Partisan Politics in Agile Projects

Politics Defined
When we think of politics as applied to project management, we typically think of the “office politics” that get involved with our day-to-day work rather than politics as it is defined for a nation’s political process. Here’s a great definition of office politics on the site BigBadBoss.com:

"The use of one’s individual or assigned power within an employing organization for the purpose of obtaining advantages beyond one’s legitimate authority. Those advantages may include access to tangible assets, or intangible benefits such as status or pseudo-authority that influences the behavior of others. Both individuals and groups may engage in Office Politics...Management and occupational employees may engage in office politics, individually or collectively. Managers who engage in office politics often do so at the expense of the employees who report to them. That makes them Bad Bosses."

Like it or not, it is the nature of people’s desire to promote their individual or group’s self-interest that drive this political process--and therefore is really the way in which most decisions are made. For any project you are tasked with managing or leading, office politics pervades the hundreds and thousands of decisions that are made every week. It is a matter of figuring out who is involved (stakeholder analysis, which is part and parcel of PM 101), how they will make decisions, when these decisions are made and finally who will drop the final ball on these decisions as the ultimate authority.

When individuals both from within and outside your teams play partisan politics (within the definition of office politics above), you will be dealing with people who are opportunistic and manipulative in the most contrived way since their sole motivation will be to advance themselves or their agenda. This is the most toxic form of partisan politics and should be avoided at all costs.

Wikipedia identifies the core characteristics of office politics you should watch out for:

1. Gossip - “Office gossip is often used by an individual to place themselves at a point where they can control the flow of information and therefore gain maximum advantage.”
2. Manipulation - “At the root of office politics is the issue of manipulation which can happen in any relationship where one or more of the parties involved use indirect means to achieve their goals.”
3. Aims - “The aims of office politics or manipulation in the workplace are not always increased pay or a promotion. Often, the goal may simply be greater power or control for its own end; or to disrepudiate a competitor.”
4. Issues - “Office politics is a major issue in business because the individuals who manipulate their working relationships consume time and resources for their own gain at the expense of the team or company.”
5. Games - “Interpersonal games are games that are played between peers (for example the game of ‘No Bad News’ where individuals suppress negative information, and the payoff is not risking upsetting someone); leadership games are played between supervisor and employee (for example the game of ‘Divide and Conquer’ where the supervisor sets his employees against each other, with the payoff that none threatens his power base); and budget games are played with the resources of an organization (for example the game of ‘Sandbagging’ where individuals negotiate a low sales target, and the payoff is a bigger bonus).”

If you are a ScrumMaster on an agile project, I could not think of a more important impediment to get out of the way! So what is the solution?

Transparency, transparency, transparency...
Transparency is about openness and accountability in all areas of the business. In today’s economy, it is more important than ever as companies are forced to strictly manage costs and utilize resources optimally. And for small- to mid-sized companies that have smaller budgets and fewer resources to help complete projects, using agile practices to effectively develop and deliver projects can help with that transparency.

Tracking tools, Kanban boards, incremental unit and acceptance testing, daily stand-up meetings, iteration planning sessions, retrospectives and adamant guidance and coaching at each point in the process help to keep team members from straying off course or going under completely. Agile’s transparency can work so well that it is sometimes misunderstood as the actual cause of dysfunction! What it is actually doing is uncovering the skeletons in the closet that have been hiding there all along.

But agile team members must be highly cognizant of one another’s work. They have to be involved in each of the planning iterations, evaluating each other’s overall progress, stepping in where needed, developing and agreeing on best practices, and testing and vetting one another’s contributions. Your role as agile leader is to be fully aware of these--and the only way is through complete transparency.

To restate the first principle of the agile manifesto: Individuals and interactions over processes and tools. Agile cannot get more basic than this: The customer, team, product owners and you are more important than the process documents, best practices or any standard operating procedures. Just having people sit in a room together discussing, arguing and hashing out an issue face to face will beat out any high-tech, real-time, social media tweeting and IM tool. Just as they say “location, location, location” for real estate success, it is “transparency, transparency, transparency” to beat partisan office politics.

Parting thoughts
Politics play a part in our daily lives at work, home and even play. But with the central goal of creating products efficiently--with high quality and (most importantly) value for the customer as agile’s central goal--it shouldn’t be about who can win the game. Project managers, product owners and developers need to work together collectively to win.

Adopting agile is the first step, but it is not the entire solution. Leading agile projects is about becoming the communication conduit to higher transparency to keep the team and customers focused on innovation--not on partisan politics rampant in many office environments. Doing this will get the customer happy about paying for your solutions.