Agile Leaders’ Behaviours Are Critical For Agile Success

To have a successful agile organization, many things need to happen to ensure the full value of being agile is achieved. It is not as simple as implementing a framework (i.e. Scrum, LeSS, SAFe), and you are off to the races. It is not a matter of just following steps. This is one reason why few organizations are identified as fully agile; by recent studies, it is only 5%.

Agile: 9 signs your leader gets Scrum

Dhaval Panchal

In the above article, Dhaval goes into detail about leaders getting Scrum. As we look into it deeper, it can be used for any framework. Why? It is all about the behaviours they exhibit that will lead to success. Here is the list of 9 things he mentions:

1. They walk the walk. 

2. They have done their homework. 

3. They know which outcomes they want from agility. 

4. They invest funding and staff to make it happen.

5. They are visible and active in the journey. 

6. They can communicate both progress (good news) and opportunity (more work) simultaneously. 

7. They are balanced in their power styles. I

8. They are willing to give power to the team.

9. They are willing to be vulnerable. 

We can tie all 9 items into the one epic user story in Jeff Dalton’s book: Great Big Agile.

“As an agile leader,

I will project agile values, provide the environment and establish a vision,

So that my teams can be agile and successful in everything they do.”

It is about being that servant leader that is engaged throughout the day to day activities. That does not mean they sit in on stand-ups or with the team for the whole sprint. It also doesn’t mean they sit in the office with the door closed either. Having the right behaviours and using them will bring about those nine expectations relatively easily.

To learn more about the right behaviours needed for an agile organization, there are plenty of good books out there to help. The book I listed above is a good one.

There an article from the Cutter Consortium: https://agilecxo.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Cutter-IT-Introduction-10.2017.pdf

If you would like to discuss this topic, you can schedule a free Breakthrough Call with me by scheduling below.