I don’t like the word manager. I don’t like it because I don’t feel it adequately describes what I believe the role of a manager should be. What I mean is best explained by letting you know how we work at ADS.
Evolution of Process
In the beginning when I was building our development team I played the role of project manager. I was the gateway between client and developer. Neither side had direct access to the other. I got the requirements from the client and relayed them to the team. I told them what to do and when to do it. They produced results, and I reported them back to the client. I was playing the role of a traditional project manager, which I had done for a number of years. This worked alright, but ultimately, was not scalable. The more projects we got the more things got lost in translation.
The next thing I tried was the hands-off approach where the client interacted directly with the team, and essentially managed them. This didn’t work out well at all. Some clients were all over the board changing things on a daily basis (driving the dev team nuts), and yet others were micro-managers (which also drove the dev team nuts). Some clients were down right mean. They got fired. There is no excuse for being belligerent and rude and frankly I don’t deal well with people like that at all.
The Better Way
What I arrived at is nothing monumental or new. I came to find my management, or rather leadership style, after reading many books, including “Jack: Straight from the Gut” (Jack Welch), “Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance? Inside IBM’s Historic Turnaround” (Lou Gerstner), “Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t” (Jim Collins), and many others. I came to it after working under various managers and seeing what I liked and disliked about how they ran their companies. I came to it after understanding what scrum is, how it works (when properly implemented), and how it can empower development teams to achieve success and produce happier clients.
The Changing Role of Managers
My role as a manager is more leader than manager. I don’t tell our developers what to do or when to do it. I trust in their abilities as developers and people who are highly self-motivated who can manage their own time. As long as the work produced is high quality and on time, I could care less what hours they work or where they work from. Why force them to work in an uncomfortable and potentially destructive situation? That is not motivating, that is demotivating. Mind you, we have the ADS War Room, where we can all gather and work together in a comfortable setting. I believe Reagan said it best when he said, “trust with verification.” I trust our development team to get the work done, and at the end of the day I can see their results.
Frankly, I think that employers don’t trust their employees, and as a result employees don’t trust their employers. This leads to many problems including fiefdoms, stagnation, bureaucracy, decisions taking forever to be made, in-fighting, and much, much more. It saddens me when I see it. I don’t want to work in that environment.
In scrum, the scrum master (project manager) leads the client and the dev team through the process of development. The main role of the scrum master is to remove impediments that hold back the development team from being productive. Impediments might be lack of tools or clients taking a long time to respond. The scrum master also ensures that there is as little outside interference as possible. Part of the process are the daily meetings (a.k.a. scrums), where the scrum master asks three questions:
- What did you do since the last scrum?
- What are you doing until the next scrum?
- What if anything is getting in your way?
Note there is no, “you are going to do this today” on that list. The team has committed to what they will do, and each day, they reaffirm that commitment to themselves and to the other members of the team. What’s really left for me to manage there? I just keep things moving forward by removing road blocks.
The Bottom Line
The bottom line is that the role of manager is no longer that of manager but that of leader. Empower your team to do what they do best and get out of their way and let them do it. That is what managers should do. Now, this requires trust on both sides. If you don’t have trust, then this won’t work for you. If you have the right people on board, and I hope you do, then show them trust. In return, you will gain their trust, and life will be better than good, and your clients will be happy.
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