Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion3
Agile, Inclusion and Equity Research
Evan Leybourn,
July 10, 2020
Evan Leybourn,
July 10, 2020
Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (DE&I) and Business Agility are both practical and cultural necessities for modern businesses. In service of the entire workforce, the Business Agility Institute is sponsoring this research to discover how these two concepts interrelate, where we can do better, and opportunities for greater collaboration.
There is a widely held belief that agile, as it is often implemented, is more inclusive – but is this true?
If not, we may not be realising the enormous potential benefits agility can bring – but we may believe we are.
Through the lived experience of some people with diverse attributes, the recent trend towards agility has resulted in the introduction of ways of working and associated cultures that have made inclusion worse for them. For others, it may have improved the situation. It appears there has been limited conscious design of inclusion into the agile ecosystem, yet it has been introduced widely and thus removed many workarounds created by diverse individuals.
The final report is due in Q2, 2021. Please join our mailing list to be the first to know when this report in published.
We will primarily conduct a qualitative study through interviews and an online survey exploring the following hypotheses:
If #1 and #2 are true, we will then consider what does a version of Agile look like that puts Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at the heart?
Who will we be speaking with?
Note an Agile Organisation is one that can adapt quickly and is focused on customer needs.
This research aims to create useful and actionable insights that will be able to be used by individuals and organisations to drive positive change. This will require completion of 100+ interviews and 500+ online surveys. If you would like to see all the interview and survey questions ahead of time, you can see them all here.
Interviews;
For those not being interviewed, they can complete an online survey that will take around 20mins to complete
At the conclusion of this research, we will produce a detailed report of our findings. All data is aggregated and anonymised with no personally identifiable or company identifying data included as detailed in the Privacy and Data Protection section.
The only exception to this is in the report acknowledgements where respondents may opt-in to be recognised.
The report itself will be released under a Creative Commons (Attribution, Share-Alike) license and will be freely available to download from the Business Agility Institute website.
We aim to release a final report in April 2021.
Beyond contribution to the body of knowledge (and a feeling of satisfaction), as a thank you for your participation in this research, we would like to offer volunteer organisations:
There may exist an opportunity to not only correct any negative inclusive impacts, but also go further and create a culture and way of working that materially improves workplace diversity as has never before been possible through the rethinking of the current practices. This is akin to applying modern principles of Human Centred Design and Universal Design principles as might be done when creating a product for a consumer to agile itself. The core of agile was created ~2001 via a group of non-diverse 17 white male engineers who had a very specific purpose – software engineering – in an era when many of the more modern design principles were not widely used.
The benefits of a diverse and inclusive workforce can include increased innovation, better employee experiences, better customer outcomes and increased revenue as demonstrated through many recent studies – thus the business imperative is considered strong. Alternatively, a diverse workforce, without inclusion, can negatively impact businesses and teams and would be unlikely to produce any material benefit over a non-diverse team.
It also is very clear that, by not designing for inclusion (and even excluding some who were previously included) the strong ethical goals often associated with an agile culture are fundamentally being disregarded eg Respect, Courage, Inclusiveness and an Open/Growth Mindset.
Anonymity
Due to the sensitive nature of what we may ask and the need to encourage respondents to be honest, we need to ensure a level of anonymity and safety. The following is our approach:-
Systems
The research team is using three separate systems to store different data.
Interview Recording (Optional)
There may be a need to temporarily record the interviews so that the interviewer can ensure they have correctly gathered the right data i.e. go back and check. Our approach is:-
This research is being undertaken by a volunteer team of both professionals and academics; consisting of leaders experienced in either the Agile or D&I space. We are grateful for the insights and contributions from;
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