Intro into what an agile manager is, self-managed team, lean concepts, tools to help agile managers best serve their teams.

1. THE AGILE MANAGER

2. PEOPLE & WORK

3. What is the number one failure of tech projects?
• 15%-25% of software development projects come to a dead end (postponed,
cancelled, aborted etc.)
• Main reason: not technology but “politics”(communication, staffing, relationship
with management or clients, lack of motivation, high turnover => sociology of the
project)
• Managers have more people worries than technical worries - but they rarely manage
that way; they manage as technology is their biggest concern
• Even though they don’t do the work, but manage it
• They focus on the lowest priority items instead of what should be their main
concern: PEOPLE
—pg. 4 PeopleWare Productive Projects and Teams, Tom DeMarco Timothy Lister, Dorset House Publishing Company Incorporated 1999

4. The
High-
Tech
Illusion
—pg. 4 PeopleWare Productive Projects and Teams, Tom DeMarco Timothy Lister, Dorset House Publishing Company Incorporated 1999

5. The High-Tech Illusion
—pg. 4 PeopleWare Productive Projects and Teams, Tom DeMarco Timothy Lister, Dorset House Publishing Company Incorporated 1999

6. Modern management theory influencers (1)
• Father of Scientific Management
• Came up with the “best practices”
• planning and improvement (“brain work”) should be separated from
normal work
“There is no question that the cost
of production is lowered by
separating the work of planning
and brain work as much as
possible from the manual labor.”
Frederick Winslow
Taylor
b. 1856, USA

7. Modern management theory influencers (2)
•Father of Modern Management
•14 principles of management (“Industrial and General Administration”,
1914):
•Division of labour: specialised employees => higher output
•Authority: managers have authority to give orders
•Unity of direction: teams with same objectives work under one manager
with one plan
•Unity of command: one subordinate must respond to only one superior
•Chain of command: scalar chain - formal line of authority
•the 5 responsibilities of managers: planning, organising, coordinating,
commanding, controlling
Henry Fayol
b. 1841, France

8. Theory X & Y Management
• Douglas McGregor of MIT Sloan
School of Management - The Human
Size of Enterprise - 1957 - 1960’s:
• Theory X: authoritarian, assume
individuals only work reluctantly
(Taylor and Fayol).
• Theory Y: people would do
anything at the best of their
abilities, if they are committed to
the goal and purpose of the
organisation.

9. Theory X vs Theory Y
Theory X Theory Y
Average humans dislike work and try to avoid working.
People spend effort to do work as natural as they do to play and
rest.
Because of this, people will need to be coerced,
controlled, directed, and threatened so that the maximum
amount of effort can be extracted out of them.
People will use self-direction and self-control for goals that they
are committed to. Commitment comes most strongly from the
intrinsic rewards related to the achievement itself. That is the
challenge, the learning, and the sende of purpose.
People want to be directed as they have little ambition and
avoid taking responsiblelity.
Provided the right environment, humans seek responsibility
rather than avoiding it.

10. What motivates people?
• Daniel Pink’s Drive: people are motivated by having a
desire for Mastery and a sense of Autonomy / self-direction
towards a driving Purpose
• Ted Talk here
• Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's Flow: The Psychology of Optimal
Experience
• Flow is the state where you’re so immersed in the activity you’re
doing, that you’re completely forgetting about anything else.
• Challenges and skills match
• Ted Talk

11. When are you
in the flow?

12. “MANAGE” A SELF-MANAGED TEAM

13. What is a self-managed team?
• Does not mean “no managers” :)
• Team is responsible for their operations and
administrative tasks, meeting targets and
objectives, reaching high performance and
continuously learning
• There are different levels of autonomy (from
teams that have considerable control over their
work and the operations boundaries to teams
with team leads that set these boundaries)
• In general, self-managed teams have decision
power over:
• The work done and the team goals
• How they work (process, framework, etc.)
• Internal performance issues (how each team
member does their part to achieve their goals)
• Decision making, problem solving

14. We talk about self-managed teams. What is the
manager to do?
Traditional manager Agile Manager
One person owns the role entirely. Part of the role is distributed / delegated to the team.
Manages the team (e.g. tells them what do to and how to
do it, reporting, sets improvements, solves problems).
Supports the team (learning, coaching, impediment removal,
organising problem-solving to allow the teams to figure out
solutions on their own).
Plans and allocates work for the team.
Teams decide who works on what; the manager agrees with the
team on team objectives, quality standards across teams, etc.
Monitors the performance of the people; rewards
performance related to the work assigned to them.
Monitors the achievements of the team as a unit; acknowledges
and cheers individual performance.
“Motivates” the team.
Makes sure the team has the right environment to be highly
motivated.
Stands between the team and organisation, as their
representative and contact point. The team will get info on
the organisation through him and communicate through
him.
Facilitates communication channels between the team and
organisation.

