Proposition

Rotate leadership roles in agile teams often.

Background

I’ve been a proponent of flat organisational structures since my time at Thoughtworks.  It’s especially great at promoting communication between all staff.

It empowers.  It’s great for morale.  It promotes healthy debate and ideas creation.

In this model the importance of organisational hierarchy is overshadowed by the tiers of employee experience.  The senior are most vocal.  The craftsmen lead the journeymen who lead the apprentice.

Leadership roles are typically filled by those from the most senior tiers.  The choice of leader is usually subjective and different candidates offer different pro’s and con’s.  Something can be said for rotating a number of senior staff through these roles.

What I’m proposing here is the same theory applied to agile teams.

Benefits

• Leadership is considered as ‘just another role’: does away with the notion that leadership implies promotion, which stimulates an undercurrent of inferiority and superiority.
• Equality prevails: Equally recognises the skills of senior members.
• Fresh perspective: Different perspectives of problems and solutions are offered.
• Encourages individual growth: leadership roles are a great way to grow confidence, whereas stepping out of leadership roles is grounding and brings different knowledge to the coal-face.

Reconsider when…

• Individual accountability is important: It works best where blame culture does not prevail and teams and individuals learn in a non-threatening environment.
• Seniority is the minority: Apprentices may be better served with a fixed figurehead.
• Teams with staff churn: Better leaders are those already having experience working within the team.

My team has been recently tweaking our daily ceremonies.

Once upon a time we had a combination of standup and huddle.  Standup being the usual brief on yesterday and todays focus and blockers.  Huddle being the team gathering around the story wall and discussing progress and issues in depth.

We eventually acknowledged the overlap between the two and ditched the standup in favour of focusing on stories and their flow through to completion.  Participants stood - keeping it brief was the focus.  The team lead facilitated the session and organized the team to smooth the flow of stories and ensure important information is shared.  Consequently the team lead was very much the focus of the meeting.  Within minutes of completion other participants would often be unable to recall the contributions of others, as their attention was on summizing information on their story.

The main intention of the meeting, however, is not to provide information to the lead.

It’s to share information among the entire team.

So we trialed running huddles in a presentation format.  The entire team is seated around the story wall.  Pairs/dev present their stories to the team in turn, divulging:

• Progress over the last day
• Tasks on the horizon
• Design highlights
• Business decisions
• Confirming the estimate

The exact manner that information is delivered is entirely at the discretion of the individuals.  Anything that captures the audiences attention is encouraged.  Humor is encouraged.  The atmosphere is relaxed.  There are no time limits.

Presentations are both informative and entertaining.

The difference has been dramatic.

In a manifesto sense, here’s what I’m thinking:

• Quality of information over brevity

• Attention seeking over ritual

I strongly recommend experimenting with it should any of the symptoms we suffered from sound familiar.