Agile methods depend on effective cross-functional teams. We’ve heard many Agile success stories…at the team level. But what happens when a product can’t be delivered by one team?  What do you do when the “team” that’s needed to work on a particular product is 20 people?  Or 20 teams?

There are no simple answers. But there are design principles for defining workable arrangements when the product is bigger than a handful of agile teams.

Some principles and practices to guide scaling Agile teams.

Most companies have policies that govern the selection and hiring process for new employees. Not a bad thing.  But I’ve noticed that in many of the companies I visit–especially the big ones–the guidelines put far less rigor around hiring people for dev teams than for management roles. (Occasionally, I see the opposite. Might write about that at some point in the future.)

I agree with the need for due deliberation in hiring managers at any level.  Managers can have a big impact, and it makes sense to hire carefully.  Many companies take a broad stripe approach to hiring managers. They look at management skills–but also assess psychological make up, interpersonal skills, and ability to work with others. At senior levels, the candidate often interviews with the other people he or she will work with. They gauge the candidates style, fit, and personality–and gain commitment from the work group, not only the hiring manager.

But when hiring technical people, many of these companies take a narrow stripe approach. They look only at technical skills and domain knowledge.  Both are important, of course.

But there’s an assumption there that personal qualities and interpersonal skills don’t matter as much, and team buy-in is irrelevant. There’s also an assumption that people developing software work independently as individual contributors, and they are relatively easy to replace if they don’t work out.

But, if you want to develop strong, creative, capable teams, you need to up the hiring game at the dev team level.

Here are four reasons why:

1)  A person working on an agile team is not  an “individual contributor. ”  He or she is expected to work interdependently.  In agile teams, people collaborate, negotiate, make trade-offs, handle conflicts.  These interactions require a high level of interpersonal skill and emotional intelligence.

2) Even junior members (in terms of experience, age, or skill level) are expected to exhibit a high degree of self-management.  They make commitments to other team members, follow through on commitment, manage their own work level and task completion. They need to know how to ask for help, and be comfortable admitting when they don’t know something.

3) People on agile teams need to have excellent problem-solving skills–beyond those needed by an “individual contributor.” An individual contributor needs to solve problems that are bounded by his task assignments. Problems of coordination and dependencies are often someone else’s job.  People on agile teams work together to solve technical problems, handle issues, and interface with other teams.  The manager isn’t doing the bulk of the integrating work between tasks and solving problems–team members are.

4) People on agile teams need an exceptional ability to learn and apply that learning–both in growing “generalizing specialist” skills and in improving team processes.

You can learn a lot about these factors in an interview if you use behavioral interview questions.  But not enough.  But it is very difficult to assess how someone will fit into the team, unless the entire team has a chance to meet him and interact. It’s hard to assess how people code, test, problem-solve, unless you see them in action. That’s why auditions are so useful.

Further, the broader the interview team, the more people will be invested in the new hires success.  They won’t have the cop-out of saying “your problem, I didn’t choose him.”

For some ideas on a hiring process for agile teams, see my article Hiring for a Collaborative Team.  And buy yourself a copy of Hiring the Best by Johanna Rothman.

(This article originally appeared on Gantthead.com)

“The beginning is the most important part of the work.” Plato, Greek philosopher and writer, 429–347 B.C.E.

I’ve written several articles about a manager’s relationship with a team that has already formed. A manager’s relationship with a team as they work is essential for cultivating a self-organizing team and maintaining a link with the organization. But a managers role in growing effectives teams starts long before the work actually begins.

The 60-30-10 Principle

J. Richard Hackman, has been studying teams for decades. One of his most significant findings is that 60% of the variation in team effectiveness is attributable to the design of the team, 30% to the way the team is launched, and 10% to leader coaching once the team is underway. By “design of the team,” he doesn’t just mean picking the best people. You also have to think about the nature of the work, articulate a goal, and plan for enabling supports.

Aim for Flexible, Long-lived Teams

You can call a group of people a team the first day they come together. But that doesn’t mean they’ll achieve teamwork right away. People need time to understand each others strengths, weaknesses and work styles. They need to agree on, try, and adjust the way they work together to find their groove.