15. How do I have authority as a manager of a self-
managed team?
• Expertise in the domain area
• Ability to coach and help the team individuals grow (feedback!)
• Communication and representing team interest in high level meetings
• Caring for each member of the team
• Ability to facilitate group events
• Knowledge of how the group works and taking active steps to help them work faster
• Creating an environment of trust, honesty and candid feedback for the team to feel safe
• Help the team maintain focus
• Being an example through your own values, behaviour, energy, actions (e.g. we like our CTO, who’s a Wing Chun
master, former hacker, bitcoin expert and has a very dry British sense of humour; I like to hang out with him, and I also respect him for his
knowledge and expertise)

16. THE TOOLS OF AN AGILE MANAGER

17. Giving and receiving feedback
• Radical Candour: giving feedback from
a place of caring, with only good
intention
• Ruinous Empathy: you care too much
about the person to tell them what they
did wrong or how they can improve
• Manipulative Insincerity: you don’t care
enough about the person to challenge
directly
• Obnoxious aggression: criticising
someone without showing you care
Source: https://www.radicalcandor.com/about-radical-candor/

18. Retrospectives
• Experience is not enough to build excellence. The essential thing is to learn from the experience.
• So the act of reflecting on past work is not naturally a high priority (there’s always work to be
done). Yet, reflecting on how we worked in the past is the key for growth, improvement and
overall evolution.
• If we all agree than learning and improving are at the heart of each team, the retrospective is the
most valuable instrument to achieve this.
Retrospectives are not
1. a process;
2. a way to change process;
3. training;
4. brainstorming
…but they are triggers for building a new process / changing a dysfunctional one / identifying a
training need/ identifying new ideas and creating the right environment to make things happen.

19. Retrospective Rules
Regardless of what we discover, we must understand and truly
believe that everyone did the best job he or she could, given what
was known at that time, his or her skills and abilities, the resources
available, and the situation at hand.
-> retrospective is a place of trust and openness.

20. Retrospectives benefits
1. Identify problems: taking the time to discuss impediments to excellent work creates opportunities for great solutions => you
get a prioritised list of improvement ideas
2. Collective intelligence: tap the knowledge of your team for best ideas and solutions
3. Increased productivity: retros make external dependencies explicit and allows you to act on them => improvement is constant
and manageable
4. Boost engagement: a place and time for the team to voice concerns and seek help
5. Contribution: create a space for the introverts to express themselves and be heard (facilitation tactics)
6. Appreciation and morale: stop and take notice of the things that are going well. Celebrate!
7. Team energiser: the team gets together and gets excited as they find new ways to do better work and support each other
8. Team building: build harmony and bonding in the team
9. Empower teams: give the team the power to make decisions and follow them through; they own their choices and their
actions, creating a fantastic feeling of empowerment
10. Commitment: a team is more committed to implement solutions they helped create
11. Autonomy - Mastery - Purpose: retrospective create a motivating environment, giving the team the possibility to 1) change
anything related to their way of work (Autonomy); 2) come up with ideas to upgrade their skills (Mastery); 3) identify Purpose in
their work

21. 5
THE WHY
WHY
WHY
WHY
WHY’S
The vehicle will not start. (the problem)
1. Why?
– The battery is dead.
2. Why?
– The alternator is not functioning.
3. Why?
– The alternator belt has broken.
4. Why?
– The alternator belt was well beyond its useful
service life and not replaced.
5. Why?
– The vehicle was not maintained according to
the recommended service schedule.
=> the fifth why, a root cause
NOTE: you should continue asking “why” until
you reach the root cause of the problem. Only
then you jump into finding a solution.

22. Go and see is a management technique
A technique with four dimensions:
1. Develop judgement by testing hypotheses: figure out if you’re right or you
have misconception
2. Build consensus by getting people to agree on the problem before
debating a solution; most conflicts involve people arguing on the solution
when they don’t agree on what the problem really is (=> one-person
solutions, people resist implementation)
3. Achieve goals at the desired speed by checking regularly where people
are in the implementation and helping them if they run into impediments
4. Empower people by involving them. “Take it to the team”.

23. Kaizen - continuous improvement
• The heart of agile
• Help the team figure out what’s their best performance and why
• Try to beat that
• The “standard” m.o. is the best the team can give at any time; now try to
beat it
• Continuous improvement - the basis for creating “learning organisations”

24. Toyota leadership
model

25. Toyota management principles

26. CYNEFIN
FRAMEWORK

27. • Good leadership is not a one-size-
fits-all proposition => we need a new
perspective based on complexity
science => Cynefin framework
• The framework sorts the issues facing
leaders into five contexts defined by
the nature of the relationship between
cause and effect
• It’s a decision / analytical framework
• You should manage in the Complex
and Complicated spaces and only
move a small amount to Simple, as it
is highly vulnerable to rapid and
accelerated change
Complexity theory - Cynefin
framework
Source: https://hbr.org/2007/11/a-leaders-framework-for-decision-making

28. Complexity theory -
Cynefin framework
COMPLICATEDCOMPLEX
CHAOTIC SIMPLE
Disorder
• Cause and effect are only
coherent in retrospect
• Probe - Sense - Respond
C E
• Cause and effect are
separated over time and
space
• Sense - Analyse - Respond
C - - - - > E
• No cause - effect
relationship perceivable
• Act - Sense - Respond
C # E
• Cause - effect relations
repeatable, perceivable &
predictable
• Sense - Categorise -
Respond
C = E
UNORDERED ORDERED
Examples:
• Simple: heavily process-oriented situations -
loan payment; complacency, falling in chaos
• Complicated: call the experts; you know
something is wrong with you car, but you
need an expert to solve it; the expert might
overlook non-experts thus miss opportunities
• Complex: battlefield commanders, politicians
in emergency they gather a team together
(different domains, backgrounds, etc.)
desperately hoping some will come up with
an answer; “Huston, we got a problem”
• Chaotic: September 11; the “legend” issue
Scrum&Leanarehere
EMERGENT PRACTICE GOOD PRACTICE
BEST PRACTICENOVEL PRACTICE

29. Reading list for the Agile Manager

30. CLOSING