How To Coach Management to Support Agile Teams | Mike Bowler

Summary

Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile Storytelling from the Trenches

Episode: How To Coach Management to Support Agile Teams | Mike Bowler
Host: Vasco Duarte
Guest: Mike Paller, Agile Coach and Trainer
Release Date: November 11, 2024

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Introduction

In this episode of the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast, host Vasco Duarte welcomes Mike Paller, a seasoned Agile Coach with over 25 years of experience. Mike shares his extensive background in agile methodologies, technical practices, workflow optimization, leadership coaching, and the integration of neuroscience and psychology into his coaching practices. The conversation delves into the challenges and strategies involved in coaching management to effectively support Agile teams.

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Mike Paller’s Journey into Agile

Transitioning from Development to Agile Coaching

Mike Paller begins by recounting his transition from a developer frustrated by frequent project failures to an Agile Coach seeking better methodologies. In the late 1990s, witnessing projects consistently deliver late, over budget, and misaligned with customer expectations propelled him to explore alternative approaches.

“I went looking for a better way... I discovered the XP community, and that was my first introduction into how we began to do that.”
[01:24] Mike Paller

Mike’s involvement with Extreme Programming (XP) marked the beginning of his Agile journey. By 2001, he had successfully implemented XP practices with a client, experiencing both successes and significant learning opportunities. This initial foray laid the foundation for his role akin to that of a Scrum Master, focusing on fostering effective team dynamics and Agile practices.

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Philosophy: Viewing Failures as Feedback

Embracing Continuous Improvement

Mike emphasizes a pivotal philosophy in his coaching approach: reframing failures as feedback rather than setbacks. This mindset fosters a culture of continuous improvement and resilience within teams.

“We don't really have failure. We have feedback.”
[03:29] Mike Paller

This perspective encourages teams to view unsuccessful attempts as learning opportunities, allowing them to pivot and adapt strategies without the stigma of failure inhibiting progress.

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Case Study: The Monkey Grassing Challenge

Maintaining Team Cohesion Amidst Organizational Changes

Mike shares a compelling story illustrating the challenges of maintaining Agile frameworks within organizations resistant to change. He introduces the term "monkey grassing" to describe a scenario where effective teams are disbanded or scattered by management, undermining the progress made through Agile coaching.

“Management has this tendency to think that if I've got a really effective team of 10 people, I can just throw them, scatter them to the winds... but that, of course, is not how it works.”
[04:55] Mike Paller

In this case, despite successfully coaching a single team to high performance, Mike observes that managerial interventions often disrupt these teams once his direct influence wanes. The metaphor of monkey grass emphasizes the persistent and uncontrollable nature of such challenges.

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The Crucial Role of Coaching Management

Extending Agile Principles Beyond the Team

To prevent the disintegration of Agile practices, Mike stresses the importance of extending coaching efforts to include management. Ensuring that leadership understands and supports Agile methodologies is essential for sustaining team success.

“If I haven't spent time explaining those same concepts to the management, they're going to come in and undo all those changes I just did.”
[05:28] Mike Paller

Mike highlights that without comprehensive coaching that encompasses both the teams and the management hierarchy, organizational support for Agile practices remains fragmented. This often leads to a misalignment of objectives and methodologies, jeopardizing the effectiveness of Agile implementations.

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Systems Thinking in Agile Implementations

Understanding and Influencing the Entire Organizational Ecosystem

Mike elaborates on the necessity of adopting a systems thinking approach when implementing Agile practices. This involves recognizing that teams operate within a larger organizational context, and changes within one part of the system can have far-reaching implications.

“We have to focus on the entire system of which the team is part.”
[08:34] Mike Paller

By addressing not just the team but also the broader organizational structures and processes, Agile Coaches can create environments where Agile practices thrive. This holistic approach ensures that improvements are sustainable and scalable across the organization.

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Strategies for Effective Management Coaching

Practical Approaches to Aligning Management with Agile Teams

Mike provides actionable strategies for Agile Coaches aiming to educate and align management with Agile principles:

1. Comprehensive Communication: Ensure that Agile concepts are clearly communicated to all levels of management to prevent misunderstandings and misapplications.

2. Involvement in Decision-Making: Encourage management to involve teams in decisions affecting their structure and processes, fostering a sense of ownership and autonomy.

