How can you apply agile management to your business plan? How can managers encourage a collaborative work environment?
In The Age of Agile, Stephen Denning argues that to thrive, companies must ensure their management is as agile as their strategy. Denning highlights three important principles of agile management: small, self-managing, multi-disciplinary teams; networked coordination between these teams; and guidance from upper management.
Let’s explore each of these practices below.
Managerial Practice 1: Small, Self-Managing, Multi-Disciplinary Teams
Denning argues that companies can continuously innovate their products and services by organizing their workers into small, self-managing, multi-disciplinary teams. These small groups are organized around a single project—such as solving a problem with their current product or developing a new feature—and are granted wide latitude in selecting their methods for achieving these goals. How far that discretion extends will vary from company to company, but in general, the goal is for the team to move quickly without waiting for their decisions to be approved.
Denning lists four benefits to this agile management practice: smaller tasks, faster development cycles, more independence, and more suggestions and ideas.
1) Smaller Tasks
Denning’s approach allows firms to break down large, complicated problems into smaller, more manageable tasks. Developers can thus test out targeted solutions without being encumbered by the complexity of working on the entire product at once.
2) Faster Development Cycles
Focusing on a smaller task allows teams to move more quickly through the iterative cycle of development, accelerating their research. By working in short cycles and focusing on small, incremental improvements, these teams can constantly generate value for customers.
3) More Independence
By working autonomously with little need for verification and approval, these teams can adapt more quickly to new information and customer feedback. Denning argues that traditional top-down management slows teams down by requiring decisions to be ratified and verified from on high.
4) More Suggestions and Ideas
By eliminating the need for top-down planning, teams are free to leverage innovative ideas from all levels of the organization. When ordinary workers can make suggestions and offer their perspectives, this creates a wider pool of ideas for future innovation.
Managerial Practice 2: Coordination Between Teams
Though working independently, these small teams must still coordinate their actions to work together toward the company’s larger goals. Denning recommends that companies allow their staff to collaborate across teams in an interlinked network that shares information and resources directly through regular communication. This not only gives team members faster and easier access to resources and information to complete their tasks, but also gives them a broader perspective of how their actions fit with those of other teams into broader company goals.
Denning argues that companies must break down silos between teams to facilitate this level of coordination. When teams are cut off from each other, they end up with blind spots and outdated information, which leads them to work incompatibly or even at cross-purposes. To prevent unproductive siloing, Denning recommends widely sharing information to keep everyone informed on company matters such as overall strategy, the activity of other teams, and new developments that might impact the company. He also suggests bringing staff together into common spaces and periodically exchanging staff between teams. This allows staff members to informally share information that may be relevant to their roles.
| How To Increase Information Sharing Across Teams Business experts have come up with several additional strategies for breaking down silos between teams—let’s explore three. 1) Create central repositories of information that can be broadly accessed or contributed to. These could include tips and tricks, contact lists, internal reports, customer research, or anything else that might be useful to more than one team. Repositories allow for frictionless exchange of information because they can be accessed at any time without having to set up a meeting. 2) Identify company experts on certain topics and encourage others to refer to them as needed. This will allow members of other teams to benefit from their subject expertise and encourage cross-team communication. 3) Hold regular meetings between team leaders to identify interdependencies and areas of overlap. This will help team leads see how their work fits together into broader company goals and allow them to identify opportunities for collaborating or exchanging resources. In particular, experts recommend holding retrospective meetings after projects have been completed. During these meetings, all stakeholders should share information on how the project went and what could be improved next time. |
Managerial Practice 3: Facilitation from Upper Management
While this may all sound like a demotion for upper management, Denning contends that company leaders play an enormous role in an agile organization. Rather than managers, they must become facilitators of a networked, collaborative environment. Denning highlights two ways that upper management can achieve this.
First, upper managers must set the ground rules for how the small teams operate. These parameters define their purposes, discretionary resources, decision-making authority, and channels of coordination with others. This allows teams to move independently without stepping on each others’ toes, duplicating efforts, or working in incompatible directions.
Second, managers must set the tone for their company’s culture. Denning argues that business leaders foster company culture by showcasing and reinforcing core agile values, such as bringing joy to the customer, collaboration, and initiative.
| How to Facilitate an Agile Organization Dennings says agile managers are responsible for setting ground rules and building company culture—but how should you go about these tasks? Let’s explore advice from other business experts: Ground rules: To set effective ground rules, business experts emphasize the importance of thinking in systems—seeing how all the small moving parts of your organization coalesce to form the bigger picture. To think in systems, consider the multiple factors that influence outcomes, and map out the organization and its available resources. This helps you ensure more effective collaboration. Experts also recommend regularly collecting employee feedback and periodically revising rules as needed. This can help you address your own blind spots as you set ground rules for your teams. Company culture: Business experts explain that to build a company culture, you must dedicate company time and resources to it. (This may sound obvious, but it’s often neglected.) For example, you could facilitate team-building activities, recognize employees for their performance, or foster one-on-one relationships between employees. Experts also emphasize the role of transparency in company policy and decision-making. The more employees feel they understand what’s going on, the more they’ll trust the company and its leaders. |
