Advice for forming an Agile team?

[Deleted member 19844]

Our company recently went through a reorg and we ended up with a weird set of people / projects on our team.

People:
* a manager that will supposedly act like a product owner
* two project managers (I'm one of them) that will each act like some hybrid of pm and scrum master
* four developers

Projects:
* two different client portfolios with various projects - one that i am managing and one that the other pm is managing
* miscellaneous smaller projects that come in from time to time

I'm really used to owning the well-being of the development team and organizing the work, but now we're expected to work as one larger team and I'm not sure how that can work with 2 PMs - it's like having two captains on a team.

I also don't know how we can organize ceremonies when there are two separate large client portfolios. I'm wary of longer sprint planning meetings with large portions where content isn't applicable to half the people...

Any immediate thoughts from anyone? I have to admit I'm a bit sour on the decision to put two PMs on one team, but I'm happy to be wrong about that being a bad thing...

 

[Deleted member 79451]

What are your responsibilities as project manager? It can be really hard to tell peoples' roles from just the title.

We have multiple product owners, but as a developer I have just one project manager / scrum master (per small group of devs). But we have multiple BAs...

 

[Deleted member 19844]

What are your responsibilities as project manager? It can be really hard to tell peoples' roles from just the title.

We have multiple product owners, but as a developer I have just one project manager / scrum master (per small group of devs). But we have multiple BAs...

Click to shrink...

It really is a bit of a hybrid between project manager and scrum master. On the one hand I am responsible for the timely, successful completion of each project, while at the same time I am also responsible for the well-being of the development team and making sure that we are not overextending ourselves from sprint to sprint.

 

[Midramble]

That admin to worker ratio seems odd to me. 3 management/admin roles and 4 devs? Is this normal in other people's space? Or is this a new team expecting expansion?

 

[King Fossil]

I haven't been around the block but I don't think I have ever been part of a truly agile team. People say they are agile but are they really by-the-book agile? The places I worked at just borrow the general concept and PMs merge it into some Frankenstein that we call agile.

 

[Post Reply]

That admin to worker ratio seems odd to me. 3 management/admin roles and 4 devs? Is this normal in other people's space? Or is this a new team expecting expansion?

Click to shrink...

Sounds like it's gonna be hell for the developers. Like, that screams constant meetings.

 

[TheRagnCajun]

You are sharing resources with another PM but you have separate projects. Seems normal?

 

[Azubah]

Stretching.

 

[EMBee99]

That admin to dev ratio is ridiculous. Agile is about empowered doers not micromanagement of process. You should have a product manager providing focus and validation and replace that other PM with a BA to document requirements and acceptance criteria to guide developer effort.

 

[Septimus Prime]

Really bad idea to have a manager act as product owner, and also bad to hybridize project manager and ScrumMaster.

But if it's unavoidable, I think the most important thing is to have a clean, prioritized backlog and a strong working agreement, where you can establish your commitments and definitions of done. You actually have enough people to form two scrum teams, sort of, if the manager on top is the PO for both.

 

[Gangster Gastino]

As a product owner running an Agile team, having two PMs is weird. I wouldn't want two people telling me that I'm going over budget lol.

Maybe you should focus 100% on being a scrum master? Do you have any business analysts? Who does all your process mapping, user stories, etc?

 

[Septimus Prime]

As a product owner running an Agile team, having two PMs is weird. I wouldn't want two people telling me that I'm going over budget lol.

Maybe you should focus 100% on being a scrum master? Do you have any business analysts? Who does all your process mapping, user stories, etc?

Click to shrink...

Yeah, that sounds like a good idea, too. Split your roles so that one project manager is the PO and one the ScrumMaster, and then have the manager be a stakeholder.

 

[maigret]

We went through something similar at my job and it was a total clusterfuck. The exec whose idea it was bailed after about a year and now we're back to doing shit the old way, lol. I swear some executive leadership positions are just reserved for outside people to come in, make a mess and then bail.

 

[julia crawford]

Two PMs??? Golly. That's not having two captains, that's having two obsessive compulsive disorders in one head.

 

[Ether_Snake]

I would expect you to work with your team, and there may be needs to cooperate with the other, which is between you and the other team's manager, and when decisions must be taken that neither of you can take exclusively you meet with your shared superior to get such decisions taken. I mean project managers are basically expected to handle a portfolio, not implicitly all portfolios.

You should have team-specific celebrations (assuming I understand what you mean by that) according to your own milestones, and there will be others at a higher level for all teams at shared milestones.

edit: A project manager is not a product owner though, that's not really good. You could both have the same product owner instead. That being said, if you are product owner and manager, and so is the other, it's doable, it's only a particular issue if you aren't both handling your own portfolio. It's just preferable for the product owner to not be the PM.

edit2: Rereading, you have a product owner, two managers, four devs each (or two each?). That seems perfectly normal, unless you both have the same four devs, in which case you need a higher up to handle resource assignment according to the respective projects, hopefully on fairly long schedules to reduce overhead.

