AGILE! Who cares - Tell me what to do

by Suman Guha

About me● Technical Program Manager & Agile Lead with Red Hat.● An Alumni of University of Glasgow, holds a degree in Computing.● PMI-ACP, CSM,Agile Practitioner for 8 years and an Engineer. ● Agile Experience since 2007.● Areas I work: opensource, linux (Fedora, Red Hat), Cloud

Infrastructure (OpenStack, Docker), web, mobile, product discovery, user experience, data mining, machine learning, agile, lean, xp, scrum, devops,

● Countries I lived/worked: Europe, North America and India.● More about me can be found here http://sguha.github.io/

StoryOn March 28, 2014

I just finished my session on the topic of self-directed teams. One of the listeners asked to share thoughts on handling agile team members who simply wanted to be

...“told what to do”...

Resistance such as

● ….but Agile is an “IT Thing”

● ….“Here’s the requirements. See you in 6 months”

● ….as long as I get my stuff I don’t care if you want to use/follow Agile.

Challenge(s): Command and Control

● Traditional Management style

● Managers only take high level ownerships

● Teams follow orders

What’s wrong with that style ?● Nothing, if you want only managers to think.● Fail to engage the intellectual power of the team.● It does n’t scale as thinking as a team vs manager.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/aloveletteraway/3460914557

Other Challenge(s)● Software projects are notoriously complex.

● Simply following directions or plans.

● Changes and obstacles.

● Team members who simply “mails it in” and tell the team what to do are “anti-pattern”.

What would you like to see ?● Teams to stay engaged.

● Discovering better ways to solve customers’ problem.

● Working together than blindly following a plan.

● Having a voice and “skin in the game”

How do we overcome ?

Lead Transformation and plan out Agile Transformation Roadmap

Not everyone makes the transition

Command and control vs

Collaborative, empowered and self directed

Takes some time and “deprogramming”

Define The StrategyBy creating an End-State Vision for the Transformation

GovernanceStructure Metrics

Lead The Transformation

● Form Teams

● Train Teams

● Coach Teams

Retrospective!Retrospective is mission critical during transition.

● Often underestimated but very important

● Focus on team in retrospective,”management free zone”

● Get the Manager out of the room.

How do we overcome ?...continues

Define Roles and Responsibilities for smooth transitioning

8-Step Process for Leading Change

Book: “Our Iceberg Is Melting”

An outcome of 30 years of research, By-Dr. John Kotter New York Times best-selling author, award winning business and management thought leader, business entrepreneur, inspirational speaker, and Harvard Professor.

Wrapping up!★ Make It Stick - Create a new culture .★ Hold on the new ways of behaving and make sure they

succeed, until they become strong enough to replace old tradition.

★ Build Trust.★ Value results.★ Build agile teams that truly engage self-direction.

Remember - You can’t win it all and That’s OK.

Q & A

What Questions Do You Have ?