Becoming an Agile Leader

Bart has been in ecommerce for over 20 years, and can't imagine a better job to have. He is interested in all things agile, or anything new to learn.

  Agile   Leadership   Strategy   ProjectsAtWork  

As an organization transitions to Agile, executives play a key role. And they too must transition, modifying their leadership approaches as well as their operating methods. It takes dedication and work, and even the best may fall into bad habits if not careful.

As noted earlier in this series, the role of an executive in an Agile organization is to remove barriers to success that the team is unable to remove on their own. In order to do this, the Agile executive needs to be in touch with the team enough to understand what the blocking issues are, without being so involved as to make the team dependent upon her. The executive needs to understand the challenges and whether providing additional resources will help overcome those challenges.

How the executive manages this will vary from person to person. It partly depends on the size of the teams and of the company, as well as the executive’s ability to stay informed about the goings on of multiple teams, and which teams need the most attention. As the organization makes the transition, the team will surely benefit from the executive’s involvement, as long it doesn’t slip into looking a bit like management, and the executive benefits by learning the teams, the people, the problems, as well as strengths and weaknesses.

Becoming an effective leader of multiple Agile teams or even an entire Agile organization …

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