Michael K. Spayd, January 28, 2008

What Your Manager Should Be Doing for Your Agile Team
(but may not be)

What do Agile teams need from their managers? Can someone actually lead a self-organized team? Do we even need managers in this new world?

This presentation will focus on these questions (plus others from the audience), primarily from the point of view of the Agile teams themselves. Starting with an Agile Manager Competency Model, we will define the team's change agenda for management!

Amongst the areas to be explored in the presentation are:

• how the manager can benefit the team through individual and team coaching
• the role of performance reviews in team morale
• the need for organizational obstacle removal at all levels
• how metrics and reporting can help or hinder teams
• supplier management from an Agile perspective (e.g., interfacing with outsourced Agile teams)
• the role of organizational culture in implementing Agile
• the need to facilitate internal organizational change
• how to work with the support functions that often are a drag on an Agile team's velocity

Attendee participation will be encouraged, as we articulate what we need from management to support Agile teams.

The January meeting will be held at Rally Software Development in Boulder. Directions can be found below. The general plan for 2008 will be to meet at the Tivoli on the Metro/Auraria campus in Downtown Denver, but this is a good opportunity for Agile teams in the Interlocken, Boulder and Longmont areas to check out Agile Denver.

As always, our monthly meetings are free to attend and open to local software professionals, students and faculty. Feel free to pass this announcement along to your colleagues.

Presentation

A version of the January 2008 presentation is available on the Collective Edge Community Links page.

Speaker

Michael K. Spayd is an organizational change and strategy consultant with more than 20 years experience in IT-related work. Clients have ranged from Fortune 100 to Global 1000 to small businesses to non-profit and educational institutes. Since 2001, he has specialized in large scale enterprise change involving Lean and Agile methods for dramatically increased IT organizational effectiveness. He has served as senior consultant to two of the largest Agile implementations in the US over the past 6 years. Michael has coached two dozen Agile teams and trained many more. He has a deep expertise in working at all levels within an organization in roles such as advisor, facilitator, team and executive coach, and educator. He has formal training in psychology and psychotherapy (Master's degree), Co-Active coaching and leadership, and organizational behavior. He is a Certified Professional Facilitator, professional coach, and Certified Scrum Master. Michael is president of Collective Edge Consulting, llc, whose mission is to lead enterprise level Agile transformations, bringing tools and approaches from the edge of the collective understanding. For more information on Michael and his work see http://collective-edge.com. He has an upcoming course listed at http://agileuniversity.org/course_agile_manager.jsp.

Sponsor

The January 2008 meeting sponsor is Rally Software.

From an initial pilot project to enterprise rollout, Rally helps companies succeed with Agile software development. Rally's family of Agile life cycle management products give teams the visibility and collaboration needed to deliver high-value software in rapid iterations, and its world-renowned coaching services help mentor teams to create internal Agile experts. Based in Boulder, Colo., Rally maps an incremental road to Agile adoption for thousands of subscribers from leading software vendors, Internet companies and corporate development teams. For more information, visit http://www.rallydev.com.

Location

The January 2008 meeting will be held at Rally Software Development's offices at 333 Walnut Street in Boulder, just East of the 29th Street shopping district. Please refer to this link of directions:

http://rallydev.com/contact_us.jsp

The entrance around back of the building, with a large lot for free parking.