Impressions from the event on „Successful Agile Leadership“, June 2011

After the study on “successful agile leadership had been concluded (see Exec Summary of the “Study on Agile Leadership”), we wanted to share and reflect the results with our interview partners and other experts. As this study was entering rather new research territory, we were thrilled to start discussing its findings:

• Which of the conclusions are confirmations of prevalent assumptions?
• Are some findings as surprising to other people as they were to us?
• What other hypothesises can be derived of the data we collected?

The format we chose was a short presentation of the results with wide space for discussion and reflection by the attendees. The participants were the interviewees of the study, other managers, university professors and selected consultants who use or study agile methods. The venue we chose was the so-called “Brunnenpassage” at Viennas Yppenplatz, a laid back, rather peaceful spot within the city. Apart from the fact that we had good coffee catering there (which by itself must be considered a crucial success factor for any venture;), it seemed a very suitable location to us -the Yppenplatz being the place were large parts of the project evolved in long discussions and workshops of the research team.

The findings we presented are summarized in this slideset:

The facilitator´s ideas how to design the event were well received: after having empowered the audience to self-organize their own reflection (foreground), the facilitators (in the background) could chill at the coffee bar:

Some flashlights of what we learned from the reflection sessions:

• The special role of middle management in agile transitions was one of the threads that ran through almost all discussion groups: the specifics of their “sandwich position”, e.g. the hypothesis that their resistance might reflect their secret desire for the agile change not to happen –empowering their team might feel as their own disempowerment
• The question why the business units of the companies that we interviewed are less convinced of the effects of the agile transition than there IT counterparts was discussed in a new light, e.g.: agile forces business to involve themselves more, communication becomes more intensive, elaborative, sometimes even tedious. Business cannot refrain from participation anymore, which means they cannot as easily just lay back and grouch about the incompetent IT departments. One might assume that view came from an IT dominated discussion group☺
• There were lots of ideas and anchor points for follow-up-research (volunteers welcome): one thread concerned larger quantified studies of the same scope, another turned towards the question on comparing agile and non-agile organizations by business criteria.

All-in-all the authors and facilitators of the event left the Brunnenpassage quite inspired and content. On the one hand enriched by a very smooth running event and lots of valuable input, on the other hand relieved of 15 months worth of research that had come to its conclusion.