Management and Agile
There is hardly a topic thats more misunderstood than “Managers Role in Agile.” This is sometimes because various Agile frameworks like Scrum do not mention the word “Manager” and others like XP treat at as a purely optional role. All the emphasis is on a self functioning team - figuring out how best to do its work. However, we believe that even within the set up an XP or Scrum workplace, there is a place for the manager. Some of these responsibilities are clearly assigned while others are ones we have found useful.
Mapped Managerial Role Responsibilities :
- The best way to explore managerial role is to understand the dynamics of leadership required for an Agile Project. The three broad areas outlined are marketing leadership, process leadership and technical leadership.
- The marketing leadership is best represented and served by the product owner. The product owner is responsible to draft, defend, articulate and update the products specifications/ features/ requirements. She is the final word on what is to build and when. She should ideally have a deep understanding of what would the customers value. The product failure because it could not stand the test of the market or the customers did not like the product is a product owner’s failure. Product owner in essence controls the pivotal aspect of the product - what is being built, why is it being build and when is it being built. As discussed in the post on product owner, she may take the team’s input but thats only one aspect of the advice. She would listen to customers, conduct marketing surveys, stakeholders, research on product’s features and prepare cash flow plans.
- The process leadership is best represented and served by the Scrum Master or Process Coach. The Scrum Master would be responsible for the success of the Scrum Process. She would ensure things like whether a product backlog exists, whether sprint planning is being conducted, are sprint retrospectives surfacing problems and also conduct a daily stand up for the team. The roots of Scrum Master in servant leadership. The team is Scrum Master’s project and she has to ensure and do everything in her power to make the team successful in working together with Product Owner in developing a quality product.
- Self Organizing Team is responsible for delivering increment of functionality. The team would work with each other, divide tasks, commit to deliverables, ask any questions and pick up practices to do the work. The important aspects are for the team to identify, volunteer, commit to the various practices. The team is the one responsible for delivering the work - its either a 100% done or 100% not done.
Now that we have seen what are the main roles and responsibilities. Now let’s see what does a formal manager do in Agile. It is useful to take XP’s approach. The role of a manager although important but optional. Here are some of the approaches for transitioning a traditional manager in an Agile environment:
- Become a product owner or scrum master
- Become a Manager 2.0 - we will touch on this in detail in our next post but for now lets just consider these points:
- Managers continue in their existing role but do not do things that are not as per Agile values and beliefs. The easiest to identify in this case are things like task breakdown, task assignment, task tracking etc.
- Managers add/ enhance some aspects which will help implementation of Agile. The easiest to identify in this case are things like providing feedback, amplifying learning, educating customers about Agile, functioning as technology or product or process Guru’s, working on next generation products, help Agile scale etc.
- Managers edit some part of their responsibilities. For instance, customer interaction could mean that they work with customers to define their requirements better, work out business case, define the release schedule, work on competitive advantage of customers, become customer’s value partners. It is important to note that stuff like task management is not included here. Rather, manager can work as a customer proxy and managers then move towards a product owner profile. Similarly, feedback can be restructured on a weekly basis and help people define and attain their goals as well as help facilitate 360-degree feedback [probably keeping their feedback as advice] where the manager provides information as outlined by Esther Derby and other management gurus rather than assess people’s performance.
In our next post, we would discuss what managers typically do and how can they make the transition to become Manager 2.0
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Posted on April 26th, 2008 by admin
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