takes to achieve that story. The points are scaled in a semi Fibonacci sequence (0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40, 100), the logic is that 1 or 2 represent the story requiring less effort and the others are graduated using this as a reference (if it is two times more demanding, it has a score of 5 and so on). There are three roles in Scrum: product owner, scrum master and development team. Product owner writes the backlog and evaluates if the team has delivered the stories accordingly, development team works to implement the stories, i.e., develop the features of the software, and scrum master mediates the relation between the product owner and the team, as well as makes sure that there are no impediments for the team to work properly.
Scrum is articulated around different events, which are called “ceremonies” that bring structure to sprints, that is, to each of the incremental phases in which a specific project is divided. As any ceremony, these events are key to understanding the culture and the values that Scrum emphasize. These are: planning, daily, review and retrospective. Both sprints and ceremonies are aimed at “speeding up” the development process, by setting up the goals for success throughout the project. Thus, agile methodologies are aimed at producing scenarios of agile development (Sabbagh, 2014).
Under this frame, the artifactual character of the process is rendered preeminent. During ceremonies, teams come together around a number of objects, such as cards, Post-Its, slides and white boards to share their work-in-progress and set the next steps for the project. These objects are objects to mediate interactions: intended for transitory inscriptions, reifying ongoing work and repositionable information. At the same time they introduce a particular topology because they involve an opening up of a space which summons a particular arrangement of things and people.
Figure 1. Photograph ©Juan Orestes, used with permission.
Among the common infrastructure and spatial lay-out of these environments, post-its, boards and paper cards visibly stand at the center of the work space, acting as “placeholders” around which teams gather and organize themselves. The rapid and iterative articulation of a specific project around sprints and ceremonies, strongly fosters the making and visual deployment of this kind of artifacts. They are oriented towards a deliberate organizational effect, for they are indeed mobilized to speed up change and iteration. In this regard, it is no accident that they become ubiquitous within almost any organization where agile frameworks are in play.
Here we focus on Post-it notes, which acquire a central role in these scenarios. Post-its in Scrum are objects used to think with, to the extent that they serve to express ideas at the same time that they shape them. By way of them tasks, doubts, activities and certainties become registered; at the same time, those ‘drops of thinking’ are determined by the physical characteristics of Post-its. While interacting with them, it is unavoidable to fall on a series of premises, as for instance, the need to be clear and to do one thing at a time, or the convenience of using the verb-noun structure and technical terms, to mention some.
Also, during Scrum sessions, Posts-its are moved from one column to another, making visible the progress that has been made. In this regard, they somehow materialize the speed with which the project advances, in terms of which the efficiency of the team is measured. They provide transparency to the project, by making visible on the wall what the team has committed to delivering and what everyone is doing. All these aspects, which are directly related to the properties of these things as things, fashion a certain kind of object and social relations, and ultimately engender a specific culture of knowing.
In the next section, we look specifically into three aspects that were rendered visible through our fieldwork: their transient nature, the succinctness they convey, and the mosaic character of the output and display.