agile-team-leader

Who Is An Agile Team Leader And What They Do?

Agile approaches and frameworks have been around for decades. The V-model, Rapid Application Development (RAD), and the Spiral model are three such techniques that precede the Agile Manifesto’s inception in 2001. Because agile approaches have been around for a long time in the technology industry, they are sometimes misunderstood as being limited to team software development and Information Technology (IT) firms. The article also explores in detail, who is an Agile Team Leader and what is the role during an Agile Transformation.

However, many businesses realize that implementing agile processes and frameworks is not enough to maintain competitiveness in an uncertain business environment. Agility necessitates the complete replacement of a management paradigm developed during the Industrial Revolution but has progressed very little since then. Organizations must reconsider every area of their business approach. Agility necessitates more than just process adoption, and this post will look at what this entails for managers and leaders.

If you wish to learn more about Agile Certified Practitioner, check out our blog on How to Become ACP and gain powerful insights.

Leadership In Adversity

The fact that an agile team does not have a designated agile team leader is intriguing. For example, on a Scrum team, there are three official roles: Product Owner, Scrum Master, and the team. The Product Owner prioritizes and sequences the backlog but does not lead the group; the Scrum Master focuses on team improvement and obstacle elimination but does not lead the team; the team is responsible for delivering value for the customer, but there is no one to recognize agile team leader of the group. The diversity of the team members is its strength. One person may be more equip to lead the team in one setting, while another may be better suits to lead in another. The squad self-organizes and decides on the best course of action.

Leadership As a Servant

Leaders that are hierarchically incline feel that everyone around them exists in order to serve them and assist them in achieving their objectives. Servant leaders live by the notion that they are here to help others around them. While servant leadership activities have existed for a long time, documenting the traits and pillars of servant leadership have been credit to Robert K. Greenleaf due to an article he wrote in 1970. For instance, Servant leaders are self-aware, have vital emotional intelligence, develop others around them, listen, and see the hierarchy as inverted. The Scrum Master position is one of servant leadership; their duty is to serve the team. One crucial function that the Scrum Master gives to the team is the removal of barriers, allowing them to focus on what is most important—delivering client value.

Mentoring and Coaching

Managers were traditionally suppose to manage, and one of their expectations was to direct and control work. In an agile workplace, managers are expected to train and guide employees rather than lead and control work, which is done formally and informally.

Developing High-Performance Teams

Although the individual is crucial, the team is the unit of capability in an agile company. Teams with the necessary skill sets will need to be created to execute work from start to finish while avoiding handoffs and delays. Managers work with Scrum Masters to improve team performance.

Getting Rid of Organizational Obstacles

Teams will present organizational hurdles to Scrum Masters regularly. However, many of these escalated barriers will be outside the teams’ and Scrum Masters’ positional authority. In this instance, it would be the obligation of management to remove the impediment.

Role of An Agile Team Leader

This article delves into the Scrum framework’s roles and responsibilities for Agile deployment. The following are some critical distinctions in Agile team-building exercises:

  1. The formation of multidisciplinary teams with cross-functional knowledge.
  2. Domain experts have a deep understanding and perspective on the business factors linked with their job areas.
  3. Stable team structures capable of iterating and improving SDLC procedures on an ongoing basis.

Agile teams frequently include the following critical roles and responsibilities:

Agile Team Roles and Responsibilities
Agile Team Roles and Responsibilities

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Product Proprietor

The product owner represents the project’s stakeholders. The primary responsibility of this function is to establish the direction for product development or project advancement. The Product Owner knows the project’s needs from the stakeholders’ perspective and possesses the requisite soft skills to communicate the requirements to the product development team. The Product Owner also understands the long-term corporate goal and connects the project with all stakeholders’ needs and expectations. Throughout the project cycle, end-user feedback is used to generate good next-best-action plans for development.