In many organizations, managers from cross-functional teams to meet the needs of a specific project. In some cases, that means the team will be together for a long time. More often, it means teams will be disbanded after a few weeks or months. That’s barely enough time for a team to gel and gain the benefit of the team effect.

Analyze the work that’s in the pipeline. Aim to organize the work so that teams have “whole” work–creating a product or service that has meaning from a business perspective. Look at the trade-offs and tensions inherent in the product. Make sure people who represent those aspects are part of the team. Look for dependencies and to the extent possible, keep them within a team boundary. Form teams that have the breadth of skills to handle a broad range of work.

Then, bring work to the teams, rather than reforming teams for each new project. You won’t find a team that’s perfect for all the work in the pipeline. When teams lack a specific expertise, keep the core team in tact and add expertise.

Articulate a Compelling Goal

An effective goal statement does two jobs. First, it focuses the attention and effort of the team. When the team has a shared understanding of what their task is, they pull in the same direction.  When teams have don’t agree on the goal–or the goal is so vague it’s open to many interpretations–team members waste time and brain cycles arguing, working at cross purposes, or doing the wrong work.

Second, a well-formed goal engages the team in a meaningful challenge. An effective goal provides a sense of purpose to the teams work. The goal might be solving an important problem, enabling business, launching a new product, or meeting a  customer need. State the goal in a way that taps into purpose.

Take the goal handed down to the FinCore team: “Maintain the FinCore Product.” That goal isn’t enough to get someone out of bed in the morning. It talks about a process (maintenance), but leaves out the purpose. It misses the opportunity to tap into pride-in-work.  A more compelling goal might be:

Sustain the FinCore product by adding necessary functionality and ensuring the technical integrity of the code, so we can provide uninterrupted service to 40,000 customers.

Not all work is exciting and sexy, but all work should have a purpose. Making that clear will help people focus and engage.

Pillars of support

The right people and a compelling goal are a good start. But if you neglect the pillars of support, the team may still wallow. The pillars of support are:

Information related to the situation, domain, problem and technology. These reinforce the goal, and provide the context for the team to make good decisions.

Material support, such as machines, tools, facilities, adequate budget, and supplies. Adequate material support communicates that the work of the team is important. Starving a team for resources undercuts the goal and creates cynicism. Paradoxically, providing too much isn’t good either. A certain level of constraint can drive creativity (and over constraint kills it).

Expertise to supplement the knowledge and skills of the team when needed. Even when the team has all the skills required by the task, they may need an expert eye for consulting or reviewing. Some times there is some aspect of the work that requires scarce knowledge. It may not make sense to develop that knowledge on the team, or it may only be needed for a short time.

Feedback loops that connect the team to the organization. Regular demos of working software allow the sponsor or product owner to see how the team is doing–and allows for course correction. The heartbeat of progress builds trust.

If any one of these pillars is missing, you’ve put the team at a disadvantage.

This Sounds Like More Work for the Manager. Why bother?

Team design is a pay me now, pay me later proposition. It’s a myth that you can throw a group of people together and they’ll gel as a team. Strong effective teams don’t just happen by some magic chemistry. Well designed teams are more resilient. They make better use of the knowledge, talents, and skills of team members. They function and stay on track with relatively little management intervention. You may not always be able to bring together the perfect team. But you can set a team up for success….or failure. It is up to you.

I recently did an interview with the nice folks at Softhouse.se for their Lean Magazine. The interview was a lot of fun, and made me think (which is fun).

The full interview will be in their special anniversary edition, schedule to be out by Christmas.  (Information on obtaining the magazine here.)  In the meanwhile, some thoughts on the role of managers….

LM:  We notice a lot of confusion when we meet managers. 

They see a new behavior in their development teams that have started to work according to lean/agile principles and usually the development teams are happy with the change. 

But as a manager the questions comes up ñ what should I do now? how can I support this? how do I avoid to destroy the good things? 

What is your message to these confused managers? What can they do?

E: Don’t tamper if things are working.  Ask what is getting in the way, and go fix it.  Ask what the team needs, and obtain it for them. Ask what you can do to help. If the team says “nothing,” don’t inflict help.

