Evolution of the Agile manager

The Director wants to be in control. He has a highly directive management style and tells people what to do; sometimes, even how to do it. The Director compares a Scrum team with a factory or an execution-machine.
The organisation is a top-down hierarchy. Plans are made at the top of the hierarchy. The Director makes sure that people below in the hierarchy (Product Owners included) focus on execution.The Director gives people individual targets to ensure efficiency, quality and responsibility for the outcome.
Profit and shareholder happiness are the main measurement for progress. Teams commit to time, scope and budget to make sure plans are executed.
Directors in a transition to the next stage have difficulties, since:

• The whole organisation is so used to this management style that it is very hard to change it.
• Targets are still efficiency\shareholder driven.
• People in (Scrum) teams are not used to self-organise (although they might be open for it).
• Teams aren’t stable enough to continuously learn and become self-organised.

Being a Director in a world with uncertainty and change is stressful. At some point he needs to delegate stuff to people he can trust. That’s the moment where Directors become Influencers. A Manager needs some maturity from the Scrum Masters, Product Owners and Development teams to make that shift.
The Influencer still has a need for control. He still makes the top-down plan and then tries to get buy-in on these plans.
Once he has buy-in, he delegates the less critical tasks. In this way the Influencer can focus on escalations and high important\long term decision making:

• The Influencer delegates Planning execution to the Product Owner.
• Product Owners have to provide frequent progress reports.
• The Influencer imposes improvements on Scrum Masters by providing guidelines on processes and tools.
• The Influencer ensures quality by setting up predefined standards for the teams.
• He challenges teams to increase their velocity.
• He adds extra resources if this is not possible.

As a result of delegating work, people will start to feel responsible for some of the work. The Influencer creates more room for self-organisation, but people still struggle to get in control.

When Scrum Masters succeed in building good teams, standards and responsibility grows. An Influencer needs this to feel comfortable enough to delegate more work and responsibilities. Influencers turn into Facilitators when this happens.
The focus of the Facilitator shifts from staying in control\ensuring compliancy towards keeping employees and customers happy.
The Facilitator takes strategic decisions, but leaves the details to consensus and mutual agreement:

• Planning decisions are an agreement between Product Owners, stakeholders and himself.
• Product Owners become the spokesmen to customers and stakeholders.
• He tracks progress by frequently visiting Sprint Reviews.
• In Sprint Reviews he participates as stakeholder or helps stakeholders to make the right decisions.
• He provides the boundary conditions for teams to setup their own quality-practices.
• He uses velocity as an indicator for fixing issues instead of enforcing it to the team.

The directive management style of the Facilitator management has changed into a supportive approach.
People feel responsible and in control. They now want full control over their work.

Once the Facilitator dares to let go of critical decision making he becomes an Advisor.
In this stage he only gives advice. Decisions are made by the people doing the work:

• Scrum Masters decide on the processes, tools and improvements to be made.
• The Advisor consults or helps the Scrum Master in solving difficult problems.
• Product Owners decide on product planning & stakeholder management. The Advisor has no need to be in between.
• Instead, he facilitates interaction between Product Owners, Stakeholders and Development Team.
• Development Teams are responsible for quality and how they do their work (using the Definition of Done)
• The Advisor facilitates the Development Team to get the resources for building high quality products.

There is a big overlap in the work of a Scrum Master and an Advisor. While the Scrum Master is focussed on coaching the teams, Advisors coach the Scrum Masters and\or Product Owners.
Once in a while the Advisor inquires if decisions do not lead to issues. He is still responsible for budgeting, but leaves the decision making with the people doing the work.

Mature Scrum teams feel ownership for the full value chain. The Servant Leader feels safe enough to hand over full control to these teams. Instead, he has has a holarchical view on the organisation, while teams continuously improve on their own level in the holarchy.
This is what real self-organisation looks like:

• Development team members are responsible for product quality.
• The Servant Leader randomly samples if customers are satisfied with the quality.
• Product Owners are responsible for budgets, profit and loss of their product.
• Scrum Masters are responsible for continuous improvement of the team and the organisation.
• The Servant Leader facilitates entrepreneurship at every employee.
• He makes sure everyone in the organisation has focus on creating customer-value.
• He focuses on capturing opportunities, solving problems and getting results.

The Servant Leader provides guidance, possibilities and resources for new\unexperienced people to grow as a professional.
The major responsibility of the Servant Leader is to prevent the environment from re-creating old paradigms. Employees need enough room for experimenting with the values in the Agile manifesto.