Three secrets of Agile Leaders:
Leading others by leading yourself
Peter Stevens
Kharkiv PMDay
Workshops

Who is in the room? Would you consider yourself a…
• Developer – you design, create, test or deploy a product or service
• Agile Developer – you subscribe to the values and principles of the
Agile Manifesto
• Anti-Agile – you’re one of those developers who hate “Agile”
• Agile Leadership role– you serve as Agile Coach, Scrum Master or
Product Owner
• Project Manager
• Line Manager – Team or Group Manager
• C-Level Manager – You have overall responsibility for your company
or business unit
• Anyone else?

Meet Peter Stevens
“Mr. What Really Matters”

What do executives ask about agility?
• What are the buzzwords about?
• How can we innovate faster?
• How can we get business and technology to talk to each other?
• How can we develop better products?
• How can we educate our clients?
• How can agile make us better at delighting the customer
• How can I make it a success?
• What does it mean for me?

This introduction represents the start of a conversation
Behavior
PerspectiveMindset
Source: Barry O’Reilly, Unlearning

Denning’s 3 Laws
What does it mean to be agile?
“Agile Manifesto” “Fake” Agility

What is agility?
User Stories
SAFe
Sprint
Scrum
Planning
Poker
Story Points
Product
Backlog
Scrum Master
CI/CD
Pair
Programming
Kanban
LeSS
Product
Owner

IMHO the first sentence represents the Agile mindset

IMHO the first sentences represents the Agile mindset
Learning
Collaboration
Purpose

Agility is
Purpose
Learning Collaboration

Purpose
Learning Collaboration
Fake Agility - 1
This has nothing to do with me

Fake Agility - 2
User
Stories
SAFe
Sprint
Scrum
Planning
Poker
Story
Points
Product
Backlog
Scrum
Master
CI/CD
Pair
Programming
Kanban
Product
Owner
LeSSDo Scrum!

What does it mean to be agile?
Steve Denning’s Three “Laws” of Agile Organizations
• Law of the Customer
• Focus on customer needs, both existing customers, and even more importantly, new
customers and new markets
• Law of the Network
• Information flows without friction through the organization to seize opportunities or fix
problems
• Law of Small Teams
• Get business and technology working together efficiently to create customer-centric
products

Agility is
Customer
Network Small Teams

Agility is
Customer
Network
Small Teams
Purpose
Learning
Collaboration

Most wishes
from executives on their organizations
map to
one of the three laws of agility.

Agility has become a topic for leadership
https://www.wsj.com/articles/are-you-agile-enough-for-agile-management-11565607600https://hbr.org/2016/05/embracing-agile

I’d like to share three examples of successful leaders and
reveal their secrets of agile leadership
Secret 3Secret 2Secret 1

Change is easy if you want to do it
First Secret:

How I lost
10kg

“Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but
most of these were largely concerned with the movements
of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on
the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that
were unhappy.”
-- Douglas Adams

I don’t like how sugar makes me feel.
So I want to avoid sugar and carbohydrates.

Imagine you’re the captain of a
sailing ship…

What happens if you are
caught in storm?

Christmas represented a severe thunderstorm!
“They are good,
they are really good”
SugarPressure.com: Trader Joe's Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups
https://www.sugarpressure.com/2010/12/trader-joes-milk-chocolate-peanut-butter-cups.html

Do I want to get back on course?

If you want to go there,
you’ll get back on course

Tip:
You are the captain of your ship!
Change is easy if you want to do it

Three secrets of agile leadership
Secret 3Secret 2
Change is easy
if you want to
do it

Be Clear on
What Really Matters
Second Secret:

How to create alignment among 400,000 people
Every member of the Apollo
mission knew:
1. We are going to the moon
2. It’s not going to fail because of
me
3. If something goes wrong…
Apollo 11 Ready for Launch

How to create alignment among 400,000 people
Every member of the Apollo
mission knew:
1. We are going to the moon
2. It’s not going to fail because of
me
3. If something goes wrong,
remember item 1
Chandrayaan 2 Ready for Launch

Joerg Ewald
General Manager
Volirium AG
To save my
company, I first
needed to take
care of myself

Joerg’s top priority was to save his company

Tip:
Get Clarity on What Really Matters and
Communicate it right away
People will notice the difference right away
Clarity Can Be Transformational

Three secrets of agile leadership
Secret 3
Create
Clarity of
Purpose
Change is easy
if you want to
do it

Software developers
have solved
your biggest issues!
Third Secret:

Walter Stulzer
Executive Director
FutureWorks.ch
We wanted to
change,
but we literally
could not.

SituationFutureworksemergesoutofthe
fissionofalargerpartnership
Walterwantstostepbackfrom
dailybusiness,passthetorchtoa
functionalleadership
Theydedicated10%oftheir
leadershipcapacityto
improvementand
startmanyinitiatives
Noneofthegoalshavebeen
achieved
Two years go by…
Image ©2019 Peter Stevens
Licensed CC-BY-NC-ND

That’s not quite true…

That’s not quite true… they created a new logo

Second try, they worked in Sprints (focused)
Waltercommittedtobeingpartof
thesolution,trainedwithhis
leadershipteamon
ScrumandPersonalAgility
Theydedicated10%oftheir
leadershipcapacityto
improvementandstartworkingon
afewinitiativesatatime
Allofthegoalshadbeenachieved
Six months go by…
Image ©2019 Peter Stevens
Licensed CC-BY-NC-ND

Six months later…
• “We accomplished everything needed
to achieve our initial goals.
• “Half of our initial ideas proved unnecessary, so we didn't do them.
• “We were able to achieve all our goals with ½ the work & ¼ of the time
• “And the the results are already visible in our finances!”
-- Walter Stultzer, Executive Director, Futureworks AG

How Walter’s team did it
• “I committed to making this a
success
• “I communicated WHY, then WHAT
• “We applied Scrum to improving
the company
• “Every three weeks or so, my
management and I got together…
• “Personal Agility was the most
important part of all

Source: © fotolia.com
Do you
have
too
much
to do
but
not
enough
time
to do it?

What are the top agile practices used in Development?
• Daily standup
• Sprint/iteration planning
• Retrospectives
• Sprint/iteration review
• Short iterations
Source: VersionOne, 12th Annual State of Agile Report, 2018

As part of their job to improve your organization,
does you manager…?
Practice
• Daily standup
• Sprint/iteration planning
• Retrospectives
• Sprint/iteration review
• Short iterations
% of development teams that use
• 90%
• 88%
• 85%
• 80%
• 69%
Source: VersionOne, 12th Annual State of Agile Report, 2018

Speed comparison
This is you working on one thing at time
1 week

1 week
20 weeks
Speed comparison
This is you working on five things at once
1
2
3
4
5

There is a huge potential
to improve company performance
by eliminating excessive multitasking in management.

Tip: Start with Yourself
Apply Techniques from your Dev Teams
Apply Agility to Leadership

How to apply these three secrets of agile leadership
Apply Agility to
Leadership
Create clarity
on
what really
matters
Change is easy
if you want to
do it

Would you like to be the next Futureworks?
Walter Stulzer, Executive Director

Start with yourself
Individual
Apply Personal Agility
to your life or project

https://saat-network.ch/tenhttps://saat-network.ch/ebk

Would you like to be like Walter?
• Peter Stevens
• Co-Founder
Personal Agility Institute
• peter@saat-network.ch
• @peterstev
Walter Stulzer, Executive Director

Your questions?
• peter@saat-network.ch
Photo © leonardo viti - Fotolia