I feel a great deal of empathy for middle managers; after all I used to be one before I joined ThoughtWorks and entered a world of a (nearly) flat structure. In the past they only had to deal with change coming on down from above. However, as the word about Agile and Lean starts to build the middle managers are in danger of being hit from above (golf course agile) as well as below from frustrated development teams who know there is a better way of working.
ThoughtWorks is increasingly seeing more and more demand for Agile adoption consultancy, based on its track record in using Agile to deliver.
There has recently been a lot of internal discussion about managing the stakeholders in the change programme and the threat that middle management poses to the successful adoption of Agile and Lean.
I think this could well be true. Middle management may well see Agile and self-organising teams as a threat to their authority and even their job. I have seen one example of a senior manager swallowing the blue Scrum pill, believing they didn't need Project Managers anymore and made them all redundant.
I believe that middle managers are people too. They have hopes and fears. I have seen training programmes created for Scrum Masters, Product Owners, BAs, developers and QAs, but it is all too easy to overlook managers.
So I wanted to canvass opinion from the great wild interweb. Are you one of those middle managers, the PHB in Dilbert? Are you having Agile done to you right now? How do you feel and more importantly what suggestions do you have to make the transition from the waterfall way to Lean and Agile.?
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