The truth is, when teams are working well, managers don’t need intervene. The hard work is in establishing a real team and ensuring enabling conditions are in place. When managers of self-sufficient teams feel like they aren’t doing much, it’s a sign they’ve succeeded. But managers shouldn’t abandon the team. Teams need support and a connection to the organization.

Managers still have an important job to do, working at the system level. Collect metrics that will give a window into the system. Start by tracking the ratio of fixing work to feature work. Then, find out what is driving the fixing work, and start working to improve those issues.

LM: Are there individual managers that will not fit into this /new/ management? 

E:  People who cannot manage themselves should not manage others. People who can only work through telling, selling, and yelling won’t be successful in companies that embrace lean and agile philosophies.

Some companies find they don’t need as many managers. Some people who are in management roles find they are happy to go back to technical work.  But, to me the new roles for managers are exciting and full of promise–developing people, seeing and steering the system, creating environments where people can build products and services that delight customers, satisfy stakeholders, and empower employees.

LM: Can everybody change their behavior or do we need to move some people? To where?

E: Not everyone is capable, and not every one will want to. Some of those people will leave of their own accord.  If there is a place in the organization where people who can’t or don’t want to change can still be of service within the organization, support them to find it, and then let them be.

We can never be 100% successful when we expect everyone to change. Don’t spend your precious energy trying to change people who don’t want to. Work with the people who want to change, and most often, when a critical mass has moved to a new way of working, most will come along.

If there are some people who are acting in a way that is destructive to people or the organization, help them find the door. (This advice applies whether you are using lean, agile or any other method known to man.)

As I said in an earlier column, it’s not enough to slap the tile of Scrum Master or Agile Coach on a project manager, manager, or whatever other warm body happens by.  It’s also not enough to look for the keywords “CSM” or “coach” on a resume.

If you are serious about helping teams learn and thrive as self-organizing Agile teams, get serious about ScrumMasters and Agile Coaches. Start thinking about the work, the role, and the job–not just the job title.

Here’s my initial take on a job analysis of the role (using the job analysis template from Johanna Rothman‘s very useful book, Hiring the Best.)

First, I considered the qualities, preferences, and skills. Second, I thought about the sort of knowledge and understanding that’s essential for the role.  Then, I thought about elimination factors, patterns of thought and behavior that would eliminate a candidate from consideration.  Of course, you can’t just ask yes/no questions for any of the characteristics on this table. You have to do behavioral interview questions and auditions (see Hiring the Best if you need a refresher on interviewing and auditioning candidates).

After I had a handle on the skills, qualities, and characteristics, I considered the interactions, activities, and deliverables for the job. I summarized it all here:

Of course, what you look for in an agile coach or Scrum Master will be somewhat different. Each team has different needs for coaching. A given team may need more (or less) help with specific engineering practices. Another team may need more help with retrospectives or planning. The key is to think of this like any other job. ScrumMaster or Agile coach are not a plug-and-play roles. You need to look for fit–with your culture and with the needs of the team.

Many of the companies I work with want the benefit of the team effect in software development. The managers in these companies recognize the enormous benefits teams provide to the company–creativity, engagement, learning.

However, in many of these companies, the HR systems focus only on individual accomplishment. Individual goals, individual bonuses and merit-pay processes cause real damage when the desired behavior is collaboration and team work. I’ve talked to managers who spend the year building up teams, only to see their work undone by the review and ranking process.

In a small company, managers have the ability to directly change the goal, bonus, and pay systems. In large companies, or in companies where the software group is only one division, changing those policy may seem impossible.

Until you persuade HR to change to more team-focused strategy, take these steps to minimize competitive focus and amplify the emphasis on shared goals.

Amplify the Importance of Team

Make the expectation for teamwork behaviors explicit. Make team performance a significant portion of each team members performance expectation.  By significant, I mean 60% or more. Anything less communicates that teamwork is “nice to have,” but not essential. When people must rely on others to achieve a useful goal, tie the success together in performance expectations.

Dampen the Race for Rankings

Minimize the competitive focus by reducing stratification. Rather than have five or more ratings, use only three categories.

