Comments on: Ssssh….Agile Is All About Micromanaging

By: The Pinedale Shopping Mall Has Just Been Bombed By Live Turkeys! Or, How To Make Micromanagement Work For You | Product Management Meets Pop Culture

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 14:01:47 +0000

[...] Sometimes, that leads to poor morale and turkeys crashing through the windshields of parked cars. Sometimes, that leads to a team embracing a more acceptable form of micromanagement called agile development. [...]

By: Jose da Silva :: One sign that you are not doing SCRUM

Jose da Silva :: One sign that you are not doing SCRUM — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:29:14 +0000

[...] it, is my advise!Alexandre Magno talked about it on Adpatworks blog post, Mike Cohn too, on his "Ssssh….Agile Is All About Micromanaging" blog post.Share on [...]

By: Gil Zilberfeld

Gil Zilberfeld — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:59:18 +0000

Hi Mike,

We do a webcast on testing called “This week in testing” and this week, we talk about this post of yours (I really like the perspective of daily scrum as micro-management).

You’re welcome to watch and comment (http://learn.typemock.com/this-week-in-test/2009/11/18/episode-4-animals-that-talk-back.html) and if you like what you see, please tell the whole world.

Thanks,

Gil Zilberfeld
Typemock

By: Agile is micromanagement « the information architect

Agile is micromanagement « the information architect — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 03:43:48 +0000

[...] Cohn suggested that it is the dark secret of Agile that it is all about micromanagement. Mike mentioned that all practices of Agile support micromanagement. He [...]

By: Ash Tewari

Ash Tewari — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 06:42:08 +0000

@Christophe : I interviewed someone who had over 4 years of Scrum experience. He said “Scrum is bad for developers .. but good for the company”. As we discussed further .. it became clear that their team members were not doing their own estimates. Estimates were coming from outside the team.

The point is that in many cases people believe that they are doing Scrum, (because they are doing iterations and they have a burndown chart), but they are not.

By: Ash Tewari

Ash Tewari — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 06:06:47 +0000

@Rowan : You highlight a very important point. Scrum demands a different kind of attitude from team members. Attitude that comes from openness and trust as well as from confidence and mutual respect. A typical team composition can make it challenging to reach the ideal team dynamics.

Also, much of existing scrum training and advice is directed at Scrum Masters (read Project Managers/Leads) not at individual team members.

On the bright side, I see that there is a whole section (4 chapters) in Mike’s new book addressing individual contributors I am looking forward to reading it.

By: Rowan McCann

Rowan McCann — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:43:51 +0000

In my experience, companies hardly spend any time on people skills and nothing on the even more difficult concept of what people need to do to ‘self-manage’ into a high-performing team. Let alone a micromanaged team

Rather than let agile teams try to reach high-performance by trial and error it seems to me that the first thing to do is for everyone to understand the behavioral characteristics of their team members. One of the important features of this is measuring individual work preferences and harnessing these to the tasks that need to be undertaken.

To help agile teams prepare for the road to high-performance Bright Green Projects has teamed up with the Team Management Systems organization to provide a free 8-page assessment of what you think about your current (or future) agile team. We think it’s really valuable, I hope you think so too:

http://quiz.brightgreenprojects.com

By: Andrew Eells

Andrew Eells — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 13:11:02 +0000

Thanks for that Mike, you’ve hit the nail on the head really!

I didn’t want to name particular instances of processes, metrics or artefacts and thereby offend anyone as many people have their own preferences and what works for them doesn’t necessarily work for others.

But I like your point about *generative rules* that don’t stipulate exact requirements. I have experienced a well-run project without a formal ScrumMaster in place but we were organised and embedded by this point.

From personal experience though I’ve found it difficult to migrate away from the documented approach or initial guidelines (so as to streamline the effectiveness of the team) when operating in a large organisation. But then I think that’s probably more a question of culture rather than process.

Good to hear your thoughts, thanks very much!

By: Mike Cohn

Mike Cohn — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 07:04:52 +0000

Hi Andrew–
Without knowing specifically which processes, metrics or techniques you are thinking of when you ask about dispensing with them, it is hard to comment on whether I agree in those specific cases.

However, it’s quite clear to me that each great agile team in the world will be slightly different from every other great team in the world. There will be a small set of core things that those teams do that overlap among them all but I suspect that will be a very small list.

For my part, this is why I like Scrum as a starting point for becoming agile. The few rules that exist in Scrum are *generative rules*. That is, they are rules that generate the right behavior from the team. For example, I know teams who have gotten to the point where they don’t have a ScrumMaster. The team itself takes on that role. To use a sports analogy I’d equate that to a team with a player-coach. Yes, some teams do that but it is extremely rare and I don’t know how many player-coach combos have led to championships (Bill Russell might have been the last in 1969). So even teams with great success with a player-coach (or acting as their own “ScrumMasters”) might have better success with an identified person in the role.

By: Andrew Eells

Andrew Eells — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 23:35:07 +0000

Hi Mike, that's a good point thanks, and I agree with you, although it takes a little bit of time and effort to get such a point in my experience. Assuming a well-integrated or -performing team, do you think it's possible to dispense with some of the more formal processes and metrics or management techniques that have grown up around the basic concepts of Agile? I mention this briefly as part of thispost, but if the team is ultimately able to micro-manage itself then my belief (and experience) is that some of the management and tracking or measurement tasks of Scrum or XP etc can safely fall by the wayside. With caution of course... Not to mention a fair amount of dedication and discipline. So perhaps best if the team has reached the performing stage of it's development. But still, it would be good to hear your opinion if you extend your post given the assumption of a well-drilled team. Thanks and regards!