A Place for the Manager in the Agile Organization

I am always impressed by my fellow Agile advocates. Some are grumpy cynics who see failure around them and feel responsible for helping clean up the substantial debris cluttering global business over the last fifty years. Others are cheerful warriors attempting to show a better way by living example for others to follow. My approach lands somewhere in the squishy middle as I see behavior that violates my values. I understand intellectually that these violations are occurring because people created those systems to normalize those violations. 

As an agile professional, I have spent the last ten years fighting the uphill battle of changing business culture and performance. A common observation we in the Agile community have when we attempt to bring Agile to organizations is that teams quickly adapt to this new reality. Managers, in particular, are a constraint on how successful agile is in an organization. Today, I want to discuss the manager's role in an organization. 

My coach at CAPCO Financial, Michael Guerrero, ruefully observes that middle management is where agility dies. Executives know the importance of being more agile, and teams embrace the ethics of agile frameworks like Scrum and Kanban. Managers are often caught in the middle and do not know how to navigate an organization transitioning to agility. The challenge of finding a place for a manager is becoming a central question in the agile reformation, along with how to scale it to the entire organization. Diana William and Liz Rettig from Project Brilliant gave an excellent presentation at AgileIndy 2023. 

The Scrum Guide and Agile are very good at defining the roles of a scrum master, product owner, and team member. The Agile community is silent about where managers fit into this system. It does not help that we do a poor job selecting and training managers and that those who advance into those roles behave in ways detrimental to the organization. Instead of making middle managers scapegoats for the failure of agile, coaches and scrum masters need to recruit them as partners for success. 

Williams and Rettig suggest four roles for the manager in an agile environment.

Provide Strategic direction –

Managers need to provide clarity and direction to the teams. They explain the 'why' of the decisions made and let the agile teams figure out the 'how' and 'what' of work. In traditional managerial roles, they thrive on ambiguity in an agile environment and must provide clear guardrails for performance and conduct. 

Grow People – 

A manager in an agile environment must grow the people they serve with training and development so that their skills become more 'T' shaped and they can advance within the organization. Even a person content to remain in the same position can learn to be better at their job. Managers of this type are judged by how they grow the people under their care. 

Create an Environment for Success – 

Managers in an agile environment need to learn how to address constraints and impediments. These managers must create solutions to these blockers and create an environment where people want to work. It is more than coffee, pizza, and foosball tables. It includes reducing technical debt outside the team and getting collaborations from other parts of the business. 

Being an Agile Champion – 

Finally, a manager in an agile environment champions the process. They encourage retrospectives, support efforts to build psychological safety, and allow teams to design their work areas. They must be willing to exhibit the same continuous improvement they expect from the development team. Finally, they need to get out of the office and talk with the scrum masters, product owners, and stakeholders to ensure they have what it takes to succeed. 

These are the four roles of a manager in an agile environment, and they will look alien to people accustomed to sitting behind a desk and doing administrative work. It is a much more hands-on role. 

When we portray agile in organizations, we show it like a three-legged stool with the development team, scrum master, and product owner, each playing a supporting role. We intentionally exclude the manager. If we want Agile to succeed, we must change this mindset to include managers. Thus, a manager should envelop the team providing these four services to make each of its legs successful.  

The next five years will be critical for Agile's success, and it is up to us in the profession to ensure managers are not left behind.

Until next time.