Usually noise has a negative connotation, but in this sense, noise means something that increases the team progress (i.e., velocity) and output (i.e., quality). Chaos is the negative side of noise and decreases velocity. Teams should know the importance of agile noise and handle the chaos in a right way at the time of transformation. Let’s explore agile noise and its benefits.
Whether you are working on a newly formed team in the process of adopting agile or on an existing team going through an agile transformation, noise is something that should be closely monitored. Usually noise has a negative connotation, but in this sense, by noise I mean something that increases the team progress (i.e., velocity) and output (i.e., quality).
Chaos is the negative side of noise. It slows down the progress of personal interaction, communication, process, and decision-making and decreases velocity.
Below are some of the factors for chaos and noise:
Factors for Chaos | Factors for Noise | |
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Change is the source for chaos and noise. Teams should know the importance of agile noise and handle the chaos in a right way at the time of transformation. Let’s explore agile noise and its benefits.
What Is Agile Noise?
The rhythmic flow of energy in agile teams because of the below noise factors is called “agile noise.” The factors may depend on one another and happen together, or they may occur independently.
- Hyperactive team members
- Frequent team-building activities
- Healthy environments due to camaraderie
- Strongly coupled team members
- Healthy competition among seniors and juniors and different teams
- Quality output from war rooms
- Healthy debates and discussions
Noise can happen whether teams are collocated or distributed, but when a team is together and starts making noise, the work location seems like a “war room.” One might think these factors would lead to a distracting environment, but they shouldn’t—everyone in the team should let the noise flow and help the team increase productivity. Highly motivated individuals and teams will create highly charged environments.
When large enterprises plan for large-scale agile implementations, you see lots of chaos and noise in different areas, right from the environment or facility setup and building infrastructure through to a consistent velocity. Let’s look at a scenario of how the rise-fall-rise of noise happens for individuals bonding on a newly formed team.
When everyone is new to the team, everyone shows interest in interacting with everybody, sharing about themselves, and trying to find someone who is close to their frequency. Eventually, when the team starts performing and productivity is measured, team members may change their preferences and pairs, too. All this noise happens in parallel with chaos in forming, storming, and norming phases.
Once the teams start performing and collaborating with others, there should be a steady decrease in chaos and increase in noise.
Some introverted individuals on the team may tend to want to go to their own virtual caves and forget the rest of the world. It’s the responsibility of the team to keep everyone involved and continue floating the noise so that they can maintain equilibrium and consistently increase the levels of team spirit, bonding, and sprint velocity.
If agile noise is not floated in teams, liveliness will continue to decline, collaboration will fail, and all Extreme Programming practices that are key for agile delivery won’t be able to be implemented—and obviously, performance will start declining. The biggest challenge in transformation initiatives is handling, addressing, and surviving the chaos. Again, in these situations it’s the team’s responsibility to keep floating the noise.
When an organization or team is going through an agile transformation, it will gradually own the change. Then the chaos will drop to a manageable level and noise will increase exponentially, so the team can initiate a successful transformation.
