Autorité, pragmatisme et auto-désorganisation

Le titre original de l’article d’InfoQ est “Agile – A Way of Life and Pragmatic Use of Authority“. Le mot autorité m’a interpellé et ce pour plusieurs raisons :

• En tant que Scrum Master comment guider mon équipe à partir d’une position dépourvue d’autorité ?
• Que devient un Project Manager dans un mode Agile? Qu’arrive-t-il à son autorité?
• En tant que coach, si j’applique le Leadership de situation et je suis directif. Je nuis à l’équipe?
• En tant que leader à Pyxis, comment communiquer une vision, prendre des décisions difficiles, faire des choix sans autorité?

Dernièrement plusieurs discussions entre collègues et amis avaient comme sujet principal l’autorité. Même que pour rigoler on a appelé une communauté des services “Le BOSS”

J’ai donc plongé dans l’article.

Premier point intéressant l’article fait suite à un article sur les chargés de projet justement. Autorité et gestion de projet c’est toujours assez controversé… ici même à Pyxis.

L’auteur tente de défendre sa position face à l’autorité

“Although in that article, I used the term ‘authority’ scarcely but some of the readers expressed reservation about ‘authority’”

Je me retrouve dans sa vision de l’autorité. J’aime penser que le problème avec l’autorité est l’usage qu’on en fait et non l’autorité elle-même. Je crois que de l’éliminer complètement peut causer un drôle d’effet bord :  l’auto-désorganisation

“There are certain decisions in life if they go wrong, we can always recover and get 2nd chance to make amendments. But there are certain decisions, where life does not give 2nd chance. If they go wrong, it may irreversibly alter course of your life, your business, your project, your relation with the customer and so on. It is these things where we should fall back on expert judgment and more experienced people. And those seasoned experts may have to use authority in certain situations if their loved ones are doing a blunder in ignorance. This is my idea of pragmatic authority.

you cannot inspire every person and make every person truly self-organizing. If this is true, what will you do to those persons who are off track, not Agile by nature which means self-disorganized?[...]One of the best and historical ways to handle these off track people is to control the incompetency of these people using authority but using it professionally.”

L’auteur fait plusieurs analogies avec la vie courante pour renforcer son point. Certains exemples sont plus faibles que d’autre, mais au final:

“It may sound a little strange that I am comparing acts of public life against backdrop of Agile in IT. Actually I am comparing humans with humans. Agile is an excellent way of software development but in my opinion, it is not a magic pill with divine powers that will transform people into a perfect human being the moment they enter into the office.”

en résumé…

“In my opinion, the problem is misusing the authority and using it unnecessarily. It should be used to protect the business, protect the customer, protect the projects which indirectly would protect and help people only. Agile is not only a set of rules but it is much bigger. It requires paradigm shift in the mindset and attitude the way we work. And it cannot be adopted completely simply by couple of days of classroom training. It requires a minimum basic level of maturity, ability to change and evolve, self-motivation, honest intentions to excel as a team and constant mentoring.

Freedom has same attribute as authority. If people misuse freedom, it is equally terrible.”