I have seen situations where both senior level and middle level management saw the value in Agile. Moving towards a team-based organization and iterative incremental delivery brings benefits. In my experience, it’s a little more common for middle managers to hold onto the existing pattern. And why not? When they don’t see their place in agile, they don’t embrace agile. Agile is silent on the role of middle level management. Blanket statements dismissing the need for managers don’t help. I think it is confusion about what middle level managers do.
First, the majority of organizations moving to agile still need management. That generally means people in management roles. This is especially so in large complex organizations. In traditional hierarchies, middle managers look up the hierarchy for direction. They focus down the hierarchy to accomplish cascading goals. When teams pull work from queues and self-organize to meet goals, the focus changes. Then, the real opportunity for middle managers is to look across the organization. They focus on improving the system and developing people and teams.
So, what do middle managers do when they aren’t directing day-to-day work? Plenty.
Take a look at the middle level management mindmap (or read through the list of middle level management skills reproduced below).
What Middle Managers Do
Maintain product integrity
- Measure and monitor integrity of the code base
- Build feedback into the work so people can self-correct
- Technical standards
Activate cross-functional networks to solve problems
- Open space
- Ad hoc problem solving groups
- Problem finding
- Data gathering, analysis, hypothesis testing
Work on the work system
- Evolve technical systems of the org
- Improvements based on data
- Measure and monitor the work system
- Demand analysis
- Measurement
- Observation
- Remove impediments
- Look for patterns across team
- Work across the organization
Create structures for people to work in
- Enabling conditions for teams
- Evolve social systems of the org
- Demand analysis
- Lateral coordinating mechanisms
- Long-lived teams
- Policies
- Policies that support people and work
- Information flow
- Opportunistic cross-pollinization (lunchroom effect)
- Formal
- Informal
Observe
- Problem finding
- Experiments
- Model
- Gather and analyze data
- What should be measured?
- Develop hypotheses
Listen
- 30/70 rule with report
- The content of conversation
- What is not said
- The buzz in the room
- Tone of the humor
- Content of rumors
- Lullaby language
Create an environment for teams to succeed
- Understand visible and invisible structures that drive patterns
- Decision boundaries
- Team support
- Delegated funds
- Team initiation
- Access to expertise outside the team
- Material support
- Compelling goal
- Information about the work
- Real team
Self-development
- Self-awareness
- Here are two exercises I recommend to managers who want to improve their self-awareness.
- Self-management
- Emotional intelligence
- Domain knowledge
- How people and organizations work
Develop people
- Individuals (Side note: one-on-one meetings are the cornerstone of individual development in self-organizing teams)
- Support for ongoing feedback
- Long-term coaching relationships
- Support for lateral skill development
- Mentoring
- Increase contextual knowledge
- Business model
- Market
- Customers
- Strategies
- Build feedback into the work
- Centers of Excellence (CoE)
- Functional skills
- Professional development
- Scan for new developments
- Peer learning
- Teams
- Peer-to-peer feedback
- Conflict skills
- Basis for trust
- Technical skills development
- Teaming skills
- Build feedback into the work
Translate strategic plans into tactical plans
- Cross-boundary release planning
- Manage dependencies
- Project portfolio management
- Prioritizing
- Value delivery
- Canceling
Many managers have the skills to do this work. They have the organizational savvy to get things done. And, they can bring much more value to their organizations.
The maturity of an organization determines how much improvement can be gained when moving to a new methodology. Some manager’s know this, some don’t. I would be curious to know what level the organizations where that had managers who resisted agile.
Helping middle managers focus on the “proper role” is a great way to improve a team. It’s sad to see organizations who have talent that is being wasted because the company’s process is a mess.
Good points of interest, thx.
I’ve always found middle managers to be of great hindrance and obstacle transitioning from the waterfall model where they used to be at the center of the universe and now are relegated to the backstage.
Unfortunately, middle managers have the greatest capacity to cause harm and risk derailing the entire transition to agile. What’s worse is that oftentimes, it is difficult to have a higher authority come and correct the situation.
I don’t think there should be any focus on what middle managers should specifically do from the get-go, but to ensure that proper Agile principles are adhered to initially and middle managers fill in the gaps.
Joe,
Why do you suppose middle managers “resist”?
You’ve pointed to one reason, already. They’ve had a position where they feel their work is valued and they’re important. You (or some other person) come along with agile, and tells them, “you aren’t needed anymore.” Those managers experience loss–loss of status, loss of routine, loss of purpose. Can really blame them for wanting to hold on to what they had.
But when managers see they have a valuable place, and have a role in shaping the organization to better support team based work, they’ll re-engage. But the harder you push them to admit they were wrong, the more they’ll hold on to their ideas.
I don’t know that you have to lay out exactly how managers should do things, focusing on principles helps. But so does some vision of what you want to create and how people can play a part it making it.
Esther
“Unfortunately, middle managers have the greatest capacity to cause harm and risk derailing the entire transition to agile.”
But only in an organization that doesn’t have a formal, documented, and offical process. I think you’re talking about a lower level organization that has a process hinged on the talents of managers. In a higher level organization the process isn’t harmed by losing or adding managers. Nor losing or adding programmers, testers, etc.
Am I missing something? Someone help me out.
Barry Oshry calls what you’ve describe as “tearing.” http://www.powerandsystems.com/ People in the middle are pulled by request from the top and the bottom. And as you point out, when all the structures and incentives hold the existing patterns in place, it’s hard for a new pattern to emerge. That’s true anywhere in the organization, not just for middle managers.
I find that engaging middle managers in lateral projects–working on the work system–helps shift the structure and their place in it.
Esther
These diagrams are most insightful, please keep em coming 🙂
Love that diagram, already in my wall an used in my team meetings.
But would love to see a diagram too of the role of senior management in a truly agile organisation.
Hi,
just want to say that I like the mind map. I belong to the middle management and can find all my job duties and tasks in this diagram.
Currently I am responsible for a software development team which implemented SCRUM two years ago. Before doing SCRUM I was responsible for project management. I eagerly pushed agile and SCRUM, because our processes were so bad and not working properly. Nobody needed to convince me for change. In the meantime we run agile practices very successfully and improve continously.