Many companies have multi-site setups, and there seems to be a general feeling that these sites have to collaborate intensively, or else the companies’ efficiency will suffer from the competition between those sites. The result is obviously a killer for agile teams, because when you take this site cooperation to the extreme (and I have seen it taken to the extreme), you end up with agile teams split up across two or even more sites.
So far this is nothing new. We all know that distributed agile teams are not as efficient as collocated agile teams. But the reasons why companies keep creating distributed teams are rarely addressed. I believe there are two fears which need to be understood here:
- Fear of a lack of competence: Often, different sites might have different competencies. So obviously, if you want to build a cross-functional team, the first impulse is to bring in people from different sites to represent all the necessary competencies. What is the result? You cement those competence silos. After all, you can always count on those experts from the other site to help you out. Site collaboration is a part of the company culture, so why change anything? In fact, building up that knowledge in another site is seen as a threat, so don’t touch the status quo – and this brings me to the other fear:
- Fear of competition: The naive assumption is that if sites do not collaborate, they compete. There is an implicit conviction here that there cannot be anything in between these two options. “What? You are not collaborating with site XYZ? Why do you hate those colleagues?” If two sites are not actively contributing to each other’s work, then they must be scheming to get rid of each other.
I believe the most important point to understand is that there is a middle way between collaborating and competing: Giving sites independent interesting long-term tasks and topics to work on. The disadvantage is that this actually requires managers to think about how to cut the existing work into such independent tasks. The advantage is that it eliminates all the inefficiencies created by forced collaboration and it forces sites to build up competencies to become independent. If there is any competition between sites in this model, then it is healthy competition. Nothing wrong with that.
The way there might seem difficult, and perhaps it is not something that can be achieved overnight, but I believe a company should make site independence a clear well-communicated near-term goal with a first intermediate step being the promotion of „T-shaped sites“.
And of course, I know that this model can create a third fear: The fear of obsolescence. When sites are completely independent, then any site could „lift right out“ of the organization when the management decides that it is time for headcount reduction. That is definitely not an irrational fear. But we should not see this as a problem but as a chance. A site that is independent and capable of delivering products to customers without having to rely on anyone else can also quite easily be transformed into a company by itself. When single employees are laid off, they have to search for new jobs by themselves. If an independent site is carved out of a company, it can survive as a complete entity even outside of that company.
So I believe we need to get away from the idea that site collaboration is a „good“ thing in a multi-site setup. It is not. Site collaboration is an efficiency killer. The real positive opportunities lie in letting go of forced collaboration and in promoting site independence.
AgileEvangelist 