Two weeks ago, InfoQ published our article about many experiences with Scrum at Port of Rotterdam. Several people contacted me afterwards with questions and one of them was an IT manager in a large organisation. He made a very short and interesting summary:

So, developers / teams are in the driving seat!

This characterisation is pretty good and can be used as a test for knowing how Agile your teams really are.

Very often, “being Agile” is confused with having teams following some set of practices “correctly”. That could be XP practices, Scrum practices (3 roles, 4 meetings), or something else.

“Teams in the driving seat” means that in a large organisation, information and artefacts are pulled instead of pushed. In a big enterprise, business has some need, which is usually pushed to IT management or product owner, translated by (business) analysts, pushed to Agile teams, which deliver a product in increments.

In case of really effective Agile teams, the need is much more pulled than pushed. The business still pushes the high level idea, with its very limited definition. After this, the initiative is taken over by teams. This switch may happen with a statement from the product owner:

My need is ….. Please enlighten me if this is sensible and what more you need from me so you can pick this up.

From this moment on, teams are in the driving seat and request or pull everything they need in order to deliver value. They are the ones actually deciding which information needs to be gathered, questions answered, artefacts delivered, process followed, and so on. They may request assistance from domain experts, BA’s or architects.

For large organisations with strict processes where first architects and business analysts are involved, direction actually set by IT people instead of business, different levels of management approval is needed, this is a major change in behaviour.

So, next time you hear someone telling you about their Agile teams, ask them who is actually driving the car and who is giving directions.