This was a very odd week for me at the office. It started off badly, with lots of friction between me and various other folks. So much so, in fact, that I was to the point, toward the latter part of the week, where I'd actually avoid talking to certain people because I just didn't want the aggravation. Mixed in with that were the survey results from last week's Engineering All hands, which I griped about here in case you missed it earlier. All of this negativity was making me think, not for the first time, that maybe this whole Agile Manager gig isn't the job for me. I'm sure there are better qualified people out there, even if based on personality types alone! What's an introvert like me doing in a position where it's part of my job to be chummy with, coach and cheerlead any number of other souls who're experiencing difficulty with the Agile Experience? Seems utter madness sometimes when I step back and think about it!
But then the last couple days were actually rewarding! Mostly just little things, but also a big one: my Feature Team did all of their planning for the next Iteration without me needing to be involved! Holy Self-Organizing Team, Batman! Not only did they do it well, they also did it quickly. We've had planning sessions take up the better part of a day at times, and this one was done in under two hours! I was proud as a peacock as I told people today that I was well on my way to being redundant on my Feature Team! This, after telling the other Feature Leads that we all needed to be careful that we weren't making our teams dependent on us. That felt really, really good. There may be hope for my Master Plan yet!
In other words, the rollercoaster ride continues!
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3 comments:
Well glad to hear the week finished off well and you can have a good weekend now.
Dear Mr. Agile Manager,
You do a heck of a job even if you don't realize it! It's good to have an expert to bounce ideas off and the chummy-ness, coaching and cheerleading isn't lost among the other feature leads.
Talking about feature lead success stories... Guess what? We completed our planning in just over 2 hours! And it almost felt like if I had sent out the backlog prior to the meeting, I probably didn't need to be there either.
The team thought up their tasks and wrote up all their stickies themselves. I was merely the Vanna White of the planning session, sticking things onto the wall. Not to mention I put 15 of my own hours into the pool too.
Hey, another new respondent joins the family! Welcome Roopak!!
Thanks very much for the words of encouragement. I wasn't really angling for reinforcement via this entry, but I still appreciate that you felt strongly enough to provide some!
And congratulations on the super speedy planning session, and on seeing that kind of independent production out of your team! Hopefully this will be the start of a new wave, and we'll look back in a few months and wonder why we ever thought there'd be a problem getting the teams to be self-organizing!!
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