I think that research budget, and learning opportunities, are being squandered in agile-at-scale environments.
One reason is that individual researchers are being assigned to individual product, feature or even sprint teams.
Organisations imagine that this will lead to a single, coherent body of knowledge, with individual research efforts magically meshing with each other to tell a bigger story.
But that's not how it works.
Real life, at best, looks more divergent:
Research projects are not planned together so there is no overlap of enquiry or analysis.
Questions and hypotheses are set in different ways. Results are analysed and recorded following different methodologies.
There is no over-arching method of summarising, extrapolating and abstracting insights and learnings from observations. Transferable insights go unrecorded.
The 'body of knowledge' is fractured and impossible to refer to or to infer from. Which means research is wasted.
Each project has its deadlines, operating context, problems, and opportunities. But the end result is always: research efforts are separated, insights are not shared, conclusions vary, and products or features do not sit comfortably together.
One of the problems is that research is seen as a way of getting answers.
And providing those answers to product teams so that products can be built.
But that is not where research operates best. As Bereiter and Scarmadalia say,
'knowledge-building projects focus on understanding, rather than on accomplishing tasks'
A blinkered focus on delivery, or 'accomplishing tasks' can end up hindering projects, and when multiplied across all the projects a large company may have going on, the cumulative damage to the organisation, including opportunity cost, is great.
Research should not be constrained to the particular demands of individual projects: it is too wide-ranging and broad-focused. Instead it should be seen as a strategic function operating over the whole business (and beyond).
When research is organised as a specialist unit within an organisation, it becomes a tool for informing strategy not just for directing tactical projects:
With research operating as a single, integrated function rather than distributed across projects, new features, functions or directions can be seen. Project goals can be viewed holistically and integrated, combined or synthesised. Waste can be avoided and the organisation can direct resources and implement projects more efficiently. The end result may look very different to the situation in which three projects co-exist with research existing as a sub-activity of each.
And once this central research unit has been established, further benefits of investing in knowledge-building will become apparent. Instead of existing to support projects across the organisation, the research unit will begin to drive the organisation, and spark projects based on the knowledge it creates. These projects will be easier and quicker to implement because of the stronger foundations of research they are based upon, and more user-focused for the same reasons. Each will have more impact for the organisation, as well as the synergies across projects already spoken about:
Research should be a guide rather than a director.
Instead of trying to give detailed answers to low-level implementation questions, the real value of research comes in acting as a guide to the whole organisation. Strategic decision-making on what is built and what is not, as well as the form and function of everything that is built, can lean on the knowledge it creates.
It can become a constantly-evolving, always-asking and always-thinking central brain trust, sparking off discussion, ideas and innovation across the organisation.
If it is allowed to do so.
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