The top category is for people who are truly exceptional. They may out-perform the system, make an extraordinary contribution on a project, or stand out in some other way.  In most organizations, there aren’t many of these people, and most people know who they are and agree on who they are.

The bottom category is likewise small and for people who are exceptional. This is for people who clearly are unable to perform, due to lack of skills, poor fit for the job or some other reason. Note: Before you put someone in this category, check the manager’s contribution to the problem. Most performance problems are not the sole fault of the employee. When an employee is in the wrong job, or clearly lacks the skills, that points to problem with the hiring process, not the person. Of course, it doesn’t make sense to keep someone in a job they cannot do. But let’s not blame the individual when a management process has failed.

The middle category is the big one–for the people who are doing their jobs well and performing within the bounds of the system. Many companies waste an enormous amount of managers’ time arriving at fine-grained but spurious distinctions between employees contribution. Such distinctions are meaningless in collaborative and interdependent work. Managers’ time would be better spent working to improve the system so everyone does better.

A three-tier strategy based on normal variation and exceptions reduces the unhealthy effects of ranking individuals against each other. As a bonus, it frees up a great deal of time that managers would otherwise spend on suspect differentiations.

Don’t Treat People as Fungible

Don’t waste time comparing people as part of the evaluation. Comparing people within a team or group fosters division and competition. Comparing people across teams or functions is irrelevant–except when considering promotions.

Emphasize Interdependent and Collaborative Work

Eliminate individual performance bonuses. Some companies give team bonuses to recognize a team that has solved a particularly difficult problem, saved the company a huge amount of money, or launched a successful product. Since the bonus goes to the team, in most cases, the team members divide it equally.

Even without formal team bonuses, you can use the pot of money HR allocates for individual bonuses in this way.

Aim for Policies that Focus Improving the Organization

In the long run, consider some form of profit sharing or gain sharing based on the over-all performance of the department. Couple this with a clear emphasis on improving team and system performance and meeting business goals. This reduces the likelihood that people will skew their effort towards meeting individual goals at the expense of unit wide business goals.

Take a Stand

Many managers tell me that HR forces them to act out harmful policies related to annual evaluations, ratings, and rankings. HR is there to support performance, not disrupt it. Talk to them about the detrimental effects you are seeing. Share the research. Decline to participate in the ranking mess. If HR insists, distance yourself from the mess and have an HR manager communicate the ratings/rankings.

I have talked to many managers who have opted out of the rating and ranking madness and none of them have been fired. And several of them–through their action–started the conversation and change towards policies that support rather than hinder team work.

In response to my recent post on Agile Metrics, a reader asked, “Why did you leave out Velocity?”

Even though it’s not perfect, velocity is the best way we have to understand the capacity of teams. It’s the best way we have to bring some reality to planning for releases.  Watching velocity over time and looking at patterns in burn downs can alert coaches and managers that something is going on, and they need to investigate.

Velocity is important. But as a metric for gauging how your agile adoption is going, it’s opens a door to danger.

Here’s why.

Velocity is easy to manipulate.  Want velocity to go up?  Fudge the definition of done and you finish more stories.  Change the scale and complete more points (what once was a 2 point story is now a 5 point story).

Velocity is easy to misuse.  Managers who don’t see organizations as systems can use it to compare teams or punish teams. Neither of which is helpful.

Velocity—as an agile adoption metric—puts the focus in the wrong place. Focus on velocity implies that if velocity isn’t improving there is something wrong with the team. In some cases, that might be true. But I don’t want people to look by default. When velocity isn’t improving or is erratic, it’s often due to factors that aren’t in the team’s direct control.  There might be a problem with the way the work is flowing into the team. Or the team maybe interrupted every hour with production support calls (or what ever). Or the team may not have the tools they need to do their work.  That’s something for the team and team coach to work on or raise up as an impediment (where mangers can work on it at the system level).

For assessing the progress of an agile adoption, I choose metrics that emphasize system performance to help managers make the shift from “work harder” thinking to “optimize the whole system” thinking. Managers after all, are responsible for creating the environment (structures, policies) and enabling conditions for teams be successful. To do that, they need a way to asses how the system is functioning.  Because I presume that the point isn’t being “agile” but delivering valuable software.

