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It's difficult to generalize management topics, and I can only express personal views based on my experience as a manager in the software development industry, however I have seen many organizations struggle to implement the optimal balance of control and freedom in an agile context – an approach I call 'Shadow and Light Management'. I believe in order to be successful it's vital to get this balance right.
 
 

Shadow and light management


Objects and light

Objects in the center of light cast shadows – the object is in focus – the shadow follows wherever the object moves.

 

Shadow Management

Managers are always trying to maintain full control over their given tasks and responsibilities, yet there are times – whether the manager is aware of it or not – when these compounding duties negatively affect the trust their teams require to grow and truly live an agile bottom up organization.

 

Balance of Control and Freedom (Shadow and Light)

Trying to control every aspect of software development is impossible. Conversely, complete freedom for developers causes chaos.

The right balance of control and freedom, shadow and light, affords software developers the feeling of autonomy and code ownership in combination with the vision, guidance and tool sets to reach their goals.

 

How does it work?

Your teams take and own the responsibility for your products. You are part of the team but with a different role – you enable without trying to control. Your role is to provide the vision and offer guidance.

It's just you and the teams – there is no delegation of responsibilities to another management level (for example team leaders). With each additional level of control, the ownership of the product moves away from the team.

If the team owns the responsibility, and you provide the right vision and structure, team members won't feel like mere 'code monkeys', but they'll be inspired to innovate and further develop your products.

Seek out the best teams. Cross-functional teams are your best option – gather the requisite knowledge for the project in each team (UX, SM, PO, DevOps, QA, FE, BE...) and invest in ongoing training to deepen that knowledge.

 

Shadow Management Tasks

  • Be available for each team and each team member
  • Listen first, then ask questions – this is the most important skill
  • Treat everybody equitably
  • Enable change and optimization
  • Help Scrum Masters to own the knowledge aspect of their teams
  • Aim for intrinsic motivation
  • Watch the team phases forming, norming, storming, performing and provide guidance
  • Implement a knowledge based career-path model

 

Light Management Tasks

  • Let the teams shine - they need to be proud of their work, celebrate success
  • Maintain a presence – show that you care and that you are available
  • Invest into openness and culture
  • Focus first on the teams then on the individuals
  • Let the teams themselves hire new team members – you can do the initial screening
  • Talk about your vision for the teams and their ways of working

 

Communities of Practice

Establish groups of knowledge, or 'Communities of Practice', whose purpose is to focus on specific issues – architecture, security and so on. (I do like some parts of the spotify model) Ensure that everybody has equal rights to voice and discuss his or her opinions, and in cases of deadlock, you can step in to cast the last vote and align them on complex matters.

All of this is based on my own experience of managing software development teams and, I believe, can be used to start an IT organization from scratch.

 

Please let me know if you have any questions.