Re-orgs and Other Nonsense
By: David Knighton
Tags: Scrum Master, Reorg, Agile Transformation, Scrum, Management And Leadership

Photo by Jason Hafso on Unsplash

The company I work for just completed their second re-org of the year. As if 2020 wasn’t already bad enough.

The first was to get the “pillars aligned”. That’s management-speak for, “We probably shouldn’t have put the DBA’s and the Android developers under a director who specializes in marketing.” Okay fine. I get it. Occasionally, it makes sense to evaluate parts of the organizational structure and see if you’ve got the right teams and people in the best place.

The second re-org was a lot “ickier”. It was about evaluating talent and making sure people were in the right position for their skill set. A lot of people were moved around. Some were invited to re-apply for their own job. And others were invited to apply somewhere else. It was done in secret, which is to say it was done without any transparency among team members, contractors, or team managers. Everyone was told to keep their mouths shut for a month and many people spent 2–3 weeks in limbo about where they were going to land. It was a completely bonkers atmosphere. Nothing like I have experienced before with this company.

After the dust settled, the team I support had a new manager and two fewer developers. It was worse in other areas. Because of the secrecy, some teams found themselves losing several people with little or no notice, which created a serious talent gap with deadlines looming. My team managed to make it through with only some minor bumps, but other teams were left in shambles, with a mountain of work and not enough people to do it. The entire organization is feeling the ripple effects, though, as dependencies suddenly go into an unknown status.

Why do companies do this? How can a company that purports to be “Agile” do something so destructive to the morale and productivity of its employees? I have a (somewhat) tongue-in-cheek theory that re-orgs are what happen when management gets bored. It’s C-Level busy work that makes executives feel safe when they become uncomfortable with the numbers.

The Scrum Master’s Take

Re-orgs are not Agile. They take away a team’s ability to self-organize. They introduce insecurity and chaos. They are an artifact of old, top-down management practices that should have been taken off the table during a company’s transition to Agile practices.

To put it bluntly, re-orgs in an Agile organization are indicative of a failed Agile transformation. That can be a tough pill to swallow considering how much money companies pour into them. But the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing managers they don’t need to be Agile too.

I feel like I’m beating a dead horse when I say this, but Agile is for the entire organization. It’s not a bolt-on solution for development teams to make them double their productivity. Agility can’t be applied to a subset of the company. The transformation must start with a hard look at the top of the org chart, followed by a lot of honest introspection about whether management has the courage to say, “Let it begin with me.” This can be especially difficult for the type-A personalities that often fill offices on the upper floors, the idea of relinquishing control and trusting the people you’ve hired to find the best way to deliver value. The instinct for these driven individuals is to manage by directive, not with the servant-leader mentality that’s required of leaders in successful Agile organizations.

To put it in the simplest terms, a company that embarks on an Agile transformation needs to have exactly one re-org. It should take place at the beginning of the process, at the management level, to make sure the organization’s leaders have the courage to change themselves. If they can’t embrace the servant-leader mind set, don’t waste your time and money. Your Agile journey will fail.