teaching pointy-haired bosses to be agile enablers

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Teaching Pointy-Haired Bossesto be Agile Enablers

@ryanripley

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#BSCADC

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“Regardless of what we discover, we understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the resources available, and the situation at hand.”

--Norm Kerth, Project Retrospectives: A Handbook for Team Reviews

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Agile coaches can gain buy-in from managers during an agile transformation by focusing on their needs.

What is a manager?

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What does a manager do?

“Yet a common misconception is that because of this reliance on self-organizing teams, there is little or no role for leaders of agile teams. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

--Mike Cohn, Succeeding with Agile

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DILBERT © 2007 Scott Adams. Used By permission of UNIVERSAL UCLICK. All rights reserved.

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SCRUM IN ONE SLIDE

Development

Sprint Planning Sprint Review

Sprint Retrospective

Sprint

ROLES: Scrum Master, Product Owner, Developer

ARTIFACTS: Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog, Product Increment

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EVERYTHING YOU’VE DONE BEFORE IS WRONG

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??????

AGILE IMPACTS EVERYONE

•Organizational Change

• Leadership Change

• Team Change

• Status Change

• Job Description Change

•Role Change

•Culture Change

What does a manager stand to lose?

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We are telling managers to

give up the tools, methods,

processes, and behaviors

that have made them

successful.

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Management support is critical to the success of agile projects and agile adoptions.

LEADING CAUSES OF FAILED AGILE PROJECTSFrom the 9th Annual VersionOne State of Agile Report

©2015 VersionOne, Inc. - State of Agile is a trademark of VersionOne, Inc. and VersionOne is a registered trademark of VersionOne, Inc.

42%

Company philosophy or culture at odds

with core agile values

37%

External pressure to follow traditional waterfall processes

38%

Lack of management support

30%

Insufficient training

33%A broader organizational or communications

problem

33%

Unwillingness of team to follow agile

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BARRIERS TO FURTHER AGILE ADOPTIONFrom the 9th Annual VersionOne State of Agile Report

©2015 VersionOne, Inc. - State of Agile is a trademark of VersionOne, Inc. and VersionOne is a registered trademark of VersionOne, Inc.

22%

Concerns about a loss of management

control

24%

Management concerns about lack of upfront planning

29%Management support

44%

Ability to change organizational culture

34%General organizational resistance to change

35%Not enough personnel with necessary agile

experience

“People who ask others to change may not understand what value they are asking people to give up. And in fact, they may not appreciate or even notice what’s valuable to the people they expect to change.”

--Esther Derby

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MANAGER PERSONAS

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•NEEDS

•WANTS

•GOALS

•LIMITATIONS

How do we build personas?

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Talk to a manager!

What is your goal?

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Managers communicate their concerns and fears through the questions they ask.

What must be true for a person to ask that question?

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“What does it matter how many times I reassign team members, isn’t that what self-organization is for?”

“Agile is for IT. Why are you talking to HR and finance?"

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“Your team leaves at 5:00pm and refuse to work weekends. Why don’t they have a sense of urgency?”

“That developer is slacking. When is the scrum master going to take care of the poor performer?”

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Pay attention to the statements that managers make.

What must be true for a person to say that?

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“If the candidate does not have CSM after their name, they aren’t worth interviewing."

“You can’t coach if you’ve never developed software. Pick another scrum master for this team."

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“Teams ship working software at the end of each sprint. That’s why we implemented scrum. Work the weekends if you’re behind. The team needs to deliver on their commitments.”

“You teams velocity is worse than the other scrums teams. Find a way to get your velocity up, or we may have to reassign resources.”

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RESPONSES TO CHANGE ARE INVALUABLEWhat is the source of their resistance?

Does the manager know how to do what they are being asked to do?

Is there a personal conflict that is causing

resistance?

Is the manager a champion of the

old process?

Are there systems in place

that reward disruptive behavior?

Is the path to success unclear

to them?

What does the manager lose due

to the change?

Ryan RipleyPSM I, PSM II, PSE, CSM, PMI-ACP, PSPO I, PSD

10+ years experience on agile teams

GOALS

Add value back to the organization

NEEDS

To be recognized for the work and contributions

delivered to the team

WANTS

To foster a safe environment for

people to experiment and do creative work

LIMITATIONS

Lack of agile certifications

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“All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move.”

--Benjamin Franklin

Movers

• Aligned with change

• Motivated

• Eager to learn

• Coach the coaches candidates

Movables

• Some convincing required

• Early trust issues likely

• Support and coaching necessary

Immovables

• Resistant to change

• Disruptive

• Low trust

• Seeks to control change

• Requires significant coaching

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IMMOVABLES

MOVABLES

MOVERS

GOAL

“People don’t resist change. Change that’s presented as “Follow, or be fired!” feels like coercion. And most people resist coercion”

--Esther Derby

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IMMOVABLES

MOVABLES

MOVERS

GOAL

Influence vs Coercion

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There are no shortcuts

But here are some shortcuts

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Make sure people are ready to hear what you have to say.

You are going to face a lot of wrong premises about what makes safety and speed possible.

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“500 YARDS OF FOUL-SMELLING MUCK”

--Red “The Shawshank Redemption”

The management agile transformation

pipelineH

Self-organization does not initially feel safe or fast to a traditional manager.

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“A scrum teams job is to self-organize around the challenges, and within the boundaries and constraints, put in place by management.”

--Mike Cohn, Succeeding with Agile

SCRUM MANAGEMENT • Manage the boundaries

• Build Stable Teams• Hire people – Grow skills

• Act transparently

• Examine systems &

correct faulty ones

• Give guidance when

asked/needed

• Reach across org charts

• Definition of Done

• Continuous improvement

• Expect working software

every sprint

Vision – Direction – Goals

“I finally have time to do my job.”

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“Managers are still needed. Not so much for their planning and controlling ability, but for that important job of interfacing on the teams behalf with the rest of the organization.”

--Diana Larsen

“Managers are still needed. Not so much for their planning and controlling ability, but for that important job of interfacing on the teams behalf with the rest of the organization.”

--Diana Larsen

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http://agileanswerman.com

ryan@agileanswerman.com

@ryanripley

Podcast available on iTunes,

Stitcher, and

AgileAnswerMan.Com

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