Spikes And Stories

Scrum tips and agile insights from a Silicon Valley agile coach

Practical Advice for Managers in an Agile Shop

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In my last blog post, I wrote about the side effects of manager as Product Owner.  In it, I talked about how I believe these roles should be filled by different people.  So if the manager isn’t directing the work, what’s s/he doing? How does a manager help his/her people when they’re distributed across multiple teams?  The Scrum Guide is silent on the topic, and although I offered up some of my own opinions in Managers in an Agile Shop, I didn’t offer much practical advice.  Let’s fix that.  Today, I’ll bias my advice toward the actionable, and I think it all can summarized in these wise words by Ed Catmull:

It’s not the manager’s job to prevent risks.  It is the manager’s job to make it safe to take them.

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Why Manager as Product Owner Will Usually Fail

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The Scrum Guide doesn’t talk about the role of managers.  So does that mean that one day we have managers, and then as soon as we begin an agile transformation, they suddenly disappear?  Of course not.  So what do we do with them?  Many organizations use managers to direct the work of their reports so it could seem reasonable to assign these managers as Product Owners.  I can see the logic in this, but a younger me would have opposed this with extreme prejudice.  A younger me would use all my persuasive might emphasizing how this isn’t the right thing to do.  But why?  What’s wrong with it?

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Starting a New Job Is Tough

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Who here just started a new job?  Or maybe you’re about to start a new job?  This is the situation I recently faced.  It’s stressful, and it was important to me that I make a strong, lasting, and positive first impression.  In fact, let’s talk about that today, but before we do, I’d like to give a big shout out to rands. A decade ago, I ran into his blog. It was the first blog I ever followed, and his advice in Ninety Days is something I reread before I start any new job.  In it, he suggests that the interview continues through the first ninety days on the job.  I agree, and I can relate with his piece of advice here:

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What Metrics Will My Team Find Useful?

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Let’s try something different today.  I’d like to tell you a story.  To do it justice, I won’t write about it.  Instead, I’ll share a video where I told this story to an agile group here in Silicon Valley, and it began as I wrestled with several questions:
 
  1. Can data help our teams improve?  If so, what kind of data?
  2. How do we responsibly use this data?
  3. Can metrics help the teams and the organization embrace a culture of experimentation?
  4. Data isn’t enough.  How can we tie it to the motivations and passions of our team members?
In the video below, I share my experiences as I attempt to answer these questions while I worked with the teams at Study.com.  However, before we begin, I want to mention a few things:

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