Sounds perfectly fine.

 

[The Albatross]

Are you going to be competing for development resources with the other PM during the same development periods? That seems like a recipe to not finish anything and burn out developers who are being torn between multiple PMs.

I'm a developer where a portion of my work is shared between multiple teams, but I manage my own projects and fit that work into the development schedules of other teams. Im empowered to push back on work and do so frequently so it's not too bad for me. But when I'm really up against it, and I tell a team that I can't support some upcoming work that's always an uncomfortable fight to have.

 

[Deleted member 19844]

I really appreciate the responses.

That admin to worker ratio seems odd to me. 3 management/admin roles and 4 devs? Is this normal in other people's space? Or is this a new team expecting expansion?

Click to shrink...

Agreed that the ratio seems odd. And nope, the team isn't expecting expansion. This is just the new normal I have to roll with.

Sounds like it's gonna be hell for the developers. Like, that screams constant meetings.

Click to shrink...

Agreed - that's something I'm going to try to mitigate as we discuss how we'll set up our ceremonies.

You are sharing resources with another PM but you have separate projects. Seems normal?

Click to shrink...

The thing is we are expected to work as one team, and I'm not sure how best to approach that. A single set of ceremonies seems like a waste of developer time as they sit through sprint planning, for example, for projects they're not supporting, etc.

That admin to dev ratio is ridiculous. Agile is about empowered doers not micromanagement of process. You should have a product manager providing focus and validation and replace that other PM with a BA to document requirements and acceptance criteria to guide developer effort.

Click to shrink...

I wish. I work in a place that doesn't ever get rid of people and basically just shuffles people around. I have to roll with this.

Really bad idea to have a manager act as product owner, and also bad to hybridize project manager and ScrumMaster.

But if it's unavoidable, I think the most important thing is to have a clean, prioritized backlog and a strong working agreement, where you can establish your commitments and definitions of done. You actually have enough people to form two scrum teams, sort of, if the manager on top is the PO for both.

Click to shrink...

This is helpful - thank you! With regards to being able to split into two scrum teams, the thing is that the resources are expected to support projects across the two portfolios, so any of the 4 developers could end up working with each other depending on the project. :-(

As a product owner running an Agile team, having two PMs is weird. I wouldn't want two people telling me that I'm going over budget lol.

Maybe you should focus 100% on being a scrum master? Do you have any business analysts? Who does all your process mapping, user stories, etc?

Click to shrink...

essentially the PMs have been operating as PMs and Scrum Masters for the past year or so, balancing protecting the needs of the project and protecting the needs of the team.

Yeah, that sounds like a good idea, too. Split your roles so that one project manager is the PO and one the ScrumMaster, and then have the manager be a stakeholder.

Click to shrink...

Interesting - I'll add that to the list options to explore.

We went through something similar at my job and it was a total clusterfuck. The exec whose idea it was bailed after about a year and now we're back to doing shit the old way, lol. I swear some executive leadership positions are just reserved for outside people to come in, make a mess and then bail.

Click to shrink...

Thats my worry... that it'll be a cluster...

Two PMs??? Golly. That's not having two captains, that's having two obsessive compulsive disorders in one head.

Click to shrink...

Hahaha tell me about it!!!

 

[Deleted member 19844]

edit2: Rereading, you have a product owner, two managers, four devs each (or two each?). That seems perfectly normal, unless you both have the same four devs, in which case you need a higher up to handle resource assignment according to the respective projects, hopefully on fairly long schedules to reduce overhead.

Sounds perfectly fine.

Click to shrink...

Thats right: 2 pms sharing 4 devs, and we're expected to operate as a single team, with the manager serving as something like a product owner. My concern is having two PMs but only one "team" and set of ceremonies is just a cluster.

Are you going to be competing for development resources with the other PM during the same development periods? That seems like a recipe to not finish anything and burn out developers.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, basically we are supposed to work as one team.

 

[Septimus Prime]

With regards to being able to split into two scrum teams, the thing is that the resources are expected to support projects across the two portfolios, so any of the 4 developers could end up working with each other depending on the project. :-(

Click to shrink...

I had a feeling that could be the case, but given this, one challenge you will face is that you're going to come up against competing priorities--doubly so if you and your peer PM are both still acting as project managers. This is kind of why I would suggest only one of you is the product owner, so you don't bash heads together trying to both get things prioritized higher, and removing the higher manager from the team entirely will allow him to become a tiebreaker if it's unclear what's actually the most important. The ScrumMaster, then, can focus on execution and removing impediments for the team.

