“How can we tell how far along we are with our agile adoption?” I heard this question again the other day. Usually, the person who asks the question starts to answer it: Number of teams using agile Number of people trained in agile Number of projects using...
A group of managers in organizations adopting agile methods pondered who should fill new agile roles. Why can’t the managers become ScrumMasters, they asked. In my experience, that’s a risky road. However, one manager was adamant. After all, the managers...
I used to make my living writing code. I was good at it. I was really good at figuring out the problem when the symptom and causes weren’t close together. So they promoted me to manager. As a new manager, I was sent to a two-day Basic Management Orientation,...
“A talented employee may join a company because of its charismatic leaders, its generous benefits, and its world class training programs, but how long that employee stays and how productive he is while there is determined by his relationship with his immediate...
How can managers support teams to truly support team responsibility? In the early days of Agile, some pundits (and developers) declared, “We don’t need no stinking managers.” They asserted that if teams were self-managed, management work was waste....
Every team needs leadership, even self-organizing teams. When I make this statement, some people assume I mean that every team needs a designated leader. I can’t blame them, most people are accustomed to thinking of leadership residing in a role or a charismatic...
Many people are conditioned to say Yes to every request that comes their way. I met a CIO like that. He told me his policy was to never say No to the business. So he always said Yes, and the business was always angry because things he agreed to didn’t get done,...
Some pundits proclaim that leadership rests on charisma, the ability to create a vision, or “presence.” Teams do need a vision and a compelling goal. But do teams need one charismatic leader? No.Teams need leaders of a different sort. Teams need leaders...
I recently talked to a group that’s forming a new “change leadership” team. Part of the work of the team is improving the organization, and part is capacity building. Four of the people on the team are folks with technical backgrounds who are viewed as having...
I’ve been noticing what’s missing lately. In some ways, its harder to see what’s not there than what is. But there’s lost of useful information in what isn’t said, as well as what is. For example: A manager, talking about one of the...
Successful management–of product and projects– depends on information flow. Without information about progress and problems, you’ll be blindsided when problems and new information come up, as they inevitably do. Some methods build in visibility and...
People who work in software are smart people who take pride in their abilities to understand complex information and solve difficult problems. But much of the work isn’t only about smarts. Creating most software requires the help and cooperation of other people....
Here in the United States, our business culture tends to be action-oriented. We value the ability to think fast and act decisively. These qualities can be strengths. However, like most strengths, they can also be a weakness. Taking action when you don’t know the...
I wrote an article about the many ways that managers inadvertently plug the communication pipeline (free registration required). In doing so, they deprive themselves of the information they need to do their jobs. It reminded me of one of the most common ways managers...
A while back I talked to a CEO of a contract development shop. He wondered how Agile could help him with fixed price, fixed scope contracts to deliver software. Of course, the requirements that come with these contracts are never complete or completely accurate. The...
What’s the purpose of team values, norms, working agreements, and simple rules? Bob Sutton posted a piece on Team Guidelines that got me thinking how team values can be shaped and influenced. The guidelines–all Mom and Apple Pie–were handed down by a...
A while back, a colleague, Susan, called to ask me for some advice. “I’ve been planning a vacation with my family for months,” she said. “And now my new client wants me on-site next week. I’d be happy to come the week after next, but they keep pushing. I told them I...
InfoQ picked up my post, Team Trap #1: Messing with the Membership, and contrasted it with Mike Cohn’s advice that a PO, manager or scrum master who observes that the team is too homogeneous might stick a couple of new team members to increase diversity on the...
There’s a buzz about systems thinking in the software world these days. Systems thinking isn’t new. Jerry Weinberg’s An Introduction to General Systems Thinking was first published in 1975. Senge’s Fifth Discipline came out in the 90s. Still, we haven’t turned the...
Do you really have a team when someone keeps messing with the membership? One summer, long ago and far away, I was on a softball team. It would be an exaggeration to say I played softball, but I did participate in practices, showed up for games and imbibed of...
