If your role has not adapted, you may not be part of the Agile transformation.
—Mario Moreira
An Agile and customer-value-driven enterprise is an organization that optimizes its roles in a manner that focuses on the Agile values and principles and customer value. This focus may necessitate shifts within an enterprise. The first shift is that employee roles should evolve toward aligning as closely to the customer and the creation of customer value. The second shift is that enterprises should add Agile activities that support customer value and remove activities that do not directly link to customer value.
In both shifts, the implication is that roles may evolve or become obsolete, or new roles may emerge. A litmus test to gauge whether your enterprise is Agile is to determine if any of the roles have changed. If you don’t see a change in roles when the enterprise evolves to become more Agile, then it probably isn’t Agile.
Optimizing Enterprise Roles for Agile
Organizational roles and their functions are part of transforming to Agile. What this means is that each function must operate such that it can readily adapt to the needs of customers and market conditions. Are current roles and their functions constraining or embracing the need to adapt toward customer value? Embracing the need should be the goal.
What roles and functional areas should be optimized to the changing needs of customers and marketplace in order to have better business outcomes? The short answer is all roles and job functions should contribute. Figure 8-1 illustrates many of the key roles that are new or should adapt toward an Agile mindset and align with the delivery of customer value.
Figure 8-1. Roles in an Agile enterprise
What you are really looking for is what roles directly contribute to customer value. As discussed in Chapter 2, the two-degrees-of-customer-separation rule can be an effective means to determine how far away any one employee is from the customer. Two degrees of customer separation would be “you (as an employee) connected to an employee connected to the customer.” The farther away employees are from the customer, the less likely they understand what is considered valuable to the customer. Aligning the roles in your Agile galaxy to customer value will often require a shift in how the organization is run and may entail adapting roles and responsibilities.
Obvious Agile Roles
If you look across an Agile galaxy, there are obvious roles and less obvious roles that should be adapted toward an Agile mindset and aligned with the delivery of customer value. As illustrated in Figure 8-2, the obvious roles tend to primarily focus on the team level. However, in an Agile enterprise, the norm is that all roles adapt toward an Agile mindset and align with the delivery of customer value. If they do not, there may be an opportunity to streamline toward alignment to customer value.
Figure 8-2. Obvious plus less obvious equals an Agile enterprise
Roles in the “obvious” group tend to be the first to apply Agile for several reasons. Development teams are more receptive to apply Agile. Management departments, on the other hand, find it easier to ask teams to change to Agile without themselves committing to the change. Also, team-level Agile processes are more prevalent and have a mechanical feel, making it easier to apply the culture changes.
Agile Pit Stop
It should be obvious that all roles should adapt toward an Agile mindset and align with customer value. Today some are obvious and some are less obvious.
In both the obvious and less obvious sections, there is advice on how to adapt each role. However, all roles should start by gaining the knowledge of the information in Chapters 2–7. These chapters highlight what it means to be a customer-value-driven enterprise, the importance of the customer and employee, what an Agile galaxy looks like, and what it means to embrace the Agile mindset. All roles should have this level of understanding. The role or functional areas that tend to fall into the “obvious” grouping are:
Development Teams
A development team consists of a group of people focused on building the product or service. It is comprised of cross-functional roles such as development, quality assurance (QA), database, user experience (UX), documentation, education, and so on.
When moving toward Agile and customer focus, development teams must learn the Agile values and principles and apply Agile behaviors and processes as they incorporate customer needs into the delivery of customer value. They should apply a discovery and incremental mindset and processes that will help them evolve their deliverable toward customer value. While technically focused, they should gain business knowledge from the product owner so they can better understand the customer and customer value.
ScrumMaster
The ScrumMaster is the facilitator for a team applying the Scrum process when building customer value. ScrumMasters lead the team through planning, daily stand-ups, retrospectives, and supporting the demonstrations. If not using Scrum, the role may be called the Agile facilitator or coach.
