Why Agile Leaders Excel with Remote Teams

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed many aspects of our lives, including the way we work. Organizations were forced to send people home with no time to think and redefine organizational new routines. 

When we are working remotely (as we all are), we cannot perform a simple gesture such as waving to a colleague when we get in the office. This is a problem because most teams were not used to working without being physically together. One day, we are sitting together with our team everyday in the same place. The next thing we know: we are home alone or with our close family. 

In most cases, routines were transposed from the physical spaces to the computers, using tools such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams. The problem is that most of those routines do not make sense anymore in the virtual world. 

Most of these problems can be faced with the help of an agile leader that guides the teams while adapting to this new reality. 

Agile can help facing the challenges of remote work

An agile team has different characteristics from a traditional one, as we have learned from experts such as professors Takeuchi and Nokada in The New Product Development Game and Jeff Sutherland in Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time. 

An agile team is transcendent, because they are embodied with a higher purpose they understand and they are self-motivated to perform. Because agile teams are autonomous, they don’t need someone (such as a traditional project manager) trying to tell them what to do. Finally, agile teams are cross-functional: they have internally all the needed resources to perform their work. This means they are a team of testers, programmers, analysts, and all the roles needed to develop value to the customer. 

Agile teams are managed by an agile leader, which is a role completely different from that of a traditional project manager. You can learn more about the competences needed for an agile leader to perform their work in the IPMA Reference Guide ICB4 in an Agile World.

So, how can agile help overcome the challenges posed by remote work? 

First of all, agile ceremonies can help teams keep pace. Morning meetings; retrospectives; groomings: all that creates a cadence that is really crucial to keep up the work. These ceremonies should be conducted even when working remotely, because it will help the teams to communicate with each other at least for some time. 

Teams should conduct ceremonies in the same as they did while physically together. For example, all people should work with their cameras on. Of course there will be issues of cooperation because people are far away from each other: it is much easier to ask a question to the person sitting besides you than asking through a computer. 

On the other hand, you will have an agile leader working with you that will work to solve impediments; help and guide you - even while you are at home. You will have your backlog; you will prepare your sprint; and define your own tasks. In the end, you are much more independent from the management than management is from you, simply because managers are used to...manage!

Agile Leadership with Servant Leaders

While working remotely, managers should be there for their teams as servant leaders. Agile leadership is all about servant leaders. It is about ensuring that teams already know the tasks they have to perform and can work without the impediments. On a higher level, servant leaders must communicate between them and with the support functions of the organization to be able to support their teams. 

Agile leadership and servant leaders can be key in addressing the challenges of remote work, and can facilitate everything that is more complex during these pandemic times. 

Conclusion

Based on our experience, all the teams that have been working remotely are much more autonomous and working much better when they have an agile leader helping them. While it might take some work and adjustments to follow a more agile approach, organizations can really benefit from having an agile mindset and leaders.

As an agile leader, you will be able to make the most out of your teams working remotely. Your teams do not want to pick up the phone every 5 minutes to answer you. They want to be autonomous and want you to solve their impediments so that they can do their job. 

If you are interested in becoming an agile leader, we have developed the specialization course Agile Leadership offered by Técnico+, the advanced training school from Instituto Superior Técnico. This course includes the  IPMA Agile Leadership certification and can help you understand the competences you need to be a servant leader.