A common misconception about agile is that managers are unnecessary. After all, agile is based on self-organizing teams. If the teams organize themselves, what do managers do? Unfortunately, most scrum training plays into that. Think about it: how many trainers or coaches have you seen sketch the structure of a scrum team with a drawing that includes a manager? While there's always a scrum master and a product owner, the core team and maybe some stakeholders, have you ever seen a manager in that drawing? This misconception can be a problem all around: A frequently cited barrier to agile adoption is managers who don't know what to do when their teams become self-managing. When they're not included in training, how would they (or anyone else, for that matter) know how to characterize their role. At the same time, organizations often lay down expectations of managers, some compatible with agile, some not. Agile has clearly shifted the old roles and responsibilities. Managers bent on command-and-control are clearly a barrier to agile adoption. But managers who take a hands-off approach or are treading water in a sea of ambiguity will almost certainly stymie adoption, as well. Ron Lichty believes (and so do a lot of leading agile thought leaders) that managers have critical roles to play in enabling success, both of transitions to agile and of agile itself. This session is about those roles.

1. Crash Course:
!
Becoming an Agile Manager
"
"
"Ron Lichty, principal, Ron Lichty Consulting
author, Managing the Unmanageable"
www.RonLichty.com, www.ManagingTheUnmanageable.net "

2. *
* Addison Wesley published October 2012

3. Ron Lichty,
Managing Software People Teams
SOFTWEST

4. Why we wrote:
*
* Addison Wesley published October 2012

5. Management Training
• Isn t it odd...
– how long we expect you to have studied
the art of programming
– how little we expect you to have studied
the art of managing?

6. Rules of Thumb / Nuggets of Wisdom*
* 300 in the book

7. The Problem:
Where Is the Manager?
7
ScrumTeam.jpg (from Exploring Scrum- the Fundamentals, by Dan Rawsthorne Doug Shimp)

8. The Problem:
Where Is the Manager?
8

9. 














--Agile Learning Labs, Laura Powers

10. Managers and Agile
• A common misconception is that because
of this reliance on self-organizing teams,
there is little or no role for leaders of agile
teams. Nothing could be further from the
truth.
--Mike Cohn, Succeeding with Agile

11. Managers and Agile
•
•
•
•
•
Roles your team still needs you to play
Roles (and styles) that are inappropriate
Roles that are deprecated
Roles that change, sometimes dramatically
Roles that are new

12. Managing the Unmanageable:
Rules, Tools, and Insights for Managing Software
People and Teams
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Why We Programmers Are Hard to Manage
Understanding Programmers
Finding and Hiring Great Programmers
Getting New Programmers Started Off Right
Managing Down
Managing Up, Out, and Yourself
Motivating Programmers
Establishing a Successful Programming Culture
Managing Successful Software Delivery

13. Managers and Agile
•
•
•
•
•
•
Creating an Agile Culture
Supporting Agile Values
Empowering Self-Organization Excellence
Removing Impediments
Counseling, Coaching and Mentoring
Hiring and Firing

14. Managers and Agile
• Creating an Agile Culture

15. Managers and Agile
• Creating an Agile Culture
McGregor's X-Y Theory

16. Managers and Agile
• Creating an Agile Culture
Lean-Agile management is the art of leading people, not
managing them... Leading people involves creating the
correct environment, focusing them on the right things,
and trusting them to do their work...
In Lean-Agile, the manager has two primary
responsibilities:
• setting the outcomes or goals expected of the team;
• assisting the doers in creating a better process and
workspace to get their jobs done...
--Alan Shalloway, Net Objectives

17. Managers and Agile
• Creating an Agile Culture

18. Managers and Agile
•
•
•
•
•
•
Creating an Agile Culture
Supporting Agile Values
Empowering Self-Organization Excellence
Removing Impediments
Counseling, Coaching and Mentoring
Hiring and Firing

19. Managers and Agile
• Supporting Agile Values
Overview of the study and URL to a free copy: http://ronlichty.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-2013-study-of-product-team.html

