There is an unwritten notion in agile development that project management and management in general is an unwelcome member of the agile team. This is course cannot actually work in a real business. The “demand management” processes for IT services – adds, changes, deletes of functionality that drive these agile team must start and end with the most senior management member who is accountable for the business benefit of the IT solution. Not the development teams.

Connecting Business Value with IT development

Why is this business connection with agile the case? First, business leadership must be the source of work authorization. Those authorizing work – be it a simple change or the development of a new system should be either Directors, or Vice
Presidents in the business unit.They need to have some “skin in the game.” Usually this comes from business performance measures and the performance rewards that result. The lower on the management hierarchy,
greater the gap between business alignment and IT development.

This authorization responsibility should not delegated. Especially down to the agile team itself. It creates gap into value generation process resulting from IT systems and trivializes the work efforts. And it violates the fundamentals of IT governance. It;s just an all around bad idea.

So how can development teams be “self managed,” “self organized,” or “self guided” in the absence of senior business management? How can these teams implement the business strategy in the absence of project, program, portfolio management? Project, Program, and Portfolio management with business leadership at the helm?

The answer? They can’t.

The connection between business strategy and the implementation of this strategy at the software development level requires management. Management of the sources of value generation. This is not self-management. It is plain olde management. Good management for sure. But management all the same.

The best management method I’ve seen is to have the C-suite agree to
a management process driven by a strategy. This means having the Program Management Office lead a cross organizational elements  with financial and operational leadership on the team.

All IT activities should be considered business management activities. These may be “teaming” activities, but they are not self-managed software development activities.

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