10 things you can do to better lead your agile team

I'm a developer and I'm proud of that. However I know that sooner or later the time will come to lead some project. That's why I'm always observing my managers and trying to learn from them. But learning only from local managers is not enough for me. I'm curious about top management trends in the world, what good practices managements rock stars presents on conferences. I have found several good talks about it and I would like to share with you one of them.

The presentation that I would like to recommend today is "10 things you can do to better lead your agile team" by Jonathan Rasmusson. The title is a little bit long but describes perfectly topic of presentation. During the talk Jonathan walks through ten points he found very important when leading an agile team. Additional value of the lecture is that all presented examples come from Jonathan's experience.

Although I have watched the presentation several weeks ago few points from it have stuck in my head. I think the reason for that is they would really help in a project in which I was participating lately. I will describe them briefly.

Ask hard questions only at the begin of the project. When project is just starting this is the best moment to ask all tough questions. By the tough questions I don't only mean money issues. It is the time for explaining what is in scope and what is not, why are we doing this project, what elements of project are risky and we don’t know if we are able to deliver them. It's also time to define customer priorities. For this purpose Jonathan recommend using trade off sliders. The technique is very simple. Below you can find example from his presentation how such sliders should looks.

Every line represent different value and has a slider and levels. In the picture there are four lines but there can be more if you found more values important. On the left side of each line you can see word 'ON' which mean that the closer slider is to this side the value is more important. On right side there is word 'OFF' which mean that the closer slider is to this side the value is less important. Customer should set sliders on those lines keeping in mind one rule - that two sliders cannot occupy the same level on line.

Thanks to this talk I have heard about this  technique for the first time and I immediately liked it. I can't imagine going to customer 3 weeks before release to ask him about what is more important - money or time ? It would look unprofessional and silly. However if you ask about it at beginning of the project it looks completely different.

Give purpose. It is good when people from your team know why are they doing project and feel excitement about it. Team should be motivated. Without motivation your team members are coming to office just to wait till 4PM to leave home. You cannot expect that such a workers will put their heart and soul into work. Moreover motivating team is not an easy task. Everyone reacts on something else. Believe me it is not enough to stand up and say 'Thank you for great work' to your team. Fortunately Jonathan touch this topic. He recommend something he called 'Public recognition'. Email from a boss, callout standup, spontaneous lunch with a team. All those things show team members that leader cares about them. They will know that not only leader appreciates their work but also company and boss of the leader. That's extra important.

The one thing I cannot agree with Jonathan is what he is calling 'Developing sense of gratitude'. Somehow I would feel uncomfortable if someone would try to make me grateful for my job. My company hired me not because of mercy. I'm professional who spend many hours of my free time and have worked hard. So trying do develop any sense of gratitude in my case would probably cause the opposite effect (during the talk Jonathan explain that for every example he shows he has a counterargument so I guess I'm one of them).

Give up control. As project leader you are not God. Believe me, you don't want to take responsibility for whole project and for all decisions. What's more - forcing team to use technology which you like or know cannot end up well. Developers will be working with code and maintain it. Because of that it should be their responsibility to choose appropriate language\framework\server that will fit the project. Testers will be testing product so leave them responsibility of choosing test methods. As a leader whenever you see that something is not working correctly you should react. Show alternatives, present opinions. Help your team every time they made a mistake. In such a case everyone will feel responsible and a part the project.

I have described briefly only three rules that Jonathan has presented in his talk but there is more. I really encourage everyone who are interested in improvement of leading skills to watch this presentation. You will not be disappointed.