Topic

Discouraging Leadership from Micromanaging the Agile Team

Response

Successful Agile transformations bring about a change to the overall relationships between the Leadership team and the individual Agile teams. These changes are fuelled by a need to transition from a command and control management approach to a servant leadership structure.

The role of a servant leader is to ensure the success of the Agile team by providing them with the support, tools, resources and quick decision-making. With the right support Agile Teams provide updates on their progress to their leadership through a number of well structured and regular forums, including the stakeholder reviews and a small number of performance charts. For example, a Feature Roadmap or Sprint burn down or Sprint burn up charts.

Agile teams and the wider organisation can take a few practical steps to discourage leadership from micromanaging. The recommended practical steps include:

Ensure there are clear distinctions between the definition of the what and the how, which shape the agile team’s objectives. furthermore, there must be recognition by all parties of their role in defining, reporting progress and changing them in response to planned and unplanned factors.
The what is concerned with the output and goals of the agile team’s work. This is sometimes supported with a definition of the why.
The how is the responsibility of the agile team. Since they’re are the ones with the expertise need to best determine how to achieve the goals.
The agile team should adopt a transparent and easy way to document and share the objectives and progress of the agile team’s work. For example, publishing on the walls of the agile teams coloctaion space these important artefacts will enable the leadership and sponsors to obtain the latest information at anytime.
Establish regular and the formal presentation of the agile team’s work. By agreeing to short term objectives, for example at the start of each iteration, e.g. a sprint or monthly cycle, leadership and sponsors are more likely to refrain from requesting updates on a daily basis, but choosing to hold back until the next scheduled ceremony. For example, a stakeholder review.

Discover more

Additional information, including working examples and templates are available in the Monetical knowledge base.