Gestalt therapy in an Agile environment

The Gestalt approach in psychotherapy and flexible development methodology have got more things in common than what you’d expect.

What is Agile software development?

Agile software development is a group of development processes that adopts iterative development. Each iteration is small and manageable and can deliver progress in a specific short period. Its main motive is to remove/avoid activities that may not be required for the project and to remove anything which is a waste of time and effort.

Requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing cross-functional teams. It promotes a leadership philosophy based on teamwork, self-organization and accountability. It encourages process inspection and adaptation.

Here’s the Agile manifesto:

We are uncovering better ways of developing
software by doing it and helping others do it.
Through this work we have come to value:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan

That is, while there is value in the items on
the right, we value the items on the left more.

What is Agile should be clearer, but what is Gestalt therapy?

What is Gestalt therapy?

Gestalt is a German word for form or shape.

It refers to the concept of the “figure against the background”. You cannot see a figure without a background: Agile methodology is visible only against the “background” - the context - where the waterfall model belongs. If it is removed, it is impossible to explain what it means to be Agile.

In psychoanalytic therapy, the analyst acts as an expert and in a way “fixes the patient”. In the Gestalt approach, since it is client-centred, the leading expert in their life is the client themselves emphasizing personal responsibility.

Gestalt therapy focuses upon the individual’s experience in the present moment. Gestalt therapists do not give advice and are not experts at all. They operate by taking into account the relationship with the client, the environmental and social contexts of a person’s life (their background).

Therapists help clients to investigate their contact with the environment and their interruptions by supporting awareness: the self-regulating adjustments people make as a result of their overall situation.

Therapy is not training: training is the development of skills; therapy works on the personality and helps the person to create the conditions for applying these skills. Therapy, especially Gestalt, is more about finding support in the contact and environment, in the situation, whereas training offers tools for use: in negotiations, during public appearances, in conflicts, etc. It happens sometimes that once the support is found, an additional bunch of skills is not needed. On top of that, a person in a critical situation is confused and forget the learnt skills that need to be applied. If the problem is deep, training would not help at all.

Gestalt therapy and Agile

The Gestalt approach focuses on the “Here and Now”, on the person current experience of being in the world. Scrum daily standups answer the questions: “What is done, what will be done, what are the obstacles”. This is exactly what happens in a Gestalt therapeutic group. The work indeed usually begins with phrases like: “Tell us about your being here and now, how you feel, what are your needs”. The meaning of these questions might lead to intuitions - the insights - and actions that support the discovery of yourself. The risen feelings activate or not a “resonance”, a response, in other participants. During that process, the dialogues that arise are treated and developed during the main session.

One of the important themes of the Gestalt approach is the paradoxical theory of change: changes do not occur when a person tries to become what they are not, but who they are. Buying tickets from Madrid to Rome won't help you if you need to get to London (not without a connection flight, at least). That’s why, for example, the Kanban framework insists on visualizing the processes. That’s exactly when you can accurately understand the current being: it becomes clear what the next step should be.

It’s all an iteration, a cycle. In Gestalt therapy, it is called the “cycle of experience”. Nothing is static. A state is something that needs to be satisfied. As soon as you manage to put efforts to spend on the rising needs, the rising Gestalt, in the external environment, you’re self-regulating. If you’re satisfying that need, the Gestalt is closed and the cycle is not interrupted (I’ll go deeper on that in other articles). That is where changes begin to take place.