In this module we're going to talk about managing with Agile.

Management is a hard job.

You have, in my experience, a very small slice of people who are just

gifted managers, for whatever reason they are just simply fantastic.

I am certainly not among them.

Then you have a relatively sizable slice over here people who love to be managers.

Now, many, but not all of these people, are like bad drivers.

I always find that bad drivers, they love to drive.

It's not stressful for

them because they're not paying attention to what they're doing and

trying to make sure that they're doing a good job.

And a lot of the time,

it's kind of the same thing with these people who just love to be managers.

And then, you have a big slice here of people who

don't particularly like being managers, and

they recognize how hard it is and they're always trying to do a better job.

And I think that's where most of us fit, and

certainly most of the most conscientious managers fit in that slice.

So if you're in that boat, and you think management is hard and

you don't understand why you haven't found the Rosetta Stone or

the silver bullet yet, don't feel bad, it's just a really tough job.

Particularly managing with Agile requires a lot of refinement and

a lot of things that are kind of hard to do.

A lot of letting go, letting others learn for themselves, and then pulling back and

just being the one to create a good working environment for them.

Sounds easy when you read it in a book,it's really hard to do in practice.

It's important to think about what's going on beyond the obvious.

I have all these plants at home, and periodically they'll get pests,

like mealybugs.

And I'll ask one of the experts that I consult with,

what should I do about these mealybugs?

And they'll tell me well you can do this or do that to get rid of them, and

I absolutely do those things.

But the thing that they always emphasize to

me is that most of the time mealybugs don't get on healthy plans.

And managing with Agile is kind of the same way.

Now if you see things not going

the way that they're supposed to go in the slides here that you've seen and

the processes that are supposed to work it may not mean that you're doing

things wrong from a technical standpoint you may have everything setup right.

But maybe down here somewhere your team's not feeling good about their work for

some reason.

And sometimes the answer is to take them out to lunch or

talk to them about the work and just generally kind of back up and

see how they're feeling about things.

Because, as we discussed at the very beginning here,

there's kind of a specific technique oriented way of managing with Agile,

and then there's also the interpersonal part of it.

Particularly in an engineering organization,

we pride ourselves on being objective, but the reality is, it's just not true.

We're all wired over the millennia to be emotionally sensitive, and

very few individual aren't that way under the surface.

So, as you think about managing with Agile, think about that material as well.

I don't really have a lot of material for you on being a great manager,

unfortunately, but it is important to stay aware of those things,

and there's a certain point where the technical parts of what we're

going to discuss aren't the place to focus, it's the interpersonal parts of it.

Let's talk about the jobs of managing here.

I've divided this into two parts, one is team management.

How are things going with your Agile team and

how you are creating an Agile friendly environment where

you all are progressively driving towards better and better Agile outcomes?

You're marrying principals and

practices and things continue to get better and better.

And then there's the interface to general management so all the things that you and

your team have to do to interface with the rest of the company that may or

may not be on an Agile program,

and all the things you have to do to interface with say large customers or

customers in general that obviously aren't on your development program.

So success here looks like we are doing the practices of Agile and

after some practice because it will not happen right away,

the practices don't require too much pushing, and

that the principals are visible in the outcomes that we're achieving.

Now you'll hear this question a lot.

We think that the principals are more important than the practices.

And when we hear this from somebody like Spotify, who's had a lot of experience,

it means something relatively specific to them in their context.

But if you're just starting with Agile, and

you're going through the growing pains,

the birthing pains of starting this, there is few discussions, that are going to be

less productive than which is more important, principles or practices.

It is something where the practices,

or where you start in there,the things that you do, and

you want to make sure that when you ask, well why are we doing this, and how will

we know if it is successful, that's a good place to talk about the principals.

But it's not like chocolate ice cream or

vanilla ice cream, and your going to pick one and take it home with you.

They both have their place and their time.

And I would say that the relationship between these two things is that

the practices are making sense, and when you look at outcomes, and

when you judge the practices on whether they're working for

you, you're referring to the principles at that point.

You should be evolving collaboratively, and experimenting,

this echoes one of the Kanban principles.

And what this means is that everyone's involved in improving your practice of

Agile, and if that's not the case, you probably have a bunch of team members that

aren't very bought in and you kind of need to unpack that to get the full benefit

of these practices of self organizing and working collaboratively.

And stakeholders meaning, external stakeholders, they're satisfied and

so you have relatively few unplanned surprises

from your internal analogs inside the company of the people that you work with,

and finance that's outside your group, and so forth on product.

So those are a few of the high points and

guiding ideas about managing with Agile and

a few of the success criteria that I would recommend using as a focal point for

figuring out how you're doing and where you want to spend time.

And in the videos that follow,

we'll talk about how to use Agile to manage your team better.

The Agile Manager

Managing an Agile Team

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