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Governance for Agile Teams

As teams come to the lab, we are commonly asked: how do we set up governance for this thing?

Unlike typical public sector organizations where multiple priorities are common for a team, members of Agile teams are ideally focused full-time on solving a problem. This focus affords them the ability to deliver and learn quickly. Any time spent waiting for a governance body to respond is extremely wasteful and risks team disengagement.

Governance structures need to be very responsive to the functions of Agile delivery.

This page walks you through the basics of how we’ve come to our practices of adapting governance. It is a good primer, and for deeper learning, please consider:

Definition

In generic terms, Governance should enable the positive conditions you are aiming to achieve with a group of people that is appropriate for the context they are in.

Governance represents the norms, values and rules of the game through which interactions and decision making are managed. It may be subtle and not easily observable.

When the lab kicked off, there were no new governance structures in place or obvious ways to restructure existing governance. Everyone was learning how to “make Agile work.” Or, they attempted to apply existing governance structures, with ill-effect.

Over time, it has become evident that there is a need to adapt the typical governance structures connected to Agile teams in the public service.

What is wrong with typical governance?

When people in government think of governance, they often think of decision making committees. These structures are a product of hierarchy and are designed for slow moving and predictable process. Committees tend to facilitate deliberation and decision making at a table where people have limited attention and time. Where the circumstances (rules, conditions) are clear and simple enough for the table to understand, this structure can work.

A committee table is ill-equipped to make most decisions related to complex problems, which are the focus of Agile teams. They have the least information about the problem and potential solutions, and simply do not have the time or methods to properly probe, sense and respond with appropriate decisions.

What is different about Agile Governance?

Agile organizations behave differently than traditional government structures, based on a different set of assumptions about what enables productivity, risk management, and accountability, given the context they are in.

The context is very important: not every program or problem should be addressed with Agile methods.

When programs come to the lab assuming they could benefit from support to become Agile, we first inspect their context. We use the Cyenfin Framework as a guide to determine if they are operating in complexity first.

Here is a 4 minute video that describes why this matters:

alt=”Making Sense of Complexity - an introduction to Cynefin” width=”450” height=”251” border=”10” align=”center”/>

Some key questions for how to design governance appropriate for agile organizations and teams would be:

Autonomous Agile product teams are designed to tackle complexity. Here is a foundational 15 minute video to describe how they are equipped to do that, while engaging the organization around them:

alt=”Product Owner in a Nutshell” width=”450” height=”251” border=”10” align=”center”/>

While teams have a lot of autonomy to address a specific problem, they also need support for their function within the broader organization, including alignment to broader organizational goals and resourcing.

Alliance Team

From 2018-2019, Lab Operations designed and tested a governance structure called an Alliance Team. The Health Gateway Team was the first to apply and learn from this approach, and it has since been adopted in various forms by other teams.

Below is an illustration of how an Alliance team operates to enable effective governance.

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During the alignment phase for Lab partnership, we include all the people that believe they should be “on the team” because they offer some critical function (e.g. aligning to standards or architecture, privacy, security, project reporting, etc.). We make it clear that they are not on the delivery team, but are connected through the Product Owner in this Alliance Team structure.

Often, there is an “Alliance Lead” who works alongside the PO to engage the Alliance team. They help with translation between Agile and traditional methods and work to engage multiple agencies.

Alliance Leads are expected and supported to apply change management practices. The Lab Operations team will work directly with the Alliance Lead to determine supports for the broader organization in accepting, supporting or adopting Agile practices. The goals is to have those outside the team, who have the benefit of rapid learning and coaching in the Lab, to gain digital competencies over time as well (ideally by the time the team is ready to graduate.) Ideally, the organization has human-centered talent that can work with the Lab to do this work.

Executive Sponsor Roles

Members of Executive Leadership are responsible for allocating resources to teams, making strategic decisions to address Service Plan and Government Mandate commitments, and for organizational development.

These sponsors are engaged directly by the Product Owner and by the Alliance team lead.


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