Project
Management in an Agile environment engages stakeholders with interaction
between developers and customers. This occurs to deliver a satisfactory outcome
for the customer and the organisations requirements.
Taking on and making an
Agile approach in this instance successful. Effective leadership over multiple
levels, that is from executive, functional and project/program management,
and team is required. In its core the Agile approach challenges those who
are anchored in hierarchies and a command and control management approach. As
a greater number of executives realize that agile leadership can overcome the
job dissatisfaction caused by authority based, non-caring management, agile
leadership is being recognized as an effective leadership style for any project
or process.
The Agile Leader
Agile leaders use
principles of the agile approach to go beyond outdated traditional leadership
approaches. It values delivering useful outcomes with individuals
and interactions working together in healthy relationships, and responsiveness
to change. Processes, tools, plans, documentation and contracts are
recognized as valuable though not as valuable as relationships and adaptability
founded on the goal of satisfying the customer.
Agile leaders are known as
facilitators and servant leaders who provide an environment in which people can
learn, grow and perform. They buffer the team from disruptions and
distractions, promoting continuous improvement by establishing a safe
environment, providing performance reflection. Defines and makes sure everyone
understands the goal and is doing what needs to be done to achieve it.
The Foundation
The foundation for effective leadership is made up of mindfulness,
intelligence and a sense of servant leadership. Mindfulness is paying
attention, on purpose without judgement. It is stepping back to observe
whatever is happening within and around oneself. Mindfulness enables
resiliency, non-reactive behavior and an experiential understanding of the
interconnection among people and systems.
Intelligence is the ability to acquire and apply skills and
knowledge. The kind of intelligence required is not just cognitive
intelligence as measured by IQ. It includes social, emotional and
spiritual intelligence - the foundations for building and sustaining effective relationships.
Servant leadership is a leadership approach based on the idea that the
leader is dedicated to making sure that those being served build upon their
skills to grow as people, to become optimally effective, healthier, wiser,
freer, more autonomous, and more likely to become servant leaders.
Foundation Building
The leader of an agile team is charged with enabling the team to deliver
useful product to satisfy the requirements of clients and product users by
making the team self-managing and protecting it from disruptions and
distractions.
For example, the agile leader will use formal processes to enable and at
the same time moderate the effects of change. In a project using an
Agile methodology, the project manager and team of developers and customers get
together to review a backlog of requirements and agree upon the requirements
for the next iteration of development. The customers agree to minimize
change within the iteration and any changes in scope are documented and
justified. The intention is to enable change while recognizing that
changes, particularly those that take place while work is going on in iteration,
are expensive and disruptive.
Mindfulness and intelligence come into play when it becomes clear that
powerful customers may attempt to make excessive changes in requirements during
iteration. Perhaps these customers do not spend enough quality time
thinking through the requirements or do not care about completing the iteration
in a timely way. Maybe, they believe that the developers can just adapt and
deliver on time anyway.
Mindfulness ‘sees’ what is happening, objectively. The mindful
person observes the behaviour and observes his/her and the team members’
feelings of frustration and fear.
Emotional intelligence is founded on being mindful of the arising of
emotions. It comes into play when the fear of confronting the customer begins
to get in the way of protecting the team from the disruption of uncontrolled
change. It also influences the way the leader responds and communicates
with the team to moderate behavior and, if the disturbing behavior continues,
to handle it in a practical way. The ability to recognize and soothe the team’s
concerns is an expression of social intelligence.
Conceptual intelligence comes into play as the leader finds the right
way to state the problem and come up with a viable solution for the current
situation.
Servant leadership and spiritual intelligence kick in to ensure that the
team is protected from unnecessary stress brought on by irrational beliefs and
behavior that violates basic agreements among the team members. It also
influences the desire to promote learning and personal growth by holding
performance reviews and addressing issues candidly.
The Power of Agility
An Agile approach, applied correctly in the right situations, enhances
the ability to satisfy customer expectations while enabling healthy
relationships among all project team members. By breaking up the work into
small “chunks”, delivering product quickly, and by working in a team that
combines customers and developers who reassess the plan frequently and
collaboratively, the Agile approach to project management promotes agility –
the ability to move quickly and easily, particularly in the face of change or
challenge. The power of agility is to manage interactions among
stakeholders to enable fully engaged customers in the effort to deliver
products and services that satisfy their needs, even in the face of volatility,
uncertainty complexity and ambiguity.
To be successful, an Agile approach needs agile leadership with its
collaborative, service-based approach founded on mindfulness and the enhanced
intelligence mindfulness enables. Without this kind of leadership it is likely
that the Agile approach will be ineffectual - either too rigidly adhering to an
impractical set of rules, or not applying the right level of discipline. This
will cause team members to be unmotivated and performance will suffer. With
agile leadership the team gets the support and direction it needs to grow and
to perform optimally.
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