The Professional Agile Leader

Ron Eringa is a Leadership Developer. His mission is to create organizations where people love to work and where real customer value is created. In the last 20 years he has built expertise on how to lead IT organizations that use Agile and Scrum. After an initial education in electrical engineering and software engineering he ended up in different leadership roles. In these roles he discovered the leadership capabilities that are essential to create autonomous teams with a high level of maturity and creativity. He believes that autonomous teams are the fundament of a modern organization that thrives in this complex and ever-changing world. Kurt Bittner has been delivering working products in short, feedback-driven cycles for nearly 40 years, and has helped many organizations do the same. He is particularly interested in helping people form strong, self-organizing, high-performance teams that deliver solutions that customers love, and helping organizations use empirical feedback to achieve customer outcome-focused goals. He is an author or editor of many books on agile product development, including Mastering Professional Scrum, The Zombie Scrum Survival Guide, The Nexus Framework for Scaling Scrum, The Professional Scrum Team, and Professional Agile Leadership, as well as The Guide to Evidence-Based Management, and The Nexus Guide. He lives in Boulder, Colorado. Laurens Bonnema is an Agile Trainer and Management Consultant and a mentor to leaders creating resilient organizations at any scale. He has a strong background in IT with experience in almost every role. As a Professional Scrum Master, Certified Scrum Master, Certified Scrum Product Owner, Certified Agile Master, Agile Master Assessor, IPMA Agile Assessor, and PRINCE2 Practitioner, Laurens strives to merge classic and agile management in the conviction that it is the future of professional management. As a Professional Scrum Trainer and SAFe Program Consultant, he helps to improve the profession of software delivery as well as marketing, human resources, and finance. Laurens brings his experience in enterprise IT since 1999 and on Scrum Teams since 2006 to his teaching, is a driving force in the agile community, and a sought-after speaker at conferences and events.

• Foreword xi Preface xv Introduction xvii Acknowledgments xxv About the Authors xxvii Chapter 1: An Organization at a Crossroads 1 Complex Challenges Create Urgency for Agility 2 Reducing Dependencies Makes Change Possible 4 Organizational Change Requires Protective, Progressive Dictatorship 10 Two Paths, One Goal 12 Reflections on the Journey 15 Chapter 2: Forming Teams and Discovering Purpose 17 Changing the Organization, One Team at a Time 18 Finding the Right People 22 Empowering Teams 26 Placing the Customer at the Center of the Change 29 Reflections on the Journey 35 Chapter 3: Shifting from Output to Impact 37 "What Gets Measured Gets Done" 38 Reflections on the Journey 53 Chapter 4: Learning to Let Go 55 Empowerment Doesn't Come for Free 56 Agile Leaders Help Teams to Grow Their Ability to Reach Audacious Goals 60 Letting Go in Small Steps 65 Slow Decision-Making Kills Team Self-Management 69 Reflections on the Journey 73 Chapter 5: The Predictable Existential Crisis 75 New Ways of Working Threaten the Old System 76 Reflections on the Journey 97 Chapter 6: Leaders, Everywhere 99 Nurturing and Growing an Agile Organization 100 Reward Building Teams and Leadership, Not Silos 114 Promotional Rewards Lock in Organizational Structures 117 Performance Reviews Don't Go Away, but They Do Change Dramatically 118 Reflections on the Journey 122 Chapter 7: Aligning the Organization 123 Evolving the Operating Model 124 Scale Agility by Removing Dependencies 131 Consolidating Support and Eliminating Opposition 132 Realign Compensation Plans 140 Realign Career Paths 141 Embrace Catalytic Leadership 142 Replace Status Meetings with Transparency 143 Be Realistic About How Long the Transition Will Take, and What It Means 146 Reflections on the Journey 147 Chapter 8: Aligning the Culture 149 What Makes Changing Culture Hard 150 Agile Leaders Must First Find Their Own Way 152 Build Bridges to the New Culture 153 Anticipate and Overcome Setbacks 159 Use "Self-Sustenance" as a Measure of Success 162 Agile Journeys Never Really End 165 Reflections on the Journey 168 Appendix A: Patterns and Anti-Patterns for Effective Leadership 169 Appendix B: Doreen's Sketchnotes 171 Index