For more about using velocity as a measure, see my post Working Hard or Hardly Working.

“How can we tell how far along we are with our agile adoption?”

I heard this question again the other day.

Usually, the person who asks the question starts to answer it:

Number of teams using agile

Number of people trained in agile

Number of projects using agile

Number of certified coaches.

Metrics like these won’t tell you what you need to know. More likely, they will lead you astray. How? Let me tell you a story.

Years ago, I worked for a company that was “installing” a Big Methodology from a Big Company.  (The fact that they thought they were “installing” a methodology was probably the first warning sign.)

Every one in the department attended Big Methodology training. (This practice is sometimes called “Sheep Dip” training).

The VP mandated that all projects would use the Big Methodology.

The Installation Team audited to ensure that project managers and teams were complying and producing the required “work products” in accordance with the Required Work Products grid in the back of the very large Big Methodology binder.

Of course, there was some grumbling (from the people the Installation Team referred to as “Change Resisters.”)  Eventually, people did comply. Every one went to training. Projects managers filled out the required templates, and checked the appropriate boxes.  The metrics looked grand!

The VP declared, “Big Methodology is now business as usual!”

At the time, I scoffed at that statement. It was clear to me that people were not using Big Methodology, and that the promised benefits were nowhere in sight. The only things that had really changed were some check boxes and some names (documents became “work products” or “job aids,”).

But, now, I realize that the VP’s statement was TRUE!

We had Big Methodology, and things went on as they had–business as usual! Well, maybe a little worse because people were spending time producing the many documents specified on the Required Work Products grid.

The metrics the VP tracked were easy to count. But they only revealed surface compliance. They didn’t say anything about whether the organization was achieving the improvements promised by Big Methodology and hoped for by the VP.

So when you think about assessing how far along you are in your agile transformation, consider what you are trying to achieve.

I often suggest that managers track three metrics to understand how well their organization is functioning, and whether they are trending in the right direction.

The ratio of fixing work to feature work. How much time are people spending developing valuable new features vs. fixing stuff that wasn’t done right the first time? If you can figure out the sources of fixing work and make some progress there, you have a boost to productivity. Agile methods can address some of the sources of fixing work…but not all of them.

 Cycle time. How long does it take to go from an idea to a valuable product in the hands of a customer? Again agile methods can help with delivery. But if it’s the upstream process–planning for products and releases–is broken, you may not see improvement until you address those issues, as well as the development process.

Number of defects escaping to production. This is a category of fixing-work that is a direct indicator that the quality of the development process is improving.

For each of these metrics, it is the trend that is important, not an absolute number.  The trend will tell you if your attempts at improvement are having an effect. Remember, most changes take time to take hold. If the trend doesn’t move in a month, it may not mean you have taken the wrong action and need to change direction. If the trend isn’t moving over time, then, examine what is happening in the development area. But also look at other aspects of the system. There are few one-to-one cause and effect relationships in complex systems and the trend you see may or may not be directly related to your change. One company I worked with was alarmed to see that defects released to production went up after they started using agile methods. It turned out that prior to the effort to measure defects released to production, no one paid much attention unless the defect brought down a customer site. The increase in the defects trend was related to reporting, not a failure to improve quality.

I find that the three metrics above are generally useful for understanding how a software development organization is functioning as a system. But your reasons for adopting agile methods may be different.  Consider the goals you are trying to achieve.  What signals would tell you that you are moving in the right direction?  How might you measure those?  When you think about measures, be wary of target numbers. Measuring against targets almost always causes distortion. That means that people will behave so as to reach the target, perhaps in ways that are counter to the actual goal behind the target. Distortion will keep you from seeing the real picture, and may also cause real harm to your organization.

Useful metrics give you a window into how the system is functioning, and whether your change is having an effect. The numbers themselves are neither good nor bad. They are information that signals you to go and find out, investigate and reason about the system.

I recently met with a group of managers who work in organizations adopting agile methods. Several of them asked whether functional managers should become ScrumMasters or coaches.

That’s a risky road.