20. Managers and Agile
• Supporting Agile Values
Methodology
You
Associate
with
Increase
Profits
Methodology
You
Use
Agile
Blended
(Some
Waterfall
and
Some
Agile)
Lean
Waterfall
Agile
73.9%
13.0%
9.8%
0.0%
Blended
(Some
Waterfall
and
Some
Agile)
31.8%
46.2%
10.6%
6.1%
Lean
14.3%
0.0%
42.9%
14.3%
Waterfall
15.8%
50.0%
18.4%
13.2%
Don't
Know
5.3%
42.1%
26.3%
5.3%

21. Managers and Agile
• Supporting Agile Values
The Agile Manifesto
– We 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
-- http://agilemanifesto.org/

22. Managers and Agile
• Supporting Agile Values
Value the Agile Manifesto over sets of practices
– We 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
-- http://agilemanifesto.org/

23. Managers and Agile
•
•
•
•
•
•
Creating an Agile Culture
Supporting Agile Values
Empowering Self-Organization Excellence
Removing Impediments
Counseling, Coaching and Mentoring
Hiring and Firing

24. Managers and Agile
• Empowering Self-Organization Excellence
When teams self-organize there's still plenty for
managers to do... a managers job is to engineer
the organization so that teams can do their best
work.
--Esther Derby, co-founder, Scrum Alliance

25. Managers and Agile
• Empowering Self-Organization Excellence
Be a damper to the noise. --Joe Kleinschmidt, CTO
John Evans, Winchester, Hants, United Kingdom, www.thetippingpoint.co.u

26. Managers and Agile
• Empowering Self-Organization Excellence

27. Managers and Agile
•
•
•
•
•
•
Creating an Agile Culture
Supporting Agile Values
Empowering Self-Organization Excellence
Removing Impediments
Counseling, Coaching and Mentoring
Hiring and Firing

28. Managers and Agile
• Removing Impediments
Managers are still needed. Not so much for
their planning and controlling ability, but for
the important job of interfacing on the team s
behalf with the rest of the organization.
--Diana Larsen, co-author, Agile Retrospectives

29. Managers and Agile
• Removing Impediments
Ensure your team has slack!
(100% capacity begets bottlenecks!)
--photo (c) Bud Adams, SXC, www.aimpgh.com

30. Managers and Agile
• Removing Impediments: Protect team focus!
(Guard against the waste of multitasking!)
--photo (c) jeweledlion, http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeweledlion/1502706553/ Some rights reserved

31. Managers and Agile
•
•
•
•
•
•
Creating an Agile Culture
Supporting Agile Values
Empowering Self-Organization Excellence
Removing Impediments
Counseling, Coaching and Mentoring
Hiring and Firing

32. Managers and Agile
• Counseling, Coaching and Mentoring
Photo by Esti Alvarez, Some rights reserved, http://www.Flickr.com/photos/esti/4638056301/

33. Managers and Agile
•
•
•
•
•
•
Creating an Agile Culture
Supporting Agile Values
Empowering Self-Organization Excellence
Removing Impediments
Counseling, Coaching and Mentoring
Hiring and Firing

34. Managers and Agile
• Hiring and Firing
Always be recruiting!
--Mickey Mantle and Ron Lichty,
Managing the Unmanageable: Rules, Tools, and Insights for Managing
Software People and Teams

35. Managers and Agile
• Hiring and Firing
Always be recruiting!
Deal with problem employees!

36. Managers and Agile
•
•
•
•
Critical to agile transformational success
Key roles in agile
Engage managers
Clarify managerial roles

37. Ron Lichty Consulting
• Mentoring, Coaching, interim and acting CTO / VP Eng roles:
– http://ronlichty.com, Ron@RonLichty.com
• The book:
Managing the Unmanageable:
Rules, Tools Insights for Managing Software People Teams
– http://ManagingTheUnmanageable.net
• The study:
2013 Study of Product Team Performance
– http://ronlichty.blogspot.com
• Training:
– The Agile Manager
– Managing Software People and Teams