When moving toward Agile and customer focus, this new role focuses the team on the Agile mindset, Agile processes and practices, and the delivery of customer value. This new role in Agile often replaces project managers; ScrumMasters act more as facilitators of the Agile process and servant leaders to the team. This may be a significant shift for some companies where functional managers or project managers have always played a more directive role.
Product Owner
The product owner (PO) role is responsible for identifying and prioritizing the work according to customer value and for incorporating customer input and feedback to better align with customer value as the product evolves.
When moving toward Agile and customer focus, the PO is the champion and owner of customer value. This may be a shift for some companies where others play this role. The PO works with the team to ensure the team members realize customer needs and the business perspective of the work. The PO is the customer advocate and captures customer feedback to move the product in the direction of what the customer actually needs. The PO contributes to sprint planning and invites customers to attend the demonstrations.
Agile Pit Stop
The PO is the champion of customer value and the customer advocate. The PO captures customer feedback to move the product in the direction of what the customer actually needs.
This new role may be played by an existing role engaged with the customer, such as product manager or business analyst. It requires the person performing the role to engage regularly with the team. The PO must have decision-making rights to steer the product toward the direction of customer value. For more information on PO responsibilities, see Chapter 14.
Product Owner Constellation
A PO works within a sea of ideas that come from many places. Many ideas come directly from customers and others come from those within the company. To bring customer value ideas together, a PO should form a product owner (PO) constellation, consisting of employees who help the PO focus on customer value. Figure 8-3 is an example of a PO constellation.
Figure 8-3. Product owner (PO) constellation
While the PO is the person ultimately responsible for prioritizing and owning customer value, it is good to have a PO constellation that includes other roles and functions that provide input to decision making for determining customer value. Other roles that can provide input are business analysts, management, salespeople, marketing experts, and field engineers.
Less Obvious Agile Roles
There are role and functional areas that are often missing from the Agile galaxy. These roles and areas need to be more engaged and adapt to an Agile mindset and practices to make for a more thriving Agile customer-value-driven enterprise. Given that early Agile processes tended to focus on the team level, this is not surprising. However, in order to have an end-to-end and top-to-bottom enterprise focused on the engine of customer value, all those within an enterprise need to adapt and play their role.
For those in this group, I often start by offering an Agile 101 session, which includes an emphasis on the Agile values and principles and a view of the Agile galaxy highlighting both axes. I focus on what it means to be customer-value-driven. Next, in the spirit of self-organizing, I ask the participants how they think they can adapt their role to align with the Agile mindset and the incremental nature it brings and how they can contribute to delivering customer value. Consider reading Chapter 9 for addition education options and guidance. The roles or functional areas that tend to fall into the “less obvious” grouping include:
Customers
A customer is someone who has a choice on what to buy and where to buy it. By purchasing your product, a customer pays you with money to help your company stay in business. Because of these facts, engaging the customer is of utmost importance. Customers are external to the company and may provide the initial ideas and feedback to validate the ideas into working products.
While not always obvious, the customer role should be front and center when working in an Agile context. Your customers are your business partners and your goal is to build strong customer relationships. While customers should be invited to product demonstrations and provide feedback, they should really be asked for their opinions all along the idea journey from identification to delivery to the reflection of customer value. For more information on customers, see Chapter 6.
Executives and Senior Management
Executives and senior management establish company goals, strategies, and objectives, and they provide leadership and guidance.
When moving toward Agile and customer focus, senior leaders must initiate a strategic shift in how the enterprise works. The senior leader should become the sponsor of the Agile initiative, encouraging buy-in to Agile. They must play a continuous role in advocating for Agile via e-mails, company meetings, and celebrations. Executives learn the language of Agile and customer value and become more conversant with those they lead.
Agile Pit Stop
Senior management may only have one person on its team who has sponsored the Agile change; others may not yet be on the Agile bandwagon.
Executives should support the concept of customer-value-driven enterprise, advocating for a discovery mindset where customer feedback loops are used to incrementally gain an understanding of what is valuable to the customer. They should also advocate for metrics that gain insight into learning what the customer value is and the fastest possible speed for delivering that customer value.
