Cross Functional Teams with agile managers
In my previous blog post, I explained how can we assemble cross-functional teams without the overhead of having horizontal line managers interfering with the normal daily activities of the team. The approach that I used is a bit radical, and not all companies can implement something similar to it.
In this blog post I will explain how we can keep the old cross-functional setup with a matrix organisation, creating the ability for the organisation to keep all middle management.
I want to be clear regarding how I feel about this approach, however; I believe this approach is not as optimal as the one suggested in my previous blog post, but I definitely feel it is better than the normal traditional approach used for cross-functional teams inside of a matrix organisation explained here.
Below you can find an example of a traditional cross-functional team with horizontal line managers:
So, what can we do in order to maximise this kind of setup and not suffer harm owing to the problems raised by my previous explanation? I believe the trick is to invest plenty of time into the coaching and training of middle management. In one of my previous blog posts, I explained what an Agile Manager does.
I explained that the Agile Manager is an Organisational Change Artist, Boundary Keeper, Value Maximiser, Lean Manager, Organisational Impediment Remover, and a Team Champion. Lyssa Adkins and Michael Spayd, in their article in Scrum Alliance: “The Manager’s Role in Agile” go deeper into this topic.
Organisations must involve and transform themselves; of course, this also applies to everyone within the company. The role of managers has changed, they cannot spend all day interfering with what´s going on within the team. They must spend most of their time analysing how the organisation is working and helping the organisation to grow and become leaner.
When the organisation chooses this approach, they must make sure that their managers will step away from controlling their people. They must understand their people belong to a product/project team and let them work with that team. Their people must feel part of the team and that´s their highest priority. Individual goals should be abolished and it should be established that only team goals matter.
When managers step away in this way, all the problems mentioned on my previous blog post: Political Environment, Blame Culture, Horizontal Line interference, Slow Decision Making, Individual Goals Mess, and New Hirings Interference will disappear, or at least that is the objective.
I still believe this is not the optimal solution, but I believe it can be a great intermediate approach for companies to reach the level of the “startup” set up that I presented here. Plus, having several managers caring about the organisation and helping the organisation to become leaner and faster is actually quite nice.
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Cheers,
Luis
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