Situational awareness in agile IT teams
As an agile coach, I believe situational awareness is the most useful “soft” skill for a person and a team to have, in order to deliver well and maintain motivation at high levels. If you want to be like Jason Bourne, in IT — read this article :).
In life, you recognize that there are moments when you are aware beyond the immediate self, here and now. Like in the movie “Jason Bourne’s identity” — the moment in the bar where James realized he is registering a lot of information automatically from his surroundings without his conscious will, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjrWOZby8s8, (we´ll find out that is due to his former training). Or during real life conflict situations where soldiers and non-combatants in the army respond to the same stimulus in the same way. Other examples can be found in the surgery room full of various people with different specialties and roles focused on saving lives, to the mother observing her 2 year old playing in the park from a distance and ready to intervene if any of the risks observed becomes acute. And we all remember our heightened sense of awareness during our first driving lesson (so many things that you have to pay attention to at the same time).
What do all these have in common? They require a very high situational awareness — which can be defined as the “perception of environmental elements and events with respect to time or space, the comprehension of their meaning, and the projection of their future status”. Academic research by institutions like the US Army have resulted in the establishment of formal models — for example, PCPDA (Perception-Comprehension-Projection-Decision-Act) , which make it possible to establish situational awareness due to conscientious effort and to put it to use.
The “awareness” part may lead you to spirituality concepts like meditation, mindfulness, yoga, or introspection — which is correct because self-awareness is a basic condition to get external awareness. In order to “get accustomed” to awareness, the practice can only begin with yourself, with your inner awareness (for example: how do you feel today, how is your body, are you aware of your body position now, its tensions, on the feelings that different stimulus arise in you, on the way that your brain solves problems according to previous experiences or to what else). While being better and better at self-awareness you may realize that you can control the emotions that may impulsively drive you otherwise and make the correct decisions in a situation and ACT, the finality of the awareness model put into practice.
However, this article will focus on the application of the academic model and highlight the situational awareness needed in an agile development team project to survive “well”, following the PCPDA model, from my experience with delivering agile in software development:
I. Perception (or Context)
Perception is the data that constitutes the project or the product:
- The delivery model
- The members and their roles according eventually to RACI matrix
- Stakeholders, decision-makers
- The stated objective of the project
- The architecture of the project
- The dependencies and risks identified at this stage
- The stated challenges of the client
- The challenges of your company, the existing “data” hard and soft in the context.
II. The Comprehension part (or State)
Comprehension is the putting together of the elements of the context, the interactions between members, members and clients, clients and other stakeholders, understanding the why of the things, predicting already at this stage possible problems in their dynamics and anticipating solutions and alternative resources needed, changing according to inputs from environment. Having a common understanding of the situation taking advantage of the diversity of the team and various points of view.
Comprehension includes understanding the main epics and features in the context of the business, the team members as persons with their own individual characteristics and way of work and behavior, the way the decisions are taken place in reality and the power-influence-market game. In this stage, some measurement system may arise, defining or taking into consideration KPIs, OKRs or other leading or lagging indicators normally defined by the project manager or the agile coach together with the client, whose results I will use in the 3rd stage of Projection.
III. Projection (or Time)
In the context of a detailed comprehension, with the help of the various team members, I understand in depth what may happen and which are the possible scenarios. Based on what I will predict and make decisions? It may be the burndown chart, the team spirit, the velocity metrics, other leading or lagging indicators.
IF I project the highest possibility of what might happen from let´s say 3 scenarios, WHAT is most probable to happen, so I could Decide and Act and proactively react to the possibility with a suitable action in the context, the final purpose of the model.
Maybe some members have personalities that enter in conflict or we cannot reach the storming phase in a team system in order to reach to the full potential of the team due to various factors, foresee with accuracy what may happen in the context and act according to the most probable scenario to avoid the foreseen bad happening or welcoming and accelerating the advantage.
IV. Decide and Act
Action that follows the decision may be talking to the client about a new proposal or alternative, talking to the team, to my colleague, taking a coaching approach to myself or someone, telling NO (or YES :)) at the right time so that some changes may be done to accomplish the final result in time.
