Do We Need a Manifesto for Managers?

It is time to recognize managers in the Agile journey

By and large, the most common obstacle I encounter during large enterprise Agile transformations is middle management resistance to change. Change is a given. Change is hard. Change is scary. It is difficult for managers who have been elevated to their current career perch through behaviors, processes, and tools that no longer are relevant in the midst of teams striving towards Agile values and principles. To make it even more difficult, these existing, irrelevant behaviors are almost instinctual. The muscle memory is well honed and trusted.

The Agile Manifesto¹ has four values and 12 principles to guide teams on their Agile journey as they collaborate, deliver, reflect, and improve². Scrum has the five team values of commitment, courage, focus, openness, and respect.³ XP has the five team values of communication, simplicity, feedback, courage, and respect.⁴

Where are the values and principles to guide managers as they embark on the Agile transformational journey? Without anything to guide them when the going gets tough in the transformation, managers turn to what they know:

• command and control tactics to manage the workers
• local optimization of functional silos