Agile Managers: The Essence of Leadership
As organizations have transitioned to agile projects and programs, what happens to the managers? Do we need managers any more? Yes, we need managers. And, in an agile organization, where the managers are freed from the day-to-day tactical project tasks, we need them more than ever as leaders doing strategic work: managing the project portfolio, removing organizational obstacles, building trusting relationships with technical staff, coaching, providing feedback, assisting with career development, leading the hiring decisions and process, and building the capacity of the organization.
Managers decide on the strategically important work. Without those decisions, managers create management debt. Managers can use iterations to make those difficult decisions without creating debt.
Management is not separate from leadership. When transitioning to agile, managers must recognize and remove the systemic obstacles, such as individual reviews and the facilities people dictating how the teams must sit.
Agile managers become team champions and build trusting relationships with the team through one-on-ones, feedback and meta-feedback, coaching and meta-coaching, and career development. That means managers become generalizing specialists--specialists in high tech management, not development or testing management.
Agile managers assess and help build organizational capacity by removing system obstacles and recognizing that team velocity is personal.
Agile managers lead the hiring work. And the team always makes the final decision by consensus.
About Johanna Rothman
Johanna Rothman helps managers and leaders solve problems and seize opportunities.
She consults, speaks, and writes on managing high-technology product development. She enables managers, teams, and organizations to become more effective by applying her pragmatic approaches to the issues of project management, risk management, and people management.
Johanna writes two blogs: Managing Product Development and Hiring Technical People. She is the author of:
- Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and Finish More Projects.
- 2008 Jolt Productivity award winning Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management
- Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management (with Esther Derby)
- Hiring the Best Knowledge Workers, Techies & Nerds: The Secrets and Science of Hiring Technical People
Find more of Johanna's articles and her blogs at www.jrothman.com.
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