One manager was adamant. In his view, making managers ScrumMasters was the best course of action. According to this fellow, managers already know people’s strengths and weaknesses. They know the domain, and the organization. So, he reasoned, the managers are already equipped to tell people what to do.

Errr. Not so much.  Coaches and Scrum Masters rarely tell people what to do. Usually, they work by different means–modeling, coaching, teaching.

But it begs the question, can a manager be an agile coach or ScrumMaster?

Here’s what I look for in an agile coach/ ScrumMaster.

Experience. If your company has used serial life cycles or ad hoc methods changing to agile methods is not a trivial matter. Nor is it simply a matter of adopting a few engineering practices or using time boxes.  Succeeding with agile does require engineering practices and time boxes. But the real change happens between peoples ears. It’s a shift in thinking–and not just by the development team. Some people change the way they work by changing their thinking. But many more change their thinking by changing the way they work.  Book learning and training is good, and it’s no substitute for experience in the agile way of working.

A deep understanding of agile practices and methods. Coaches need to know the why and when, as well as the how. They need to understand how practices fit together, the intent behind practices. People do need to adapt methods to local conditions.  Without understanding, adaptation is risky. I’ve seen teams and companies “adapt” themselves right back into the situation they were trying to fix because they didn’t fully understand the “why” behind some agile practices. An agile coach needs to be able to think through what adjustments maintain the essence of a practice, and which adaptations sustain the current pattern.

Coaching skills.  Seems obvious. An agile coach should know something about coaching. That means helping people learn skills through practice and feedback. It means helping people think through issues and see new alternatives.  It may mean providing answers, facilitating, or acting as a mirror. If often means helping people think about the way they are thinking, and helping teams get unstuck.  (It does not necessarily include “life coaching.”)

Coaching is tricky when a person also has the responsibility to rate and rank individuals. Coaching requires openness and trust. When people fear that revealing lack of knowledge or skill will show up on their annual review, they are less likely to ask for help. I know of several companies where managers are now “coaches” (and managers). Its confusing for the team members.  They don’t know who they are talking to–the person who helps, or the the one who will hand out a rating at year end.

Understanding of teams and team dynamics. Another skill that would seem obvious, but is often overlooked. When the job is coaching a team, the coach needs to understand something about how people behave in goal-oriented social units. He needs to know the foundations and enabling conditions that allow teams to form and thrive. He needs to recognize when problems are related to the design of the team, when they are system patterns, and when there are individual problems.

Interpersonal and collaboration skills. Coaching is about enabling other people to be more effective. The zeroth step is to make contact with people. If a coach cannot do that, he won’t be able to build relationships and trust. I do sometimes meet coaches who are all about “me.” Doesn’t work. Coaches need to be able to work with others, share credit, and let others shine.

Influence and organizational smarts.  It is silly (or worse) to expect a ScrumMaster to remove significant organizational impediments and drive organizational change–even though that’s often the hype. Coaches need to be savvy about the organization and to have influencing skills, so they can help managers understand the costs of impediments.

If you want empowered teams, you need to change the dynamic between managers and teams.  Slapping a new tittle on a manager (or project manager) will not change the dynamic unless the manager’s mindset and actions also change.

Of course, some managers do have all the qualities and skills to make the transition.  And some teams have the gumption to call out their former managers when they slip back into command and control thinking or acting.  Even when the mangers is willing and capable of changing the way he interacts with a team, it will take time for the new pattern of interaction to take hold.

But for many companies, calling managers “coaches” or “ScrumMasters” is really hierarchical control in coaches clothing.

Organizations still need managers.  Call them managers, and have them do management work–improving the organizational system and translating strategy into action. And get a coach to be the coach.

This article originally appeared on gantthead.com 

In the early days of agile, some pundits (and developers) cried, “We don’t need no stinking managers.”

By now, most people realize that organizations still need management (and people in management roles) after they adopt agile methods. However, if those organizations want all the benefits of agile, managers must also change the way they work.

Managers can play an even more valuable role in organizations as teams become self-organizing and take on more responsibility. But if managers want teams to take more self-responsibility, they need to shift their focus from monitoring the day-to-day work of individuals and let teams grow up.  Here are three common areas of confusing as managers and teams negotiate their new relationships.

