• Agile Coach

Manager? These 3 actions are expected of you when working Agile

So a frequently cited learning objective in our training courses for Scrum Masters, Product Owners and Agile Coaches is: how do we bring management into an Agile approach? In this blog, we describe the 3 actions expected of you as a manager.

A tsunami of projects

Do you recognize this in your teams and/or organization?

• There are far too many projects;
• They also run all at once;
• As a result, almost everything takes too long;
• And so the energy runs out of those projects.

It occurs in many organizations. So maybe you will also come across this?

• Employees work in many different project teams;
• Often only a few hours a week, in addition to their own work;
• It is unclear to them what value the projects really add;
• A lot of effort is put into delivering the traffic light reports;
• But everyone knows that is mostly a paper reality.

If, as a manager, you were able to put a lot of check marks above all, I have good news! You can positively change your world and the world of your team members with 3 actions. So that they deliver more value, work with fresh enthusiasm and you get more grip.

Action 1: Prioritize with a filleting knife

In many organizations, there are too many projects. Once a year, all submitted ideas and initiatives are reviewed by management. The output soon produces 100 projects. To manage that, ingenious project management techniques are needed, and so whole project management departments are rigged up.

An Agile organization handles this differently. For example, by holding a PI(Product Increment) planning session several times a year (often quarterly). There, the work for the coming quarter is prioritized and selected. The art of management is to make hard choices when necessary.

The outcome should always be: an ambitious and valuable Agile Roadmap. Which is insightful and aligned between teams. Of course, that Agile Roadmap is also achievable and the risks have been identified. By the way, what is the difference between Agile Roadmap and Product Backlog? You can read about that in this article.

Action 2: Create motivated teams

Another consequence of bringing a lot of projects into the organization is that you also have to rig up a lot of teams. As a result, team members are sometimes only available for 4 hours a week to work in a team on a project. Another disadvantage is that 1 team member is often in 5 or more project groups. With any luck, all team members working in a project have the same day scheduled to work on the project.

Management should be expected to free up teams to work on an Agile Roadmap with projects. So put together a team that works together for an extended period of time (quarterly, semi-annually, annually). Not on tig projects at once, but on 1 project with laser focus. Then you will know much faster what works and also make money faster. Or you lose less money, because you stop a project that has no chance.

The result is always; you bring work to motivated teams and you stop classifying individual team members into different project groups.

Action 3: Create a mindset of experimentation

Many teams find it difficult to turn a large and compelling plan into smaller valuable products. Sometimes teams get stuck in a procedure of a Stage Gate-like project structure, where you manage a project through several stages. From idea to realization over several months. That’s not how an Agile approach works. In an Agile approach, you go through those phases within a maximum of 4 weeks. That means you often do smaller experiments , which create value faster and from which you learn faster.

In one of our projects, the risk manager was hesitant about the Agile working method: if things keep changing, how do you keep a grip? And how do you ensure that risks are managed in the long term? After an explanation of the Agile mindset, the framework of Scrum and a two-day PI planning session, the risk manager was convinced. Because; this approach gives much more grip than the paper reality of interim traffic light reports. Want to spar about that? Send me a message and we’ll get started.

Need help? Feel free to call to address your challenge

Fancy implementing these 3 actions so that you maximize Agile working within your organization and/or teams? Feel free to call me and together we will take the first concrete steps.