Middle Managers Can Really Mess Up Agile
From AgileOpenNorthwest
Contents |
Opening
Brent Barton opened with stories describing the reality that Senior Leadership declaring their companies are "going Agile," doing it well presents many difficulties. A potentially intractable problem centers on equipping Middle Managers to be supportive of agility within the business strategy. For sure, their job needs to change from a little to a lot.
We announced the focus of the event as an exercise to help based on Pete Deemer's exercise [[1]]
Defining Middle Managers for this Discussion
We needed a definition to continue. We settled on
- Not Senior Leadership
- Not individual contributors
- Intermediaries at any level in between
The discussion of a team versus individuals did not force us to reject this definition as sufficient for this event
Gather and Process Data
We broke into small teams of 3-5 people and wrote down the "things managers do:" one per sticky note
Next, we had the groups integrate (removing duplicates as we go) their work onto two flip charts labeled:
- Fine in Agile
- Conflicts with (or not needed) in Agile
We then reviewed the "Fine in Agile" information. With a bit of work, this could turn into a valid job description.
In the "Conflicts with (or not needed) in Agile" area we found items that could be re-written in opposite form and included into the job description (e.g. Change "maintain status quo" to "challenge status quo").
Fine In Agile
File:FineInAgile.jpg File:ConflictsWithAgile.jpg
The "Hook"
Then ask questions like:
- Would you be more or less useful if your role was like this?
- Would your job be more or less interesting if your role was like this?
Thoughts
- This can be run with Managers to help them define their new roles
- This can be run with teams to provide input into the organization
- Take these to Senior Leadership and HR (Who else?) and help equip the organizations middle managers to support Agile!
