It's more than just toys and food: leading agile development in an enterprise-class start-up

Abstract

One of the myths of agile development is that self-organizing teams do not need direction. The agile development movement focuses primarily on programmers - programmers should do X, Y and Z, and everyone else should do whatever it takes to support the programmers. A fantastic start, since programmers are the people who actually build the organization's product; however, few techniques are offered to the rest of the organization. The admonishment to managers instructing them to only provide "toys and food" [Beck et al., (2000)] and buffer the team from external distractions implies that leaders in an agile environment should do less work, and be less involved with the team on a day-to-day basis, than in a more traditional environment. In fact a leader in an agile group must do more than he/she would in a more traditional environment and must be even more involved in the day-to-day activities of the team. The Sabrix development discipline has strong and deeply involved management as one of its keys to success. Management best practices, when applied appropriately and discerningly, do not limit, but rather enhance, the productivity and job satisfaction of the individual members of the engineering teams. We discuss ways a manager can and should help the team be more productive, have a better understanding of their fit in the organization as a whole and develop team members by being active and involved with the team and the rest of the company.