Tip #13 - Respect The Team

This Agile Leadership Tip has a similar message to Tip #12.

This Tip is about how to scale with agile by decentralizing decision-making.  Agile is about many things that can all be found in the Agile Manifesto, but at the heart of it is having trusted Teams who can make implementation decisions and delivery.

Recently, we worked with an approximately 1,000-person company that was having a problem getting to market quickly.  They called themselves ‘agile’ and even had a Team of about eight people.  But they could not get anything done.

What we realized was the Agile Manager was focusing on small details of what the Team was doing and changing their mind frequently. So, the Team did not have a clear direction, customer or Product Owner.

Everything had to run through the Manager, so in effect, the Team ran at the speed of the Leader.  Unfortunately, the Manager also had other responsibilities where he also micro-managed in a similar fashion which resulted in neither product doing very well.

The Tip here is, as an Agile Leader, focus on the flow of work, not the detailed tasks that are being completed. That detail should be done under the “Definition of Ready” which happens when the two or one-week Sprint begins.

You need to observe Agile Manifesto Principle #5 “Build products around motivated individuals.  Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.”

It’s one of the keys to scaling; you need to manage the flow of work, not the details and individual tasks.  Bad things happen when you do this; work gets missed, there are delays, and quality suffers.

We now offer a 3-hour workshop that shows how an effective agile environment operates.  This workshop might be just what you need to get the wheels turning and develop new ideas on how to improve your delivery situation.

Here is a link to all 52 Free Agile Leadership Course Snippet.