Can Agile Unlock Diversity’s Potential?My job is to make my company more diverse and inclusive. And in my last two years at

Symantec, a cybersecurity company, I’ve thought a lot about not just how we bring diverse individuals into our company, but how we can create and scale an inclusive culture across the

company, to leverage those diverse perspectives best.

Image © Brook Graham

When I speak about diversity, I mean not just gender, race, ethnicity, sexual identity and age. I’m also talking about the stuff you can’t see – the things below the surface that make every one of

us unique, that come into play when you have teams of people who come from different backgrounds.

There’s been a LOT of research to show that diversity does improve the bottom line. It improves innovation in teams of knowledge workers by bringing together unique

perspectives and non-traditional approaches that are the result of unique skill sets, experiences, and complementary knowledge. Diverse groups are more likely to represent important constituencies, bringing valuable insights from the external marketplace into

the workgroup.

BUT that’s not necessarily true. Increasing the diversity of your teams does not automatically lead to better team productivity or innovation. Shifting from a team of individuals who all have

a similar educational, age, gender, racial, and class background to a team comprised of individuals from different ages, genders, racial, class or other backgrounds, can cause increased

miscommunication, misunderstanding, frustration and reduce productivity.

Image © Harvard Business Review

Language barriers, different communication styles, different expectations and different ways of approaching problem-solving can arise when you bring together a diverse set of individuals in a

team. Diverse teams can also spend so much time trying to find commonality that they compromise on their unique perspectives in order to gel as a team.

So how do we unlock the potential of diverse teams? Through inclusive behavior. To truly leverage diversity within teams, they need to function in a manner that fosters open

communication & dialogue, come together around a set methodology for working together, and prioritize different perspectives as input during the process.

The Agile Manifesto“we value:

Individuals and interactions over processes and toolsWorking software over comprehensive

documentationCustomer collaboration over contract negotiationResponding to change over following a plan

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.”

And I believe we have a formula for success in the agile methodology. Valuing individuals and interactions over processes and tools is key to both agile methodology

and inclusion. Fast iteration requires immense trust and openness. Diversity teams need the same to succeed.

Prioritizing responsiveness to change benefits diverse teams this calls on teams to draw on members’ unique perspectives to problem-solve in the moment.

The Agile Team

Here’s how agile works in practice (in scrum teams). I’m going to talk about the scrum variety of agile because it’s used about five times as often as other variations.

In scrum, you’ve got three roles:

1. The Product Owner, who understands the customer’s needs and creates a plan – a product backlog with the team (a list of tasks that need to be completed) that can be broken down into “sprints” or shorter chunks of work from this backlog

2. The Scrum Master, who does whatever it takes to help the team perform at their highest level. This involves removing any impediments to progress, facilitating meetings, and doing things like working with the product owner to make sure the product backlog is in good shape and ready for the next sprint.

3. The Development team are the designers and engineers that create the product.

And they all together make up the scrum team.

Image © Maxxor.com

Scrum calls for four ceremonies that bring structure to each sprint:1. Sprint planning, where the product owner, scrum master and development team pick up parts of the

backlog to work on (a chunk of work that’s do-able in two weeks)2. Daily stand-up, where each day every member of the scrum team spends 1-2 minutes talking about

what they’ll do today, and mention anything they’re blocked on3. Sprint review, where the team get together to informally review and celebrate a piece of work done or a

milestone reached 4. Sprint retrospective where the team talks about what went well and what didn’t during the previous

sprint, so they can improve their processes

The Scrum Team

So here’s a non-comprehensive list of practices of Agile Teams that I believe would benefit non-development diverse teams

First, the structure of a scrum team. Scrum teams are, by design, cross-functional but tightly knit. In order for a sprint to be successful, teams need to work closely together, bring diverse perspectives to the

development process and help and mentor each other. This is encouraged in agile teams as an essential tenet.

Stories & Rewards

Next is rewards.Each task in the backlog is called a story, and at Symantec, the completion of each story comes with rewards in the form of points. As a team, you get points if you finish a story in your sprint. These points go towards

rewards.Incentivizing teams in increments is a very effective way of boosting morale, especially as a counter to any

friction or tension that arises from having different work styles on a diverse team.

Image ©2013 Dave Neuman

Scrum teams meet once a day for no more than 15 minutes to share what they’re working on, and what they’re stuck on, if anything. Fellow team members offer to help if they can, or offer advice if needed.

The daily standup ensures both transparency of each individual team member to the group around the work they’re doing, and accountability. All team members are working towards the same goal – completing the sprint successfully – and if one member falls, everyone falls. It is therefore everyone’s job to ensure that

every team member is functioning to their full potential.

Introverts have to speakAnd if someone is blocked and says so, other team members have a chance to jump in and help.

The Scrum Master

A scrum master is the champion of the agile process within a team.

From Atlassian: An effective scrum master deeply understands the work being done by the team and can help the team optimize their delivery flow. As the facilitator-in-chief, they schedule the needed resources

(both human and logistical) for sprint planning, stand-up, sprint review, and the sprint retrospective.

The Scrum Master

On diverse teams, having a facilitator that enables each individual’s maximum productivity could mean the difference between dysfunction and miscommunication, and a harmonious team, inclusive of all

perspectives and input.

Scrum masters will call on individuals to help a team member blocked on a certain task, for example, as the scrum master knows each team member’s strengths.

Agile Project Management Tools

Using project management tools is a must for technical teams practicing agile. With so many small teams working on small chunks of work, a software that enables the tracking of all these moving parts is essential.

What if tech companies expanded the use of these project management tools to all teams, not just technical? In Jira, a Symantec engineer told me, every story you track for yourself can be seen by your

colleagues, managers, all the way up to your Senior VP. This kind of transparency ensures better productivity, but also has some unforeseen benefits. Introverts, for example, can ask for help by posting their issues on the team board, instead of bringing it up in a standup.

Providing team members multiple avenues for expressing themselves is a best practice from agile that could shift how well we leverage the quieter members of teams’ perspectives in other realms too.

Retrospectives

Agile is about getting rapid feedback to make the product and development culture better. Retrospectives help the team understand what worked well–and what didn't. This sort of self-reflection by teams, looking

at their own dynamics, is key to uncovering and blocking implicit biases that might be at play in the workplace. To truly succeed at retrospectives, scrum masters play a key role in facilitating the dialogue and

digging out the root causes of issues during the last sprint, so that the team can together modify and improve their working dynamics.

Agile ≠ Diverse

I do want to note here that teams adopting agile methodology do not become diverse. Most agile teams at tech companies, look something like this. These are the guys from the HBO tv

show, Silicon Valley

In fact, this is what the inventors of agile look like. Twelve white guys. I’m going to venture to say here that when they came up with the the ideas that led to the agile methodology in its

current form, they weren’t thinking about diversifying computer science. They were thinking about efficiency and productivity.

Agile + Diversity ≈ Better Teams

How you make teams diverse is the topic for a whole other presentation.What we’re talking about here is this: with a diverse team (in a non-development environment),

introducing some best practices from the agile methodology will improve inclusive behavior. That’s what I mean by “Unlocking” the diversity on your teams – the potential that comes with

different perspectives, different work styles, different personalities.

Thank YouRuha Devanesan

Manager, Global Diversity & InclusionSymantec@ruhatd