Avoiding the Dilbert Syndrome

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Avoiding the Dilbert Syndrome
What Does the Agile Manager Actually Do?

compliance international B2B MBAEnglish IPO
agile husbandstart-up technology
newly-minted Canadian
executiveleanstartup outsourcing father
enterprise transitions
B2C data analysis kanban seismology PhD
scrum
organizational excellence
dave.sharrock@agile42.com
twitter: @davesharrock
Certified Enterprise Coach (CEC)
Certified Scrum Trainer™ (CST)
Dave Sharrock

Introducing
Catbert,...
the pointy-haired
boss…
and Dilbert.

How do managers spend their time?
Accenture survey of 1,770 frontline, mid-level and
executive-level managers from 14 countries
https://hbr.org/2016/11/how-artificial-intelligence-will-redefine-management
53%
30%
10%
7%
Administrative coordination and
control
Solving problems and collaborating
Strategy and innovation
Developing people and engaging with
stakeholders

EXERCISE: what do managers do?
•Form groups of 2-4; Think about what managers did before agile…
•Make a list of 5-10 core responsibilities of a manager in your organization
6 min

What is management?
Leadership
• Providing strategic direction
• Cross-training employees
• Engaging with other managers
Line Management
• Recruitment
• Resource management
• Coaching and performance feedback
• Reporting on performance indicators
Functional Management
• Training and support to new hires
• Provide necessary tools and education
• Establish standards and best practices
• Monitoring performance vs targets
Project Management
• Tracking project progress
• Managing tasks and priorities
• Identify and address inefficiencies

But Agile makes managers irrelevant!
Leadership
• Cross-training employees
Line Management
• Recruitment
• Resource management
• Coaching and performance feedback
• Training and support to new hires
• Provide necessary tools and education
• Establish standards and best practices
Project Management
• Tracking project progress
• Managing tasks and priorities
• Identify and address inefficiencies
SM
PO
Team
SM
Team
Team
Team
CoP/Guild
CoP/Guild
Team/PO

And it gets worse!
All that’s left…
Leadership
Line Management
53%
30%
10%
7% Administrative
coordination and control
Solving problems and
collaborating
Strategy and innovation
Developing people and
engaging with
stakeholders

EXERCISE: Case Study
•The goal is to come up with 1-2
options (Option Catbert, Option
PHB)
•Write each option on a 4x6
card or post-it note
•If you have time place your 2-3
options on the Dilbert Scale
15 min

Maintaining Visibility
expecting iterative and
incremental change
https://c1.staticflickr.com/8/7573/15708839377_1cfef5571c_b.jpg

Maintaining Visibility
expect iterative and
incremental change
focus on flow and value
delivery
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/Kowloon_Waterfront
%2C_Hong_Kong%2C_2013-08-09%2C_DD_05.jpg

Importance of Safety
provide guidance
and visible progress

Importance of Safety
provide guidance
and visible progress
shield the team (to allow
risk-taking)

Encourage Learning
https://d.justpo.st/media/images/2014/03/1c4a756623a5a9527c3899191ef49685.jpg
enable problem solving,
not solving problems

Encourage Learning
enable problem solving,
not solving problems
share your knowledge
https://d.justpo.st/media/images/2014/03/1c4a756623a5a9527c3899191ef49685.jpg

EXERCISE: Case Study
•Now come up with a final
Dilbert Option, based on:
• Maintain visibility
• The importance of safety
• Encourage learning
•Write it on a 4x6 card or post-it
note and add it to Dilbert Scale
6 min

1. Poor Performing Teams
We are about a third of the way through the
project timeline, with only 20% of the
expected scope complete.
Your stakeholder committee is getting
nervous, and would like an update in next
week’s Steering Committee meeting.
What would you suggest?
The major web relaunch project has been started
using Scrum. The project has a fixed deadline with
executive bonuses tied to successful delivery on
or before the hard deadline.
The web team have agreed the expected scope
for the project. However, the delivery of the teams
is significantly below that needed to meet the
deadline.
While the productivity of the teams has grown, it
has not yet doubled as required to meet the
project deadline.

2. The Super-Developer as Bottleneck
Several sprints later, things had got worse.
Even though the retrospectives kept
focussing on how to share work across the
team, the developer refused to change his
behaviour. Something had to change.
Eventually the Scrum Master comes to you
asking for help.
The team formation and chartering exercise went
well. Right from the outset, one of the senior
developers was far outperforming the rest of the
team. He finished most of the stories, and always
took on a lot more work than others.
However, none of the rest of the team knew what
he was doing. Sometimes stories finished as
planned, sometimes they were carried over into
the next sprint.

3. Code Ownership and Quality
Without the regular one-on-ones with his testers
he was unsure what the team was doing, or how
product quality had changed.
He was still meeting with his functional team
regularly, but wasn’t sure how to make sure
quality was where it needed to be.
After several months of working as small,
dedicated Scrum teams, I asked the Quality
Manager how things were going – was the team
increasing the quality of their work? Was test
automation progressing as planned? How
comfortable was he with the work the team was
doing?
He said he had no idea what the team was doing,
let alone how good the quality of the product was.

Drucker’s Manager of Tomorrow
• manage by objectives
• take risks and allow risk-taking decisions to take place at lower levels in the organisation
• be able to make strategic decisions
• be able to build an integrated team with team members capable of managing and measuring their own
performance and results in relation to overall objectives
• be able to communicate information quickly and clearly, and motivate employees to gain commitment
and participation
• be able to see the business as a whole and to integrate their function within it
• be able to relate the product and industry to the total environment, to find out what is important and
what needs to be taken into account
https://mbsportal.bl.uk/taster/subjareas/busmanhist/mgmtthinkers/drucker.aspx

Managing Agile Teams
• Maintain visibility
• Expect iterative and incremental change
• Focus on flow and value delivery
• Importance of safety
• Provide guidance and visible progress
• Shield the team (allow risk-taking)
• Encourage learning
• Enable problem solving, rather than solving problems
• Share your knowledge

Thank you
@davesharrock
dave.sharrock@agile42.com

Avoiding the Dilbert Syndrome

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