A team can’t “become agile” in a vacuum. The covenant that management and the surrounding organization makes with the team needs to become agile as well in order for the team to be effective. This presentation enumerates 10 commitments an agile team needs from their organization’s management in order to perform well, and describes the cheats we still often see substituted at detriment to the team and the project.

1. Copyright © 2016 Excella Consulting
10 True
Commitments
Agile Teams Need from Management excella.com | @excellaco

2. No Team is an
Agile Island
• Team agility is reinforced
or hampered by
• Management support
• Interactions with stakeholders
Why do we keep cheating?
Agility demands
10 TRUE
commitments

3. ScrumMaster
• Teamwork champion
• Process guide
• Improvement advocate
• No training, aptitude, or inclination
• Already has a day job
01
CHEAT

4. Product Owner
• Domain/value expert
• Communicator
• Decider
02
• Can’t herd cats … uh, stakeholders
• No time for team & no posseCHEAT

5. Value priorities /
Increment clarity
• Prioritize ‘til it hurts
• Clarity before perfection
03
• Everything is “must have”
• Fail slow – fiddle as Sprint burnsCHEAT

6. Scope / Schedule
flexibility
Flex
Schedule  MVP
Scope  deadline
04
• Insist on “original scope”
• Arbitrary deadlinesCHEAT

7. Development
Environments
• Build, integrate,
test, deploy
• Beginning NOW
05
• Wait until delivery to test
• Use your development PCs
• Share the server with those guysCHEAT

8. Cross-functional
team / Autonomy
• Handles EVERY part of
solution
• Decides how/when to
do it
06
• Force reliance on central groups for
“efficiency”CHEAT

9. Consistent
organizational
behavior
Renegotiate team
interactions with
• Business • Security
• PMO, QA, … etc.
07
• Impose legacy processes on team agility
CHEAT

10. Common
team space
• Work side-by-side
• Physical sprint board
08
• Nearby cubicles
• Virtual board onlyCHEAT

11. Team Stability
• Winning teams
sticktogether
09
• Plug and play
CHEAT
Forming  Storming—X  Norming

12. Multitasking …
the mind-killer!
Pain
Box
Pain
Box
Pain
Box
Multitasking is the mind-killer.
I must … not … multitask!
Focus
• Projects in progress
across all team members
= 1
10
• High-priority interrupts
• Team velocity = team membersCHEAT

13. Cheaters Beware
• Don’t cheat, delete
to the project
to the team ORCommit Don’t Start
These are not
the projects you want!
Acknowledgements to Karl Brock for inspiring this presentation.

14. excella.com | @excellaco