Yesterday I posted on the similarities between Leadership and Agile Project Management. Today I wanted to share how the two fields are connected and how Agile project management utilizes leadership best practices. The following ideas are extracted from a larger article I wrote for the Cutter Consortium earlier this year. When faced with the challenges of running an agile project, leadership techniques provide a great framework for project stewardship. Jeffery Pinto defines the behaviours of effective leaders as: Modeling desired behaviour Creating and communicating a common vision Willingness to challenge the status quo Empowering others Encouraging others These behaviours have strong correlation with agile project management recommendations. 1. Modeling desired behaviour – agile project managers should demonstrate the behaviours they […]

The techniques promoted as Agile Project Management are far closer aligned to Leadership than traditional project management. Leadership, as defined by authors such as Bennis and Pinto focuses on people not tasks, empowerment not control, effectiveness not efficiency, direction over speed. Leadership experts Kouzes and Posner describe four key leadership practices: Develop a Shared Vision Challenge the Process and Adapt Empower Others to Act Encourage the Heart All principles familiar to those managing agile projects. So, when we talk about effective agile project management I believe we are actually talking more about leadership behaviours than project management behaviours.  Doug DeCarlo summarized it well with the paradoxical phrase: “You lead people by standing behind them” by which he means: supporting them, […]