The Lively Art of Managing Agility Leaders

Managing Agility Leaders

• What does it mean to manage Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches?
• What does this Manager do?
• What are you looking for in a Manager?

What do you want from a Manager?

• Be consistent: Apply Agility to Management
• Training, fundamental needs (desk)
• Set guiding principles and expectations
• Let me do what I need to do
• Ask questions from a place o curiosity
• Avoid things that sound like mind guys
• "Ask a Manager" blog
• http://www.askamanager.org/
  
• Professional Development
• Know when to listen and when to act
• "Would you like my help with this?"

Navigating the system

• Perspective taking
• Ego development theory: 1st, 2nd, 3rd-person perspective
• Ladder of inference
• Develop system thinking ability
• Applying Agility throughout the organization
• Apply Agility to the work of management
• Establish working agreements
• Understand where people are today and where they want to be tomorrow

Alternatively...No Manager

• Divide responsibilities among multiple people: Hiring, coaching leaders
• Healthy support/peer mentoring network
• Community of Practice
• "Field trip" to observe other Teams and "steal ideas"
• Full-team coaching

How to navigate "20th century" management expectations?

• Hiring
• Performance Reviews
• Professional Development
• Apply Agile principles and tools
• Pairing
• Delegation: Having the team own the work
• Visibility
• Gather requirements: What does success look like?
• Rapid feedback

Working yourself out of a job?

• Never have to make a decision
• The system allows the right decisions to be made
• Culture of individual power and ownership
• Help people help themselves
• Be assertive about doing what I want to do
• "The 5 Levels of Leadership"
• People are connected to outside coaching networks

--

David Whitlock
Adjunct Lecturer
Portland State University

--

David Whitlock
Adjunct Lecturer
Portland State University