Senior leaders should adapt the enterprise from hierarchical to self-organizing. When employees feel they have more ownership and decision-making accountability, they apply more brainpower and bring passion to their work. This should include hiring direct reports who have a discovery mindset while retraining current directs who have a certainty mindset.
Business Leaders (Including Marketing and Sales)
The business department, including marketing and sales, focuses on developing products and services that meet customer needs. They focus on customer value by understanding current demand, marketplace trends, competition, brand value, and overall customer needs. The best product owners come from the business side and its employees can be an effective part of a PO constellation.
When moving toward Agile and customer focus, the business side (specifically the product owners) becomes the driver for capturing customer value. All those on the business side should learn Agile, embrace the discovery mindset, and begin to operate in more of an incremental manner. Roles in this space should be no more than two degrees of separation from the customer. All business personnel associated with a product should attend demonstrations as products evolve.
Middle Management
Traditionally, middle managers carry out the strategic vision of executives, create effective work environments, coordinate and control the work, and supervise groups of people who do the work. They may have functional and technical ownership of products. They also provide performance management and career development to their people.
When moving toward Agile and customer focus, middle managers must build a healthy Agile culture by encouraging their teams to align with Agile values and principles and focus on being customer-value-driven. They must adapt and act as a coach and servant leader toward their teams and become less directive. They must trust their teams to make good decisions, establish bounded authority, create safe work environments, and remove employee and team roadblocks. They should focus on the optimal location of people that reduces impediments and enables the flow of work. They should promote career and personal development through continuous education and apply Agile-minded performance excellence.
Agile Pit Stop
Middle managers must adapt their role by backing away from their functional leadership since the PO now owns much of that work.
If middle managers have strong product knowledge, some functional management members shift their roles and become a PO since the PO now owns the product direction. Because of less functional responsibility of their teams, some managers may evolve from a functional manager to a resource or career manager.
Middle managers are often the lynchpin that allows the executive’s vision for Agile to thrive in the team setting. If they embrace Agile, then the change may succeed. Otherwise, they can block the change toward an Agile culture if they feel the need for control and won’t allow a team to self-organize.
Human Resources
Human resource (HR) departments focus on managing company processes, policies, and standards, while carrying out management programs that focus on employees. More specifically, HR engages in recruitment, employee relationships, performance management, corporate communications, employee benefits, and pay structures.
When moving toward Agile and customer focus, HR can help build a healthy Agile culture that optimizes for engaged and happy employees. HR should be knowledgeable in Agile and what it means to be a customer-value-driven enterprise. HR should promote the values of collaboration, ownership, motivation, empowerment, trust, and safety (COMETS) for employees.
HR should recruit those candidates with an Agile mindset and align performance management from individuals to teams. HR works to adapt all roles toward an Agile mindset as described in this chapter and, in particular, to move management toward a coaching and servant leader role. For more on evolving HR to be more Agile, see Chapter 21.
Finance
Finance employees are primarily responsible for the fiscal health of an organization. They are focused on the financial side of funding decisions, facilities support, and staffing and, as a result, they manage the supply-and-demand system of the organization. A specific activity undertaken by finance is managing the annual budget process and periodically reporting and monitoring the financial health of the enterprise.
When moving toward Agile and customer focus, budgeting departments should adapt to a continuous Agile budgeting or at least a quarterly budgeting cycle. Finance needs to understand the importance of customer feedback and how it can change the direction of customer value to better know where to invest the enterprise’s money. Since the demand for certain products and services can change quickly, finance needs to establish a system that can adapt supply according to the demands of the customer and market conditions.
Agile Pit Stop
Business (including marketing and sales) and finance become stewards of capturing customer value, embracing the discovery mindset, operating in an incremental manner, and applying customer feedback, all of which lead to better business outcomes.
