No matter what others think, Agile and accountability are not mutually exclusive …

How does your organization implement accountability? Is it a valuable statement from your organization or part of a corporate culture? Most of the companies and executives with whom I worked (according to Agile methodology or not) do not do very well with accountability. The vast majority of them are either too lenient (that is, they rarely blame people for their actions or inaction), or they control everything too much (that is, people in the team are not given a chance to demonstrate their involvement).

In the simplest form, accountability means that if I say that I will do something, I will do it. It is about taking responsibility. Agile teams are not immune to accountability – that is, from fulfilling what they promise to do. The mature Agile worldview regularly demonstrates accountability. And accountability is part of a healthy Agile culture. These are individual responsibility, team responsibility and company responsibility. At the company level, management should work to create a culture of accountability and show that it expects people to be accountable and will not tolerate behaviors, systems, and structures that are inconsistent with these company values.

Individuals and Agile teams should also show accountability. So what should it look like?

  • In addition to successful delivery, Agile teams need to be accountable for demonstrated progress on their Agile path.
  • A daily stand-up helps everyone to show responsibility, ensuring the visibility and transparency of the team. Standups show the individual accountability of the team, that is, the responsibility that they take on the upcoming sprint.
  • As servant leaders, scrum masters are responsible. They openly admit their mistakes to others for their mistakes in those tasks that were unsuccessful.
  • Team members are responsible not only to each other for their obligations, but also for the fact that they are part of the team, which is also responsible.

Here are just a few of the ways Agile teams can demonstrate accountability. If accountability is a problem in your organization, then you need to start with yourself as a person. When your teammates see that you are acting responsibly, the ice breaks and people begin to follow your example. When a sufficient number of team members regularly demonstrate a high level of accountability, other teams notice this and imitate their behavior. Cultural changes, such as accountability, do not happen overnight. But they have to start somewhere. Why not start with yourself?

That’s all. But we invite you to free webinar during which it will be possible to communicate with the teacher of our course “Agile Project Manager in IT” and ask questions of interest to the topic.


And also, as a bonus, we offer watch lesson for free on which VTB Agile Coach Dmitry Emelyanov talks about how Project differs from Product’a, how responsibilities are distributed between them and what is the difference in soft skills for these roles, as well as it analyzes typical tasks in work and correlates them with the corresponding roles.


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