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Xavier Albaladejo
CAS2014 - Agile Spain Conference - December 2014
Agile Management is different
v1.2

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Speaker Bio & Company Information
 Xavier Albaladejo is Agile-Lean Coach on organizational
transformation and member of everis Agile Excellence
Center. He helps large organizations to bring more value,
faster and efficiently, using Agile and Lean principles.
 Xavier Albaladejo coordinates a Postgraduate on Agile
methods in La Salle, he is Certified Scrum Practitioner,
founder of proyectosagiles.org, Agile Barcelona and
member of Agile Spain Board of Directors.
insert photo
AGILE EXCELLENCE CENTER
IT Government – Technology BU
PMA
Postgrado en
Métodos Ágiles

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AgileManagement

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AgileManagement
Different
mental
models
Principles Approaches
Culture

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 Different context
Traditional
 Reduced competition
 Mass/chain production
 Lengthy product cycles
 Push the product in the market
Agile
 Competitive markets
 Fast product cycles
 Adapt to the demand
 Fast feedback and innovation
 Short productions
Principles and Culture

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Principles and Culture
 Different productive models
Traditional
 Complicated
 Repeatable
 Predictive
 industrialization
Agile
 Complex
 Uncertainty
 Adaptability
 Learning
 Improving
<
It is unusual to repeat a work

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Major success and productivity factors
1 People competence
2 Team cohesion
Main factors
4
Experience and knowledge in
similar projects
5 Middle Management style
6 People motivation
See full study in http://www.slideshare.net/xalbaladejo/en-cas2013-agile-lean-organization-and-productivity-improvement-frameworkv30
3 Technical / product complexity
Focus in learning, improvement, growth.
Competitive
advantage!
Repeat projects of
same type
Intrinsic motivation!.
Organizational facilitator, teamwork.
Stable
teams
by product
line or client
type.
“Cells”

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Principles and Culture
 Employees
Agile
People  ¡Think, emotions!
Knowledge workers, “creators”
Traditional
“Resources”
Easy to change “pieces”

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Profit
3
Principles and Culture
 In Agile employees motivation is fundamental.
Satisfied
clients
Service quality is proportional
to employees “quality” and
satisfaction
2Motivated
employees
Without employees there are
no products nor services, they
are who generate value
1

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Principles and Culture
 Indirect management vs know the place where work is done.
Agile - Lean
Go to see & listen to the “trenches”
to understand problems and worries
Traditional
Office mgmt, indicators, conversation
with direct line of reporting
<

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Principles and Culture
 Conformance to standards vs all people seek for improvements.
Traditional
Stable processes, created by specialists.
Penalties to people who don’t follow the rules
Agile
Empowerment & System Ownership to
bottom-up improvement of standards
Don’ look for guilty people, but on
how to improve the process
Safe environment to
challenge status-quo

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Principles and Culture
 Command & Control vs self-organization and service to teams.
Traditional
Command & Control.
Micro-management.
GROUP
Agile
TEAM
Thinking together. Self-organization.
Management as servant leaders.

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Principles and Culture
 Organization. Departments vs cells.
Traditional
Programming TestingAnaly
sis
Dev
Ops
Departaments
Own projects (and budget), knowledge silos.
Pooling & proxies, capacity, assignments
Programming TestingAnaly
sis
Dev
Ops
Cell N
Cell 1
Cell 2
Agile
Competences
Lifecycle and projects are cell-contained.
Stable, cross-functional teams, face to face
See the whole model in http://www.slideshare.net/xalbaladejo/en-cas2013-agile-lean-organization-and-productivity-improvement-frameworkv30
End to end

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We’ve seen that
Principles are
different
Let’s talk on different
Agile Management
http://www.jokeroo.com/pictures/funny/884904.html

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¿What is the purpose of
an organization?

