The transformation in digital transformation connotes an enterprise-wide organizational change, centering on the facilitation of self-organizing, innovative digital teams. Managers intent on achieving such self-organization, however, face a paradox: self-organization suggests the absence of management, so what’s a manager to do?
Scenario: Self-Organization Gone Wrong
Bob, your VP of Engineering, brings a ScrumMaster, a Java developer, a UX (user experience) specialist, and a Linux admin into his office. “We need to build this digital widget app,” he says, describing what a product manager told him she wanted. “So go ahead and self-organize.”
Bob’s intentions are good, right? After all, Agile teams are supposed to be self-organizing. Instead of giving the team specific directions, he laid out the general goal and then asked the team to organize themselves in order to achieve the goal. What could be more Agile than that?
Do you see the problem yet? Let’s shed a bit more light by snooping on the next meeting.
The four techies move to a conference room. The ScrumMaster says, “I’m here to make sure you have what you need, and to mentor you as needed. But you three have to self-organize.”
The other three look at each other. “Uh, I guess I’ll be the Java developer,” the Java developer says.
“I’ll be responsible for the user interface,” the UX person says.
“I guess I’ll be responsible for ops,” the admin volunteers.
Excellent! The team is now self-organized!
What’s wrong with this picture, of course, is that given the size of the team, the constraints of the self-organization were so narrow that there was really no organization to be done, self or not.
And while this situation is an overly simplistic example, virtually all self-organizing teams, especially in the enterprise context, have so many explicit and implicit constraints placed upon them that their ability to self-organize is quite limited.
As a result, the benefits the overall digital effort can ever expect to get from such self-organization is paltry at best.
Read the rest of the article at http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbloomberg/2014/12/16/digital-transformation-self-organization-paradox/.
Intellyx advises companies on their digital transformation initiatives and helps vendors communicate their agility stories. As of the time of writing, none of the organizations mentioned in this article are Intellyx customers. Image credit: Vincent Diamante.
