Management’s Role in Scaled Agile

January 12, 2017
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We are currently undergoing a transformation from a waterfall hybrid (I call it Water-Scrum-Fall) to a flavor of Scaled Agile. As we are navigating the waters of such a large effort there are a number of questions that have arisen. Most have been well covered in the many online articles about such an undertaken. However, there is one that has been very vague and hard to find a lot of prescriptive information on: the role of management in a scaled agile world.

It turns out there is a good reason: the role of management isn’t as central of a role in scaled agile as it is in waterfall. The day to day planning, execution, and corrections are now handled by self directing teams, taking the manager out of the middle of the day to day mix. But this doesn’t mean the manager’s role is diminished…

The role of the manager is still to help the organization reach its goals. This just happens in a different way in an agile world. Instead of directing day to day traffic the manager takes on more of a servant leadership role, helping to enable teams to be successful.

Depending on your organization, your staff, and how you are structured the additional roles of management will vary. Who reports to the manager? Is the manager a coach as well? What KPIs should managers be tracking? What is the role of the manager in escalations? These are just a few of the many questions you’ll need to address to determine the role of the manager in your newly minted agile organization. This is one of the bigger hurdles to get alignment on but once you do adds a great deal of clarity and peace for your managers staring this transition in the face.

Here are some links that we have found that can help guide you. We have yet to find any that are as prescriptive as for more central roles to Agile, such as the Scrum Master or Product Owner:

  • http://blog.crisp.se/2015/11/10/henrikkniberg/what-is-an-agile-leader
  • https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2009/december/manager-2-0-the-role-of-the-manager-in-scrum
  • http://www.netobjectives.com/blogs/importance-leadership-and-management-in-agile
  • http://www.netobjectives.com/files/ManagementsRoleLean-Agile.pdf
  • http://agilemakingprogress.blogspot.com/2011/01/managements-role-in-scrum.html
  • http://portal.netobjectives.com/what-is-the-executive-role-in-lean-and-agile/
  • https://blog.versionone.com/the-role-of-functional-managers-in-agile-from-tactical-to-strategic/
  • http://portal.netobjectives.com/what-does-the-middle-manager-do-in-mid-scale-agile/
  • https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-role-of-a-VP-in-a-large-organization-regarding-Agile-Scrum

Good luck in your transformation!

Warning on our increasingly connected world

January 9, 2017
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There is a lack of understanding by many non-technical people on how the technology their lives revolve around works. This is the intention of technology – shield complexities of how things work from people and make hard things easy. However, it also has a potential dark side that can create a blind spot in people’s personal security.

Let’s take a simple example – any of the many voice response tools out there, from speakers to TV remotes to refrigerators to phone. Many people are unaware that to process speak most of these devices sends recordings / streams of people speaking to the company’s servers for processing (the chipset in most devices isn’t powerful enough to process things like freeform speech efficiently). The device opens a connection to the servers, sends information, then waits for a response telling it how to behave.

This means that all of your recordings, and anything you or others said in them, are now stored on a server and you no longer own them. Most of these devices claim that they sleep until their activation word is spoken, meaning that the only recordings are the ones that follow you explicitly initiating dialog.

 

It would be quite easy to couple the data in these recordings with your profile account information and other openly searchable data points (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) to put a pretty robust picture of you together. This could be used for anything from targeted marketing to targeted scams, if the data fell into the wrong hands.

This is just one of many examples of how our increasingly interconnected world opens avenues many people don’t realize exist. These technologies are not bad things. You should just make sure you understand what you are getting into and how you will use it before you go all in on the latest and greatest IOT device.

Mr. T Challenge!

May 9, 2016
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So my team has a tough goal. They named themselves “The A Team” with A standing for “Agile Coaching”. Given their name I told them that if they could hit a set of tough goals that I’d shave my head like Mr. T. They said it needed to be purple too. They hit their goal so I held up my end of the bargain.

Wearing it like this for a full week. Go team!