3. Continuous Education: Implement ongoing training sessions for management to keep them informed about the benefits and methodologies of Agile practices.

4. Promote Autonomy: Advocate for managerial support that allows teams to make decisions about their workflows and practices without undue interference.

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Key Takeaways

• Holistic Coaching: Successful Agile implementation requires coaching both the teams and the management to ensure alignment and sustained support.

• Feedback Over Failure: Adopting a feedback-centric mindset encourages continuous improvement and resilience within teams.

• Systems Thinking: Understanding the broader organizational ecosystem is crucial for effective Agile coaching and implementation.

• Preventing Monkey Grassing: Proactive engagement with management can mitigate the risk of disruptive interventions that undermine Agile practices.

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Conclusion

In this insightful episode, Mike Paller underscores the importance of extending Agile coaching beyond teams to include management. By fostering a comprehensive understanding of Agile principles across the entire organization, Agile Coaches can create resilient and high-performing teams capable of sustaining Agile methodologies amidst changing organizational dynamics.

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Stay Tuned:
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Transcript

[Vasco Duart]

Hi, I'm your host, Vasco Duart. Welcome to the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast where we share tips and tricks from Scrum Masters around the world. Every day, we bring you inspiring answers to important questions that all Scrum Masters.

[Podcast Host]

Face day after day. Hello, everybody. Welcome to one more week of the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast. And this week, joining us from West Canada is Mike Paller. Hey, Mike. Welcome to the show.

[Mike Paller]

Thanks for having me.

[Podcast Host]

Absolutely. And for those of you who are listening, you probably don't know that I just did a big fail. I started talking with Mike without recording, but here we are again doing it for you guys who are listening to this show. So let me tell you about Mike a little bit. Mike is a longtime Agile coach and trainer with 25 years experience with agile methods who focuses on technical practices, workflow optimization, and of course, leadership coaching and human behavior with the help of neuroscience and psychology. His expertise spans technical implementation and fostering psychological safety. So, Mike, that was a short intro, but tell us a little bit more about yourself and how. How did you end up becoming a Scrum Master?

[Mike Paller]

Of course, I come originally from a developer background, and in the late 90s, I was getting frustrated watching projects fail. We would go and we would deliver. We'd put all of our effort into these projects, and when we got to the end, it wouldn't be what the customer wanted. It was typically late and it was over budget and it was just. It was a failure. But we'd celebrate, we'd say, hooray, we shipped something. But we all knew that it was a failure of some kind. And so I went looking for a better way. And what I found was a community of people that were just like me, people that didn't have all the answers but were looking for something better than what they were doing. And that community was the XP community, or Extreme Program. And the XP community later became the Agile community, and we went from there. So in the late 90s, 1999, I discovered XP and I got really excited about what was going on. And so I started to do this and I convinced the client to let me run a team using xp practices in 2001. And so that was my first experience actually doing it. I'd been excited about it for a couple of years at that point, but I got to actually do it with a client. And I'd love to say that we did everything perfectly, but of course we didn't. There were a lot of learnings. We would try things. Some things would work, some things wouldn't, but it was a tremendous learning experience, and that was my first introduction into how we began to do that. It wasn't a Scrum Master per se, because we were doing xp, and the XP role is called XP Coach, but it's the same. Effectively, it's the same role as a Scrum. Scrum Master, absolutely.

[Podcast Host]

And we'll put the link to extreme programming, which, of course is a big inspiration in the whole Agile movement. And we've talked about XP quite a lot here on the podcast as well. But, Mike, now we turn our attention to one of those stories where we, as Scrum Masters or XP Coaches or Agile Coaches, whatever we are, end up trying our best, but the best just not being good enough. Now, we want to explore this story because we know that there's a lot to learn there. So tell us that story, Mike. We'll dive into the takeaways later, but tell us that story first.

