Agile organisations typically have three areas of accountability to deliver products and services in an agile way:
Where does the manager fit in?
The manager’s role in an agile world is to make efficiency and productivity a reality.
To do this in the past, managers have typically “managed” individuals in vertical, functional silos (i.e., Development, Quality Assurance, Finance, etc.). In the agile enterprise, though, management is horizontal:
Set a strong vision and mission of why agility is important for the organisation. Agile can reap significant benefits:
Make it clear that these “transformation” outcomes are everyone’s job. Improve your overall organisation by having each person take a step toward these benefits.
All of these things are easy to achieve, but it requires people to change the way they work. If you’re not explicit about the change that’s required, if people just tweak the way they work and don’t really change, you won’t get agile’s benefits. If you don’t participate yourself, then the people you lead won’t change their behaviour.
All agile frameworks have specific rules that make it effective. When only parts are enacted, agile isn’t as effective. A manager’s job is to set expectations that for agile to work teams must work within its rules.
Managers can easily achieve 15-20% more productivity when they encourage teams to be self organising.
Managers should look beyond just the symbols of agility and work to change people's mindsets - the way they think about work
Managers should give people room to improve and to be active in learning.
Working in a cadence of rapid, short work cycles, is key to receiving fast feedback to learn, innovate, and pivot to change.
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