What's a Manager to Do?

What's a Manager to Do?

How managers can reshape their roles with self-organizing agile teams

Sometimes I see teams that reject all direction and go their own way, declaring, “We are self-organizing.” They are missing an important fact. When someone is paid by a company to be part of a team, that team exists within the organizational context.

On the other hand, some managers hear the words “self-organizing” and believe the team is on its own—that they can go into semi-retirement. But that’s not the case, either.

In fact,both are risky over-simplifications.

When teams self-organize there's still plenty for managers to do, but their relationship with the team changes. We'll explore principles to follow as the team takes on more responsiblity for managing their own work, making decisions, and managing team membership.

Speaker's Bio: Esther Derby works with individuals, teams, and organizations to improve their ability to deliver valuable software. Esther is recognized as one of the leaders in the human-side of software development, including management, organizational change, collaboration, building teams and retrospectives. She’s been a programmer, systems manager, project manager, and internal consultant. She currently runs her own consulting firm, Esther Derby Associates, Inc., in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Esther has an MA in Organizational Leadership, is the author of over 100 articles and co-author of Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great and Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management.. She’s a founder of the AYE Conference and is a board member of the Agile Alliance. You can read Esther's articles and blog at estherderby.com/

This is not a meeting to be missed. Esther is world-class and we're very fortunate to have her visiting us.