EDIT: Oh, yeah. One other thing: protect your sprints! You should ideally put into your working agreement what criteria a new story or task would have to meet in order to be so important that it can interrupt a sprint. Like, this kind of stuff should be things like P0 bugs that affect live users and fires so hot that they could burn the whole business down and things like that. Otherwise, things that are kind of important and are just things people want sooner can generally wait for the next sprint.

 

[Swig]

That admin to worker ratio seems odd to me. 3 management/admin roles and 4 devs? Is this normal in other people's space? Or is this a new team expecting expansion?

Click to shrink...

2 PMs is a bit much for that, but its fine to have a PO and a PM/SM.

 

[Ether_Snake]

Thats right: 2 pms sharing 4 devs, and we're expected to operate as a single team, with the manager serving as something like a product owner. My concern is having two PMs but only one "team" and set of ceremonies is just a cluster.
Yeah, basically we are supposed to work as one team.

Click to shrink...

Well ok let's not panic here, doesn't seem too bad like some others said.

Someone, somewhere, has to determine which resources get assigned to what, and hopefully the duration for which they will be assigned will not be very short (depends on the kind of business, but I would assume at least a few weeks).

1- Will someone other than you two be responsible for making resource assignment decisions?
2- Is the duration of the assignments reasonable?
3- Is there a superior above the product owner who handles the budget of the whole team and who can override the product owner regarding scope?

 

[Swig]

About a year ago I was brought to a new team to introduce Agile. The biggest problem we ran into was a director who didn't understand it and made bad decisions because of a lack of experience and refused to listen to negative feedback. I would get expectations down on paper and buy in from the team members, or at least the PMs/PO. Devs don't really care unless the team becomes dysfunctional. If anyone has Agile experience, they should probably guide that process.

 

[Deleted member 19844]

Well ok let's not panic here, doesn't seem too bad like some others said.

Someone, somewhere, has to determine which resources get assigned to what, and hopefully the duration for which they will be assigned will not be very short (depends on the kind of business, but I would assume at least a few weeks).

1- Will someone other than you two be responsible for making resource assignment decisions?
2- Is the duration of the assignments reasonable?
3- Is there a superior above the product owner who handles the budget of the whole team and who can override the product owner regarding scope?

Click to shrink...

I think what makes sense is:
* manager would be responsible for making resource assignments on a project by project basis and decisions re: what new work we accept into our backlog
* each pm continues managing their own projects and works collaboratively with the other pm to figure out resource allocation when the same resources are working on projects for both of us. If we can't figure something out, we bring in the manager
* we maintain one set of ceremonies for the whole team, with the understanding that there will be some wasted time for resources not working across portfolios, and each PM leads when their projects are being addressed.

Honestly I just disagree with the new structure in general and wish I could retain my autonomy as PM of a team, but that's not within my control.

And thank you for the reply!

 

[Ether_Snake]

I think what makes sense is:
* manager would be responsible for making resource assignments on a project by project basis and decisions re: what new work we accept into our backlog
* each pm continues managing their own projects and works collaboratively with the other pm to figure out resource allocation when the same resources are working on projects for both of us. If we can't figure something out, we bring in the manager
* we maintain one set of ceremonies for the whole team, with the understanding that there will be some wasted time for resources not working across portfolios, and each PM leads when their projects are being addressed.

Honestly I just disagree with the new structure in general and wish I could retain my autonomy as PM of a team, but that's not within my control.

And thank you for the reply!

Click to shrink...

I have never seen a situation where there are resources managed by more than one PM at the same time, and it makes no sense. So I think the real issues will come from how often do resources need to be reassigned. If it's not on short term durations, then the resources are not really shared, not in the practical sense, it's just a small pool of resources that are assigned to two different teams back and forth.

The closest case along yours would be a construction company constantly assigning staff between two ongoing projects, but in that case someone is determining who gets assigned and when according to their evaluation of both projects and their priorities, which are determined based on PM-provided status from each team.

 

[Deleted member 19844]

I have never seen a situation where there are resources managed by more than one PM at the same time, and it makes no sense. So I think the real issues will come from how often do resources need to be reassigned. If it's not on short term durations, then the resources are not really shared, not in the practical sense, it's just a small pool of resources that are assigned to two different teams back and forth.

The closest case along yours would be a construction company constantly assigning staff between two ongoing projects, but in that case someone is determining who gets assigned and when according to their evaluation of both projects and their priorities, which are determined based on PM-provided status from each team.

Click to shrink...

That's interesting. Right now the expectation is that resources would be working on 2-3 projects concurrently, and projects last anywhere from 1 to 12 months, so we could be in a situation where a resource is working on projects for both PMs for months at a time.