For healthier decision making, finance should participate in two activities related to the value of ideas. The first is to challenge the assumptions and certainty thinking being demonstrated when people say an idea is of high value. The second is to advocate for Agile budgeting where the company funds only increments of an idea to place smaller bets and ensure that feedback is collected before any further funding. In addition, finance should adapt reporting toward a more incremental and outcome-driven manner. Finally, finance should learn Agile and what it means to be a customer-value-driven enterprise. For more on finance and their role in Agile budgeting, see Chapter 19.
Portfolio Management
Portfolio management (PM) teams focus on identifying what work is deemed valuable to an organization. These teams are found near the early part of the delivery axis of the Agile galaxy. In a more general sense, PM is a group within an organization that defines the standards of how the portfolio or work is managed. Traditionally, these employees are often involved in having authority and making decisions on what work gets done. PM often supplies metrics and reporting on the progress of the work.
When moving toward Agile and customer focus, PM should move toward a servant leader role. These employees adapt from being a key decision maker to enabling effective decision making by the business side. They set up an enterprise pipeline of ideas being considered or those that are already underway, focusing on the value of the work instead of the status. Information on the enterprise idea pipeline should be publically available.
PM can be instrumental in supporting a customer-value-driven organization by providing transparency on how the work has gotten prioritized, what prioritization methods have been used, what assumptions have been made, what customer feedback loops have been applied to validate customer value, and what team(s) have or may be involved in the work.
PM should also encourage a discovery and incremental mindset that, instead of moving a large idea into development, promotes the activity of decomposing an increment of the idea to validate its value. It should also adapt reporting toward recognizing value delivered, rate of delivery, quality of delivery, and business outcomes of revenue generated. Of course, PM should learn Agile and what it means to be customer-value-driven.
Project Management Office (PMO)
The project management office (PMO) focuses on defining project standards and supporting projects in the latter part of the delivery axis of the Agile galaxy. Traditionally, the PMO is directly involved in managing projects and often supply project managers to lead them. PMOs supply output metrics and report on the status of projects. They may initiate project status meetings to determine how projects are doing.
When moving toward Agile and customer focus, there may be a significant shift in how the PMO operates. Since most work in Agile is facilitated by a ScrumMaster with the Product Owner deciding the value and priority of the work, there is less work for a project manager to do. It is not uncommon for some project managers to become ScrumMasters, depending on their ability to adapt to an Agile mindset and act as a coach and facilitator.
Agile Pit Stop
If you have a portfolio and/or project management office, the focus should be less on decision making and more on servant leadership for enabling customer value.
It is not uncommon for a PMO to adapt to a leaner AMO (Agile management office). In an Agile environment, the focus is not the project, but the incremental delivery of value. Establishing a project implies you can know customer value upfront. In Agile, the team creates increments of value and the PO collects customer feedback used to adapt the product toward customer value. While the PMO may be leaner due to the ScrumMaster and PO, the PMO may focus on managing bigger releases where multiple teams are required to build the product.
As the PMO adapts to an Agile culture and processes, it should also adapt reporting toward understanding value delivered, speed of delivery, quality of delivery, and business outcomes of revenue generated. Of course, the PMO should learn Agile and what it means to be customer-value-driven.
The Importance of an Agile Coach
The Agile coach plays a big role in getting Agile off the ground. It can be beneficial to have a coach with enterprise Agile experience because he or she can help you navigate toward an Agile culture and the deep Agile implementation knowledge that ensures teams are implementing Agile effectively. While education will provide initial knowledge, a coach can keep you on the Agile path and prevent you from reverting back to old, traditional habits. The coach also understands the short-term and long-term pitfalls of adopting Agile and that Agile is a culture shift and will take time. The coach can help the team move to Agile in a more effective and efficient manner.
With that being said, it is important to gauge whether the Agile coach really understands Agile and what levels he or she has operated in (for example, team, management, and enterprise). As a tip, ask perspective coaches if they can articulate and discuss the Agile values and principles (without referring to a book or the Internet). Ask them what level(s) they have coached. For each level, ask them what challenges they have encountered and how they overcame them.