The agile approach gives us the benefit of welcoming the risks, small risks within small deliveries. If we fail, we take it as an opportunity to learn, failing fast being sometimes very important in testing an MVP for example and improving it fast as well.
This PCPDA model can be used for a project but also on MYSELF in the project: what are my challenges here, how am I doing, do I need help, who I can talk to, how am I feeling in a moment or other, which are my own risks here, what decisions do I make and how do I act; do I finally act? PCPDA is a very good introspection tool that may lead to good action for me, in my own professional and personal interests.
There are 2 main challenges for me as a coach when working with Situational Awareness within teams:
Challenge # 1: Make the PCPDA model conscious for each individual; either way it happens naturally within each team member.
Challenge # 2: The team has reached to a COMMON understanding of the PCP in the team and Decide and Act in the same manner to various stimuli.
The desired state is that the team itself and/or management could establish determined working frameworks so that everybody could add his/hers own Perceptions, have a common Comprehension and Predictions of various situations and that can finally react IN THE SAME WAY to similar situations.
Normally in agile methodologies, we establish some ground rules in the Team Pact or/and the Team`s Way of Work, with the guiding help of the coach. Agility does not mean not having rules, but adapting them to the context, improving or modifying them with flexibility on the way, when different new situations occur, but still trying to predict most of the things that could possibly happen. What does the team need in order to achieve the objective of the project, how and when do we work individually or in the team, what happens if that or other happens, where and when do we upload work, how do we review work, what does the team do if one member does not comply with the team pact or way of work — everything talked about, established and written.
How can we get a COMMON situational awareness so that in the first 2 stages of Perception and Comprehension each member has the same vision and understanding?
Could we have an open conversation in the team about Projection that would lead to the team´s decision and action?
Here, 2 elements are the key:
1)Project`s clarity — the project manager, coach, or scrum master to make sure that everybody understands the context and during the team ceremonies (dailies, retrospectives) make sure there is a common individual member of the team understanding of the Comprehension and Projection — and focus on the responsibility of each member to understand that and group responsibility to decide (work on what matters) and act (deliver on quality).
How he/she does that depends on his/her own ability and the team´s maturity.
2) Empathy — the capacity to understand each point of view even if you do not agree with it, the capacity to let go for a moment of your ego and reason and put yourself in other “shoes”. There are many articles with tips and tricks to achieve it in case one does not have it naturally, it is a skill that can be worked. Also a coach may help you to see what it is in your blind zone.
In conclusion, increased situational awareness is not intrinsic but achieved with high training and constant exercises and rituals.
The exercises are individual — each person on the team should work on his own awareness and explore his/hers environment with attention, creating connections. The team exercises may be led by an agile coach or the scrum master and on a project level — having the capacity for the coach or project manager to establish the key elements/indicators of the project, to follow them on a constant basis, be alerted on deviations, communicate, decide and act accordingly to improve them. The exercises I practice are in the below link:
What’s in it for me? Why should I “bother” with situational awareness and practice it by myself?
As situational awareness is about “survival” we can extract at least 2 dimensions of it:
First is the “survival” in the good shape of the project-product you are working on and second is your own survival as a professional — get that fame money, and ascension — is such a unique differentiator that automatically gets you out of the “unconscious’’ crowd.
- The project factors are detailed above and relate to individual and teams to keep track of deadlines, dependencies, project specific details, respond to potential challenges or threats, mitigating risks, making better decisions considering the potential impact of different options and improve collaboration into the team ensuring that everyone has a shared understanding of the context in which they are working.
- The personal factors are derived from the shared understanding of the complete context that leads to increased individual motivation, involvement, and even autonomy in the context of common own established rules and way of working. Also, it is an advantage because once you have enlarged situational awareness one may understand which is the right moment to propose something that will be well seen and understood, the dynamics between decision-makers of the superiors to get also career benefits that derive from your conscious work at the project level but also on a human level enlarging the T-Shaped skills.