I like the construction example - in that example there would be one person making the assignment decisions, but in our circumstance, the manager doesn't have the level of project engagement to be able to make those ongoing tactical decisions (though I guess we could continually be providing the mgr the information necessary to make those kinds of informed decisions, but honestly I'd prefer to work it out with the other PM than hand that over to the manager.

 

[Ether_Snake]

That's interesting. Right now the expectation is that resources would be working on 2-3 projects concurrently, and projects last anywhere from 1 to 12 months, so we could be in a situation where a resource is working on projects for both PMs for months at a time.

I like the construction example - in that example there would be one person making the assignment decisions, but in our circumstance, the manager doesn't have the level of project engagement to be able to make those ongoing tactical decisions (though I guess we could continually be providing the mgr the information necessary to make those kinds of informed decisions, but honestly I'd prefer to work it out with the other PM than hand that over to the manager.

Click to shrink...

Right, seems that you are in a situation where you will have to all work together to make the best call, with some trial and error. The best in such a situation is to favor team-building (by team I mean everyone, not just your team), because if people are in a good mood it will be beneficial for all decision-making processes that have dependencies to both teams.

You might not be PMP-certified or planning to be, but this site is still a great reference for project management in general http://www.acethepmpexam.com/ppe/index.html

I do suggest following a PMI class that can lead to certification, I'm following one and just think it will have been beneficial even if I don't go for the certification.

 

[CatAssTrophy]

Only advice I have is to make sure everyone is on the same page as far as:

-not taking criticism, comments, concerns, directives, etc. personally. everyone is on the same team, just trying to get projects done.
-actually taking it seriously and following the process. if you have one developer that gripes and moans about not wanting to update work item notes, update their status, move them to the correct column, etc then it's going to be YOU doing that work for them, and it's a huge pain.

This is my first time working within Agile (started in June) and I really really like it when it works and when people do what they're supposed to do, but when I can't tell if something is ready for me (QA) to look at because there are no notes and the status isn't updated, it can be like pulling teeth sometimes getting a specific dev to just do it instead of complaining about it.

 

[Deleted member 19844]

-not taking criticism, comments, concerns, directives, etc. personally. everyone is on the same team, just trying to get projects done.

Click to shrink...

Not related to the main thread, but we have a low performing member of the team that has been in this field for 12 years, does mediocre work, doesn't have good attention to detail, and feedback results in a flare-up of insecurity, which results in poorer work.

On top of that, I work for a company that hardly ever fires people for performance issues. They just put you on performance improvement plans that don't accomplish anything.

Sigh...

 

[CatAssTrophy]

Not related to the main thread, but we have a low performing member of the team that has been in this field for 12 years, does mediocre work, doesn't have good attention to detail, and feedback results in a flare-up of insecurity, which results in poorer work.

On top of that, I work for a company that hardly ever fires people for performance issues. They just put you on performance improvement plans that don't accomplish anything.

Sigh...

Click to shrink...

Mega bummer. I totally get the insecurity thing from my problem team mate as well. Gets all bent out of shape when I test code and send it back for fixes. That's the normal process though? Like, this is how the work flow works? I don't get it. Just do your job and let's all work together.

Hopefully you guys can find a way to make things work, but unfortunately it sounds like it means everyone else picking up the slack this person is leaving.

 

[Ether_Snake]

Not related to the main thread, but we have a low performing member of the team that has been in this field for 12 years, does mediocre work, doesn't have good attention to detail, and feedback results in a flare-up of insecurity, which results in poorer work.

On top of that, I work for a company that hardly ever fires people for performance issues. They just put you on performance improvement plans that don't accomplish anything.

Sigh...

Click to shrink...

If you can identify what is lacklustre about his work which he could improve on, and figure it's something all could benefit from, you could try to propose whatever training could help. Chances are his low confidence is due to his known limitations to meet expectations, feeling stuck/unable to learn due to past complacency, fearing a coming irrelevancy. He needs help to realize he can still learn and regain some confidence through that.

 

[Khamsinvera]

That mixture spells disaster to me, esp. with shared resources. Too much brass, not enough boots.

 

[Kwigo]

One PM should become a Requirements Engineer.
If not, you'll need to track resources up to the hour with the other PM and do lots of prioritizing work with him.

 

[Midramble]

I understand the agile format of separating the roles between SM and PM. I understand the separation of product owner. What confuses me here is the near 1:1 management to dev ratio. I know PM and SM should be separate but if the team is only 6-7 people it makes sense that one person would be both of those roles and instead hire anither dev to help with throughput.

Sometimes I feel like agile can get too obsessed with minmaxing/micromanaging management itself to a point where a department finds themselves spending half their budget on buzzwords.

Again the setup makes sense if it is in tandem with other teams and resources change semi frequently or expansion is expected soon, otherwise it seems excessive to me.