Bounded Authority
As you move to an enterprise where employees are engaged and teams self-organize around work, there is a benefit to providing guidance on the boundaries of the various roles and their activities. Instead of approaching this by trial and error where teams bump into the boundaries with often negative consequences, consider applying the concept of bounded authority.
Bounded authority is defined by the sphere of responsibility determined by who has the most knowledge and experience over a particular aspect of work. Those people should have the authority and decision-making rights over that work. For example, the group having the most knowledge about enterprise strategy is senior management. The group having the most knowledge about designing and building a product is the team.
Within a hierarchical structure of a company, bounded authority can help at multiple levels. For simplicity, Figure 8-4 illustrates team-level, middle-management-level, and senior-management-level boundaries. You may also add functional areas such as HR and finance.
Figure 8-4. Bounded authority to help with self-organization
Within an Agile context, the goal is to push ownership and the authority and decision making it brings to the lowest possible level where the most information and experience dwells. For an Agile team, the members self-organize around the work in the product backlog that has been prioritized by the PO. Once that work is available at the team level, the team has authority to make architecture, design coding, and test decisions, and it can self-organize around how to build the product.
The key to bounded authority is that each level knows what work it should self-organize, what it is empowered to change, and the areas in which it can make decisions. Another key is that each level knows the authority of another level. Equally important is that this implies what authority a level does not have.
Agile Pit Stop
Within an Agile context, the goal is to push authority and decision making of the work to the lowest possible level where the most information and experience dwells.
If the team’s work is prioritized by the product owner, what does middle management do? Can they assign work to the team? The short answer is no since the team gets their work from the PO via the product backlog. While the team self-organizes around the work, middle management helps optimize flow for their teams by removing impediments and enabling the teams to be its most effective.
Senior management should be focusing on the work where they have the most knowledge and experience. Their bounded authority of work may be to provide a strategy for the enterprise. This means they must help teams understand strategy and help them align strategy with their work.
Another option is the concept of seven levels of delegation where the bounded authority guidance is at the activity level instead of the role level. Established by Jurgen Appelo, this concept expands the binary view of authority of a decision (for example, you have authority or I have authority) into seven levels of delegation. They are the following: tell, sell, consult, agree, advise, inquire, and delegate.
As you may guess, on one end of the spectrum “tell” means that the manager fully owns the decision, and on the other end “delegate” means the decision is fully owned by the team while not even telling the manager the outcome. The value of this model is that some managers are not ready to give total authority of the decision away, so they may incrementally move to a less authoritative position (for instance, from tell to consult) where the manager now asks for input before making a discussion. You can learn more about the seven levels of delegation in Managing for Happiness.1
Healthy Employee Relationships
A big part of building an Agile enterprise is evolving roles to better connect people together. Promote activities where employees can interact, build empathy, and collaborate. Sharing each other’s delights and concerns is a meaningful way to build understanding and trust. In Agile, there are many related practices that promote people working together (for instance, pair programming, story mapping, and grooming). Informal activities, such as eating and socializing together, can further the connection.
Agile Pit Stop
Sharing each other’s delights and concerns is a good way to build trust and understanding.
Strong connections occur when two people bond in a face-to-face manner. Since nonverbal communication makes up a major portion of all communication, face-to-face communication helps people better understand each other and how they are feeling about a discussion. While physical face-to-face contact is preferred, there are online applications that bring you face-to-face. Consider using a virtual alternative when physical face-to-face is not an option.
It is not uncommon in a distributed organization to have members at the remote site visit and bond with team members at the local site. This is a way to get team members to know each other, which promotes collaboration and builds trust. When members return to their designated site, the trust that has been built will promote stronger relationships.
Healthy Manager-to-Employee Relationships
As you look at the various trust relationships, an important connection is between an employee and his or her direct manager. Managers are responsible for maintaining a healthy and happy workplace. Managers need to make extra efforts to build trust with their employees and promote an open and honest workplace. As a manager, consider ways you can get to know team members and they can get to know you. Key ingredients in building trust are transparency, listening, integrity, and growth.
