Do workplace politics destroy Agile principles on documentation? – Ryan Knapton 0

Posted on 30, March 2011

in Category practitioner experience

Politics is a tricky business. When I think of a politician I am reminded of a cowboy trying to herd cattle – they know where they want to take everyone, it’s just rather hard to get everyone to go in their chosen direction. Blood, sweat and tears are involved in the dusty world of influencing people, and all too often, business analysts forget their cowboy hats at home.

Human nature inherently means that we want to be heard and have our opinions counted. If our thoughts are not listened to, we tend to feign interest regardless of the outcome. Politicians need to listen to a wide, diverse range of individuals when they want to pass new laws or make amendments to bills and the way that they track these conversations is by writing things down. They write lengthy documents in order to ensure that their point of view is clearly understood, which in turns facilitates a process of analysing and commenting which makes the law more widely palatable.

Now while I am not saying that documenting system requirements is as important as passing legislation, I have worked in enough large organisations to know that politicking occurs as much in the boardroom as it does in Westminster or on Capitol Hill. On software development projects there is a regular need for business analysts to play the role of ‘cowboy’ in order to obtain project success. And the only way to successfully ‘herd’ humans is to listen to them and to let them know that they have been heard.

Herding cattle is all about communication

I’ve yet to see a more effective way of sharing ideas and obtaining input from across an organisation than the BA practices of holding workshops, documenting the outcomes and reviewing the documents. If documented correctly, the ideas and requirements of the system can be objectively seeded across the company (there needs to be a culture within the organisation of reading documents, but that is a topic for another day).

A clear specification is a lot less open to interpretation than subjective word-of-mouth conversations – something that is written down cannot easily be changed to cater for the whims of different audiences. A clear specification proves that you heard what someone was saying, internalised it and then articulated it back to them. As enterprise social features become more prevalent in the workplace requirements may move out of offline documents into online forums, but they will still be written down and documented.

Communicating with larger groups of stakeholders is difficult

In documenting requirements one opens up the project to comment and analysis. In small teams, commenting can be done through conversations, and Agile comes into its own because the team would not twist words to mean something different. Business stakeholders and the development team are co-located and the focus is on discussion, resolution and implementation. Documentation becomes less important.

In large, complex political organisations ideas need to be seeded widely throughout the organisation in order to obtain buy-in. Often many different business units need to provide input into the changes so that their future work is not adversely affected and so that they have the opportunity to benefit from the project. It is not practical, nor feasible, for one or two business stakeholders to represent requirements across such a large community. It shouldn’t be a question of whether documentation is required or not, it becomes a question of how the documentation should be represented to best suit the project.

Agile vs. comprehensive documentation – a standoff?

In my experience working across many large organisations, people are listened to in the workplace – flat organisational structures allow for everyone to have their say. Because of this, large companies are susceptible to internal politics. Wherever there are lots of people vying for prioritised requirements, politicking will occur. A BA should be objective, and the best way to remain objective in multi-party projects is to write things down.

The Agile Manifesto states that working software should be the focus over comprehensive documentation. While I wholeheartedly believe in working software, I also believe that while roaming the dusty plains of requirements gathering in large organisations, comprehensive documentation is vital to appease all political parties.

This article originally appeared on Bridging the Gap on 30 March 2011. Click here to view the original article.