Results of the 2011 Study

www.p-a-m.org

Successful Leadership in Agile Organizations

What we wanted to find out:   What is required to successfully

lead in an agile environment?

  What are the key factors from the point of view of teams and their managers using agile methods?

Our approach:   58 face-to-face interviews with IT and business-

experts from 5 different companies   7 clusters of qualitative and quantitative questions   Aggregation of the questions both per company

and across companies   Interdisciplinary research team with backgrounds

of agile and traditional project management, organizational development and line management

   Middle  Management  as Change Agents

Success factors of agile leadership

Quality  of  communica2on

Trust Professional self-management

  Leadership as Teamsport   Context Management & Coaching

Organizational Change Management

Quality of communication

  Communication has improved in all 5 companies

  This is perceived very similarly by all hierarchical levels

  IT sees improvement in a better light than business

Impact of agile transition on communication (1: very positiv 3: neutral: 5: very negativ)

„Internal communication has become more honest, more specific, things are said more straightforward” – team member

Trust

Trust in ...   the competence of the team   their ability to self-organize ... requires leaders to...   adopt to change   learn   sincerely delegate responsibility   cope with uncertainty and democracy

Also see www.p-a-m.org: „A recipe for trust building“

„To work agile is like climbing stairs without handrails“ – Senior Management Business

Middle Management as Change Agents

  Not middle management, but command & control leadership becomes obsolete

  New core challenges: Recruiting, Role Clarification, Change Management,…

How do you rate the potential that the entire company can benefit from the agile transition? (1: very positiv, 3: neutral, 5: very negativ)

„Why do we have line managers – so that someone signs our vacation forms?“ – team member

Leadership as team sport   Team decisions instead of individual

decisions   All key players are involved in major

decisions: Business, Product Owner, Scrum Master, Team and IT-Line-management

 Affected stakeholder become involved stakeholder

 Complex problems are viewed and solved from different perspectives

Authors of the study

  Siegfried Kaltenecker (siegfried.kaltenecker@p-a-m.org)

  Thomas Spielhofer (thomas.spielhofer@p-a-m.org)   Sabine Eybl   Johanna Schober   Stefan Jäger