A Social Contract for Agile

Here is an added bonus from Israel:

Perhaps the most difficult aspect of my leading Agile projects over the past five years has been dealing with the broken social contract. With globalization, off-shoring, outsourcing and reduction in the workforce being so pervasive, the social contract between employees and corporations in the software industry has for most practical purposes broken. The implied agreements by which employees form productive teams and maintain cohesive organizational order have at the very least been shaken, and very possibly voided altogether.

The voiding of the social contract typically manifests itself in the refusal – overt or covert - by employees to collaborate in their own demise. Knowledge transfer to an “assassin” in a remote country – i.e., to a person who will displace me after I train him – is the way employees often describe their reaction. Collaboration and empowerment go down the drain in the absence of an effective antidote to the “assassin” syndrome. Needless to say, trying to do Agile without collaboration and empowerment is like trying to drive your car without gas and wheels.

Conversely, an employee could and should expect an employer to pay close attention to the economical realities of business, including the cost of labor. This consideration is particularly true for the software industry where labor cost is often the #1 component in the cost structure. With software becoming more and more pervasive – in car safety bags, avionics, cell phones, etc. – software labor cost is fast becoming an issue for any industry that embeds software in its products.

The pity of it all is that nobody benefits from a broken social contract. Employers often stare at disappointing results from off-shoring and outsourcing as well as unsatisfactory outcomes from software initiatives that span multiple countries. Employees are frequently uprooted, either in terms of their sense of security/belonging/commitment; or, in terms of the actual dislocation that often accompanies a new job; or both.  The simple fact that both employers and employees are driven by very similar Darwinian rules of economics is of little consolation to either party in the face of mutual failure(s).

While Agile most certainly is not a panacea, it actually provides the opportunity to resurrect the social contact in the corporate setting in the following two interrelated levels:

• Enhance productivity big time. Results reported by Sutherland, Mah, and me show that productivity can be increased to the point that it compensates for the differential in labor cost from one country/continent to another.
• Provide safety net for employees through the development of marketable Agile skills.

If I were to start a major new Agile project today, I would deliver something similar to the following message:

“Team, my overarching organizational objective is to preserve our team and its institutional knowledge for our corporation and its customers for years to come. We will achieve this goal by enhancing our productivity to the level that it offsets disparities in the cost of labor across geographies. I wholeheartedly believe the current state of the Agile art would enable us to reach this level of excellence. In the event that we fail to reach such a high bar and our assignments fade away, you will find yourselves in demand in the market, as in the course of doing the project you will become competent Agile practitioners. I am committed to your professional development, regardless of the outcome. A significant amount of your time will be spent in Agile training, coaching, and retrospectives.”

Saying so and walking the talk might not constitute a full-fledge social contract in the classical sense of the term. However, I believe it could be quite effective as “contracting in the small,” i.e., compensating for mega issues in the software industry by way of redefining the contract at the Agile project/business unit level. I tend to think about it as “mini social contract” – i.e., a contract between the team(s) and me.

This “mini social contract” provides the critical third ingredient in the “secret sauce” that I plan to henceforth use to drive Agile projects, as follows:

• Empower them – everyone loves to have the opportunity to make an impact.
• Excite them – genuinely executed Agile is a great antidote to the weariness, bitterness, and cynicism that a broken social contract generates.
• Invest in them – hone their Agile skills in a way which (should the need arise) will transcend organizational/corporate boundaries.

While the approach I advocate might fly in the teeth of some prevailing wisdom, practices and policies, I believe it is mutually beneficial for both employers and employees. Neither employer nor employee can single-handedly change mega trends in the industry; both can, however, learn to live and evolve with these trends in a way that leaves both as whole as is realistically feasible. The simple sentence “Whether you will or will not be with the company in the future,  I acknowledge your need to develop professionally as an Agile practitioner” is all it takes to start reconstituting the social contract.