Mike Lyons explains how Agile teams manage themselves instead of being managed. In traditional project management, managers assign work and track deadlines. Agile teams estimate their own work, decide who does it, and hold each other accountable through daily standups and sprint planning.
In a section of his book titled Agile Project Management with Scrum, Ken Schwaber says this Being managed by someone else is totally ingrained in our life and work experience. Why should we expect that when we tell a team that it's responsible for managing itself, it will know what we're talking about? Self managing, self organizing, these are new terms in the Agile mindset and really represents a shift in in roles. Take for example the traditional role of project manager. Well, it's got the word manager right in the title. Traditional project management is about assigning the work, following the plan, creating the work breakdown structure, even estimating, coming up with ideas of when things will be completed and then walking that project plan down, sort of asking people, are you done yet? Are you done yet? When will you be done? The project manager that was highly successful typically served in a role of, you know, in some ways hounding team members to get the work done on time, on scope, on budget. And that was really the key measurement. And again as we've discussed, sort of on time, on scope, on budget, won't really matter if no one uses your products. The Agile approach is different. Self managed teams decide on their own who, what, when and how the work will be done. And companies need to empower those teams to make those decisions, set the vision for them and trust them to get the work done. That's what self management is all about. Additionally, teams are self organizing, that is that the Scrum master, the product owner, a manager is not telling them what to do or when to do or how to how to work. Teams know what needs to be done and then they're empowered to organize around that work and then, and then deliver. There's no one that needs to tell them to do that. They're not waiting around for someone to sort of say, hey, are you done yet? Have you started? Teams also hold each other accountable through SCRUM events like, like the daily standup where we might ask, what did you complete yesterday? What are you going to complete today? We ask each other that and that sort of accountability and transparency helps to keep us organized and managed towards the goal of the Sprint. Even in another event, Sprint planning, the teams are committing to the work of the increment that they're going to deliver. And they should by the planning be able to relate back to any sort of manager what the goal of the Sprint is and what that thing of value they'll be that they'll be working on. They'll be working towards another area where teams self organize is around the idea of estimation. We say during Sprint planning the only people they can estimate are the people who will do the work. No Scrum master product owner, certainly no manager gets to estimate. No one gets to say how long or how difficult the the thing is except the people who do the work. And you're going to get the best estimates when you allow the teams to self organize in that fashion. It's a bottom up approach to estimation. And finally let's conclude with remembering the Agile Manifesto principle. Build projects around motivated individuals, give them the environment and the support they need, then trust them to get the job done. Self organized, self managed teams that are empowered to deliver against the product backlog are some of the best teams to work on and they're constantly and regularly delivering above and beyond expectations. It is definitely a shift from the traditional top down management structure we may be used to. Certainly something to consider as you're shifting into your new Agile team.
