Agile transformations fail not in or on the teams, but on the mindset and the corporate culture. The transformation of these elementary components of agility and thus also establishing SCRUM in the company is the responsibility of management. Essentially, it is about ensuring that the teams canbecause want have probably wanted this for longer than management thinks. The following blog post explains what management needs for this and what it should write as user stories on the Kanban board.

Framework conditions create clarity and structure

Clearly structured framework conditions are a strategic issue for the start of the agile transformation, which is why responsibility for this lies with management. Create clear framework conditions to provide structure.

Here is an example: One of the first and most important tasks is the premises. If you provide these, you should make sure that they are designed correctly, appropriately and openly. Make an active contribution to ensuring that teams can develop in open spaces, not in offices that are too small. If you have "space allocations", that's absolutely fine. However, it is not okay if someone from management "assigns" team members to places. What's wrong with the teams choosing their own seats?

Yes, it will work, despite all the objections that are now popping up in your mind's eye. Trust your teams! Support self-organization by setting small framework conditions for this too: "Please report your seat assignments to person XYZ by such and such a date so that we can have this set up."

Now the idleness in management is really starting

Now that the framework conditions can be categorized based on the example above, let's move on to the really difficult part: actually doing nothing to promote an agile mindset and transform the corporate culture.

Pushing teams into performance

Performance comes from success, and success in this case means delivering functionality that can be used directly by the customer/user. To do this, teams need "autonomy"! Autonomy means that there is no micromanagement at the tactical level, i.e. in the implementation of requirements by the teams. What am I good for then?", one or two people at one of the management levels are probably asking themselves.

This question is both legitimate and complex to answer, because you are responsible for the following things, among others:

• Mentor and coach of the team: Because self-organization needs leadership.
• Elimination of impediments: This concerns disruptions, impediments of the team(s) of any kind and nature, which are usually communicated by the Scrum Master.
• Controlling requirements management.
• Accounting and Controlling.
• Team development.

They are there to live the company's vision, to communicate it to the teams, to invite them to help shape and participate, to create appreciative and satisfying atmospheres, and even to make them possible in the first place. In doing so, they lay the elementary foundation for an agile transformation to really succeed.

Satisfaction enables success, not the other way around

Satisfied people are successful. It is a fallacy that success makes a person satisfied and motivates them as a result. Conversely, however, it becomes a coherent option for action.

The fallacy we are subject to

Where is the success that satisfies you supposed to come from? It has to be earned first. So that would mean that we try to achieve success with dissatisfied people, which then satisfies them and motivates them! Hm, that sounds a little bit stupid, doesn't it?

Let's look at it from the other side

We create an appreciative atmosphere based on general respect in the workplace, establish autonomy in the teams, support team building, in short: we ensure, with all the means at our disposal, that we find satisfied colleagues in the corridors and in the rooms every day. This automatically leads to motivation and therefore to success.

Doing nothing in management: how to achieve agile transformation

Courage is one of the SCRUM-values. Gather all your courage and commit to doing nothing. Ask yourself every time you feel the urge to intervene: "Is this doing or not doing?" and then support the teams in being able to do the right thing themselves. Encourage ability, because the team already has the will. Create a framework, the satisfactionand appreciation and recognition in the foreground. You will experience the same for yourself as the teams: Your satisfaction will not only lead the team to success, but also yourself - and the agile transformation will succeed.

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