[Mike Paller]

Okay. So, first of all, I just want to set down sort of my philosophy on approaching things is that we don't really have failure. We have feedback. So we look at. We try something and we don't like the output of it. I don't really consider it a failure. So when I look back over my career, I got a lot of feedback that caused me to change direction, sometimes change direction quite severely. But this is what we're looking at. So one of the things that I'd like to talk about is that often I'll be able to get a team. Particularly in the early days, I'd get a team to a really good place, and then as soon as I'd step away from that team, something would happen to completely undo everything that I'd done. So maybe management would come in and they would scatter the teams that were going on. At one client, we called this monkey grassing after a particularly wild growing weed in the area. Monkey grass is a weed that apparently you can pick up a clump of it in your hand and throw it, and it will continue to grow wherever it landed on the grass. So monkey grass is a pervasive weed that will continue to grow. And management has this tendency to think that if I've got a really effective team of 10 people, I can just throw them, scatter them to the winds, and Now I'll have 10 effective teams. But that, of course, is not how it works. And so this was a big learning for me that I could get a single team to a really good place. But if I hadn't actually coached the management, if I hadn't started to coach some of the system around the team, it would very easily be taken apart as soon as I'd left.

[Podcast Host]

When you think about coaching management, I mean, I'm guessing it's not just talking about the benefits. Obviously it's more than that. Also, although extreme programming doesn't go into that in much detail, there are other areas in Agile where we talk about systems thinking and understanding, that it's not just one team, that there are other things around it. What do you actually mean when you think and especially from today's perspective, when you think? Okay, so I need to help management get to a point. What is that point and how do you help them?

[Mike Paller]

Well, they need to understand how to properly feed and support a team that is working well in an agile way. And that means that you can't just go and rip the team apart. If you want to add somebody new to the team, you can do that. But there's things we have to do. We can't just drop somebody new into a team. We should ask the team themselves. We'd like you to interview somebody, we'd like you to bring them in. Or if we have to separate the, split the team into two for some reason, allow the team some say in what's going on so that it's their decision. They have some autonomy in what's going on and not just management coming in and moving things around, because management doesn't necessarily know. I've spent all this time teaching the team how to do good agile things, but if I haven't spent time explaining those same concepts to the management, they're going to come in and undo all those changes I just did. So if, for example, I mean, this was an example of restructuring the teams, but what if I come in and I show a team how to do probabilistic forecasting and then management comes along and says, well, now I need you to give me an estimate. And the team says, well, we'd like to do this new thing. No, I want the estimate. Well, that was on me because I didn't also explain to management that there's going to be a new way that the team's going to be providing information to you and this is why it's better.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, and of course I sympathize with that example, having talked about no estimates for a long time as well, but I want to explore that a little bit further. Okay, so that's the obvious part of that statement is clear, right? The management must understand and agree how the team works, because otherwise they'll come in and undo the change. But when you talk about monkey grassing, I think you're talking about also another anti pattern. Right. Which is this thinking that people are fungible. Right. You can quickly replace them somewhere and then everything will be fine. Or other ideas. Like it's enough to have somebody, a team for the ideas to spread, which it isn't. I mean, there's good reasons for that. Like, how do you handle that these days? How do you help management understand that there are good and bad ways to spread, ways of working into the organization?

[Mike Paller]

Well, right. We're explaining because I'm spending the same time explaining those same concepts to the team. I just need to make sure that I'm also communicating the same information up to management. It's when we teach some people the concepts, but don't teach everybody that we get this disconnect. And because the managers have the power, if we haven't taught them the right thing, then they will come in and stomp all over the change. Not intentionally. They're not trying to undo anything. They're not trying to cause damage. They just don't know. And so this is where we need to come in and we need to help them understand so that they can more effectively work. And this is not just one level of management. This is potentially multiple levels of management up that we need to be having these conversations. We need to be talking about systems, thinking, what happens at a higher level. Perhaps we need to restructure our teams. Well, that's not. The team can't decide to restructure themselves. Management needs to be involved in that discussion. So it's a much larger thing. And that was one of the learnings that I had early on is I thought, well, if I just focus on the team, maybe we'll get some really good results. And then I realized, no, we have to focus on the entire system of which the team is part.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, absolutely. Very well said. We have to focus on the entire system of which the team is part. Thank you for sharing that story, Mike.

[Mike Paller]

You're welcome.

[Vasco Duart]

Monday is about what we learn from our obstacles and our failures. But tomorrow is Team Tuesday. Here on the Scrum Master Toolbox podcast, we explore teams and their journeys, the habits they develop that threaten their performance, how each of our guests help their teams evolve, and the one key lesson they learned from that experience. We really hope you liked our show, and if you did, why not rate this podcast on stitcher or itunes. Share this podcast and let other Scrum masters know about this valuable resource for their work. Remember that sharing is caring.