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Create the context
To achieve:
Organization purpose
Good products or services1
 Cells that “run”:
1 - fast
2 - efficiently
2
… so winning the Time To Market race and
quickly incorporating market feedback

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 You should not feel the organization.
 Whatever you do in efficiency should not
slow down cells.
The organization
should be a help,
not an impediment
Organization purpose

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Who are the “clients”
of an Agile Manager?

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Programming TestingAnaly
sis
People from their competence area (that are part of cells).
Competence areas
Testing
Competence
Manager
Cells that implement the organization strategy (they produce the value and
must “run” fast).
Cell N
Cell 1
Cell 2
Agile Manager clients

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Do you know what is a
core team?
 Infrastructure team: creates context for teams to flow
faster, making the infrastructure seamless.

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Managers as a “Core” team
Management must be a facilitator at an organizational level
 Removes organizational impediments
to improve end to end flow.
 Creates & improves the context in order to help cells to flow.
 Identifies people “in the trenches”
that should talk directly.
Management works on organization seamless

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Agile Manager responsibilities
“Shaping
the
context”
takes time
Traditional
Strategy
People
Operative
Micro-management and intra-team coordination, among
departments, capacity management, assignments.
Collapsed management that benumbs projects.
Organization
Culture
Strategy and
improvements
People
growth and motivation
Operative
Organization,
structure and teams
Culture
Agile
Management removes
organizational impediments
in the value flow
All
aspects
need a lot
of Go see
and listen
to the
trenches

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Agile Managers types and responsibilities
Responsibility Organizational responsible Operative
The following areas are responsibility of all people in the company…
… but it is still important to have ultimate explicit responsibilities.
Culture and
Organization
Especially Middle Management.
 Hire people with the right idiosyncrasy.
 Organization and cell design, motivating work environment.
 Identify and connect people that should talk directly.
Scrum
Masters
Outlearn Competence Managers
 Communities of Practice, professional growth, mentoring, motivation.
Speciality
Coaches
Outimprove
Improvement Champion
 End-to-end flow responsible (“processes”) and waste identification.
 Organizational improvement and global metrics. Based on
Competence Managers and Scrum Masters feedback (bottom-up).
Scrum
Masters
Product
CEO and Product Managers
 Project Portfolio prioritization and teams workload limitation,
based in their capacity.
Product
Owners

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Agile team
A fractal in the high level Agile Management team
Product
Owner
Scrum
Master
Product
Champion
Cross functional development & operations team
Development Q/A OperationsUX Customer care
Improvement
Champion
Growths a high performance
team, who share objectives (an
strategy/roadmap guided by
business value) and that regularly
reflects on.
Collaboration at all
levels !!!
(Competence Managers)
Competence
Manager
Competence
Manager
Competence
Manager
Competence
Manager
Competence
Manager

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Agile Manager characteristics
Teaches
Mentors, develops and grows people in competences, doing “craft teaching”.
Coaches by actively listening and making people thing by asking questions.10
Gives example1 Specially in meetings (positively). Signals when there is not collaboration-sharing-help.
Protects the Organization form behaviors that puts “the tribe” under risk.
Motivates2 people to create commitment, increase creativity and performance, is inspirational and
creates a motivating work environment.
Visions3 at a long term, creates an strategy guided by business objectives, jointly with his team.
Designs4
the Organization. Creates Cells formed by cross-functional and stable teams,
constituted by people that complement each other.
Empowers5 self-organized teams to take decisions, given boundaries and constraints, (“the team
knows the problems”) and establishes directives to guide/align.
Facilitates6 Removes organizational impediments in order to help cells flow.
Connects7 Identifies people “of the trenches” that should talk directly.
Walks8 to the place where work is done, to directly know the reality, problems and worries.
Reflects9
on how to improve the system, regularly, with his team. Creates a safe environment
for making proposals and improvements.
With your people, “tribal”

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Best Manager award - Google
Your bosses
respects you
You do incredible
things for your clients
Your people
loves you

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Questions

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Technology BU