A Product Owner’s primary tasks include the following:

  • Backlog management in Scrum
  • Management of Releases

Management Of Stakeholders

The Product Owner is aware of the backlog items that have been added to the list and the things that have been selected for development. Based on stakeholder feedback and project circumstances, the Product Owner modifies and prioritizes the backlog item list. The job also controls release cycle planning to guarantee that the development team can consistently provide updated project revisions. Finally, the Product Owner ensures that product development yields value to stakeholders. Communication with end-users, corporate leaders, partners, and the development team is so critical.

Scrum Master/Team Leader

The Team Lead or Scrum Master fosters team collaboration and promotes project progress among individual team members. The Scrum Master accepts the Product Owner’s directions and ensures that the tasks are completed correctly.

The role might entail:

  1. Facilitating Scrum and Sprint efforts daily
  2. Team members communicating about changing requirements and planning
  3. Team members are being coached on how to deliver results.
  4. Handling administrative responsibilities such as meeting facilitation, fostering cooperation, and removing roadblocks to project progress
  5. Keeping team members safe from outside interferences and distractions
  6. The job is also managing external collaboration with the company and the Product Owner to ensure the Scrum framework is becoming implement effectively. Among the responsibilities might be:
  7. Making modifications
  8. Coordination of stakeholders to find required resources
  9. Assisting Product Owners in optimizing backlog planning for maximum performance

A Scrum Master’s position is center on transparency throughout the Scrum Team, self-organization, dedication, respect, and, most importantly, adhering to an empirical procedure to determine the optimal way for product development.

Members Of the Development Team

The Development Team comprises people whose tasks include, but are not limit to product development. The team assumes the cross-functional duties required to turn a concept or a demand into a physical product for end-users. One or more dev team members may have the necessary skills:

  • Designer of consumer goods
  • Writer
  • Programmer
  • Tester
  • Expert in User Experience

Not every member is an engineer, but they may be a part of the team if their talents are essential for going forward at the appropriate rate.

In addition to abilities that aid in product development, team members should have soft skills that allow them to self-organize and complete tasks. This implies that if an issue arises, the team is both capable and equipped to address it. The Development Team’s primary responsibility is to complete work sprints based on the requirements specified by the Product Owner and supervised by the Scrum Master. A daily standup meeting consider the Daily Scrum is held to share project progress with colleagues and the Scrum Master. This action enables openness and allows the Development Team to integrate modifications as needed in future sprints based on Product Owner feedback.

Stakeholders

The Stakeholder position may or may not be directly involve in the product development process. Still, it is used to represent a variety of essential responsibilities that influence the choices and activities of the product development team.

A stakeholder might be:

  • The product’s end-user
  • Executives in business
  • Personnel working in production support
  • Investors
  • External examiners
  • Members of the Scrum team from related projects and teams

Stakeholder input is critical for directing project progress in multiple directions to align product development with corporate goals and end-user expectations and address obstacles confronting the Scrum Development Team.

Additional Responsibilities for Larger Scrum Projects

In addition to the conventional Scrum team responsibilities, influential organizations working on massive projects may incorporate additional roles in the Scrum teams. These are some examples:

  1. Technical and domain specialists that understand the technology and a wide range of stakeholder requirements or expectations.
  2. An independent testing and audit team may operate alongside Scrum team members throughout the product development lifecycle.
  3. For big teams that operate on independent but closely connected subsystems, an Integrator may be necessary.
  4. The Integrator’s responsibilities would include subsystem integration and testing, which external testing teams might undertake.
  5. Architectural conceptualizing, planning and decision-making may necessitate the involvement of an Architect Owner.
  6. The Integrator and Architecture roles may be present in numerous sub-teams working on the project’s multiple interconnected sub-systems.

Conclusion

The agile Team Leader approach is notably the Scrum framework, which should be visible from the standpoint of duties. These functions do not correspond to job titles. Scrum duties should be spread among current team members assign tasks to monitor project management activities and technical difficulties following Agile principles.

Techcanvass offers a PMI-ACP certification course, this course is designed with the objective of helping participants approach the PMI-ACP certification exam.

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