A Manager’s Role in an Agile Process
“Agile development reflects a product lifecycle approach (continuous delivery of value), rather than a project approach (begin-end). While an individual release of a product can be managed as a project, an agile approach views a release as a single stage in a product’s ongoing evolution.”
- Jim Highsmith
It may interest you to know that more than 44% of companies claim to use agile processes to tenfold their team productivity and operational efficiency. And it has shown an impeccable result for most of the organizations so far.
The world knows the scrum teams work on building blocks’ principles, adding more to the overall value and productivity of the organization. It not just focuses on the core but strengthens the excellence of each contributing to project completion. One of the biggest guiding principles behind the agile process is self-organizing teams improving the workflow extensively.
The right execution and result-orientation are possible when managers practice appropriate behavior without compromising the quality of work. Here is a detailed illustration of a manager’s role in the agile process.
Vertical and horizontal management
Management is one of the vital aspects of any organization. This becomes simpler and more effective when managers practice the typical top-down management or waterfall approach of work. Besides keeping a watch on the workflow, it ensures an equal contribution from each teammate.
The waterfall approach uses the vertical structure strengthening the performance management and scheduling method from the managers themselves. Talking about the agile method’s horizontal approach, it pays special attention to the velocity of the team working on a project while setting priorities based on the potential. Here, the team follows the horizontal approach of operations down the value stream effectively.
Communication
Communication and the agile process go hand-in-hand. No manager can commence or strengthen an agile process’s quality without having a positive and confident tone. Be it internal or external; managers play an important role in business communications at all levels. This makes it necessary for a manager to be confident enough to handle clients and teammates simultaneously. Here, many newbies to this seniority exposure lack good communication skills. This may be due to a low confidence level or speech-language issues. It requires you to read more at speechpathologygraduateprograms.org and find out how speech or language issues can be a barrier to better management.
Development managers vs. scrum masters
Scrum masters and development managers are appointed at individual levels optimizing the team’s performance and output. Both the designated managers are required to keep a check on the time consumed to meet a milestone and estimate how soon the team will achieve the assigned tasks.
The last word
From start-ups to Fortune 500 companies, almost every venture type involves the agile methodology to brace themselves and add more to their profit graph. This has ended up in improving the work standards of organizations extensively. However, it is necessary to keep a check on your manager’s role to prove it more productive.