Agile Pit Stop
To build healthy relationships between managers and their employees, apply transparency, listening, integrity, and growth to the relationship.
Transparency is about sharing information regarding the company, division, and group so employees know what is going on. This may include sharing the latest changes, strategy, group goals, and anything else that has an impact on employees. When trust is established, transparency becomes a two-way street. As a manager shares more, employees will share more with the manager about what is really going on around them.
Listening is allowing employees to lead the agenda in a one-to-one encounter. By being an active listener, you have the opportunity to learn about the employees and what they care about. Another example of listening is walking the gemba (in other words, the real place where work gets done) where employees are sitting. Stop by and say hello. Ask them if there is anything they need.
Integrity is about being fair and honest with the way you treat employees and avoiding favoritism. Deliver on commitments to employees and only promise something when you mean to do it. If you ask employees to take risks, provide them a safe environment to do so. If you respond negatively to an employee failure, this will be a sure way to lose trust. Instead, address what was learned (focus on the positive) and how that learning can be incorporated for better results in the future.
Growth is about showing employees that you care about their personal goals and career growth. This goes well beyond the notion of promotions by providing them learning opportunities both within the workplace and outside. Periodically check in to discuss their goals to see how they are doing.
Holocracy
When considering how to evolve roles to align for the changing needs of customers, you may look at the holocracy model. Holocracy can be defined as a different way of operating an enterprise that moves power from a hierarchy management structure and distributes it across autonomous teams, as illustrated in Figure 8-5. Holocracy has clear rules and definitions for what teams and individuals can do.
Figure 8-5. Hierarchical and holocracy structures
In holocracy, teams are the basic components and building blocks of an enterprise. Teams are given a consequential purpose and then self-organize around the work and determine how to best achieve the need. Teams are not part of a business unit. This allows for dynamic movement of teams and individuals toward the work of perceived high customer value.
From a customer-value perspective, teams have customer value as their driving consequential purpose. As customers’ needs change, so do the teams. Because team members have a number of skills and experience, they may move from team to team to where the highest value work is occurring.
Holocracy leverages a number of concepts. Transparency is applied where strategy, policies, and decisions are made public so you don’t need to rely on the politics of who you know to get information. Self-organizing teams are responsible for their work, decide how to do their work, and determine who will do the work without any managerial input.
Lightning-bolt-shaped teams ensure team members have a primary, secondary, and tertiary skill set, experience, or ability to work on different types of work to make it easier to move from team to team. Bounded authority is applied where ownership and decision making is moved to where the most knowledge lives, which is often at the team level. Also, the concepts of open source, Agile processes, and lean enterprise are often seen as part of holocratic organizations.
Enterprises that move to a holocracy model will see their organizations’ structure adapt to allow for more teams working on customer value and more employees who are closer to the customer. The two-degrees-of customer-separation rule (where every employee is no more than two degrees of separation from the customer) almost becomes automatic.
It may be challenging for some employees, including those in management, to move to an holocracy model. I suggest first experiencing self-organizing and applying lightning-bolt-shaped teams before considering holocracy. For more insight, consider exploring Holocracy by Brian J. Robertson, The Evolutionary-Teal Paradigm by Frederic Laloux, and the Agile mindset on how an organization may evolve to be better align with customer value.
Have You Evolved Your Roles Yet?
It does take an enterprise and the whole Agile galaxy to move to Agile and the focus on customer value. Every role should evolve to become closer to customer value. If you are an Agile enterprise, you should see new roles, adaptation to existing roles, and the minimization of other roles. Avoid optimizing on the title of the role and instead optimize on what is needed to more effectively deliver customer value.
For additional material, I suggest the following:
Managing for Happiness: Games, Tools, and Practices to Motivate Any Team by Jurgen Appelo, Wiley, 2016
Being Agile: Your Roadmap to Successful Adoption of Agile by Mario Moreira, Chapter 12, Apress, 2013
Holocracy: The New Management System for a Rapidly Changing World by Brian J. Robertson, Henry Holt and Co., 2015