Messing with Team Membership

No group is a team the first day they are together.  Becoming a team takes time–time to learn how each person fits in and contributes, time to lean how to work together, time to develop group identity and trust.

If you want the benefit of the team effect, provide the enabling conditions:

• A clear and compelling goal
• Appropriate constraints
• Stable membership
• Time for the team to gel.

Plucking people off the team or poking people into the team causes a re-set in the team forming process. Mess with the membership often enough, and people will stop trying. When team membership feels like a revolving door, individuals won’t put in the effort to form team bonds. You may get a group that functions reasonably well, but you’ll miss out on the team effect.

That doesn’t mean that team membership never changes. People leave (or are asked to leave) and people join. Hiring new people for a team should always be a joint decision, involving team members. And when people are asked to leave it shouldn’t be mysterious to the team why that happened. (For more on hiring as a collaborative process, see this article.)

Delegating then De-delegating Decisions

As a general rule, delegating decision making to the people who are closest to the work is an excellent principle. Doing so can remove bottlenecks, lead to faster decision-making, and improve customer responsiveness.

Except when it doesn’t, as happens when a manager and a team haven’t clarified who makes which decisions. Or when a manager delegates a decision, but doesn’t clarify boundaries or constraints around that decision.

When managers see that a team is about to make a poor decision, they may be tempted to countermand that decision. Countermanding a decision prevents the problems that would have been caused by a faulty decision. But it leads do a different kind of problem–loss of trust between the team and the manager.  Team members may feel the manager wasn’t serious about delegating decisions in the first place. They may believe that he only delegates decisions on the condition that the team decides exactly what the manager would choose.  Such situations will damage a mangers relationship with the team.

If the team makes a decision that will result in real harm to the company, a manager must intervene. How he intervenes makes a difference. To prevent real harm to the relationship, refrain from blame. Acknowledging that key constraints weren’t clear or communicated will help. Use the opportunity to learn from the mistake, and to set appropriate boundaries for team decisions.

Strategic decisions belong to management. But tactical decisions, course corrections, and decisions that affect day-to-day work belong with the development team. Some decisions fall in between, and require both management and front-line input.

Work with the team to identify which decisions are squarely with the team, which ones you share, and which ones are management decisions. Then set boundaries, about cost, impact, and scope.

For example, when it comes to hiring a new team member, the decision about what skills and qualities to look for in a new team member is probably a joint decision.  The choice among candidates is best done as a recommendation from the team (which you may over-ride at your own peril). But the offer and salary are neither a team decision or a joint decision. Employment terms and salary (in most organizations) are management decisions.

Clouding Team Commitments

One of the secrets ingredients for team success is that team members make commitments to each other to complete their goal. Peer pressure can be a wonderful thing. But commitments can lead to conflict, it’s not clear who makes commitments to whom about what.

Fred, a member of an agile team, participated in a planning meeting where he and his teammates committed to deliver six stories during the next iteration.  Then Fred when to the team manager, Megan, to get approval for a two week vacation, starting the second week of the next sprint–as he had done every spring for the last four years.

But this time, the result was a mess. The other team members were mad at Fred, for committing his effort to the team, when he knew he wouldn’t be in the office for half the next sprint.  The team members were mad at Megan, too, for giving Fred permission when they thought he should have talked to them first. Fred and Megan felt attacked–for doing what they’d always done.

Managers are still point-person for matters of company policy. But work commitment a happen between the team as a whole and their product owner or customer. Megan and Fred landed in the middle of that. In the end, Fred took his vacation. The team needed to renegotiate their commitment to the product owner. Megan attended the meeting to explain what had happened to the product owner.

When Fred (gratefully) returned from two weeks at the cabin with his three kids and the in-laws, they all had a sit down. They talked about which commitments the team could make, what the team could negotiate among themselves and where Megan needed to be involved for legal reasons.

I hear managers say they want teams to take more responsibility. The best way to make that happen is for managers to stop acting in ways that take responsibility away from teams. Start with these three areas.  Then, spend some time examining your relationship with the team. What else could the team do that would enhance their autonomy and responsibility? What else are you doing that might confuse the team about how much responsibility they really have?