Line Managers in a Scrum Team

Hi Bartek,

I assume you understand that there is no such thing as a Line Manager in Scrum. How is this person empowered by the organisation? Are there formal sign-offs or permissions that the Line Manager is required to do?

Although Scrum prescribes that a team should be self-managing, this does not mean that there is no such thing as leadership in the team. It is quite possible that people have a heavier say in certain matters simply because they know a lot about something. An example of this is the Scrum Master, who is the person to go to if you have questions about Scrum. This only becomes a problem in the case where others contribute less because of a dominant team member. Ideally the role of every leader is that of the Servant Leader. Leadership that is focussed on bringing out the best team work.

As for the strategies that you could apply - I like to use the 'blue elephant' principle when it comes to changing behaviour. A children's game involves complying to the command 'don't think of a pink elephant'. This is almost impossible, but there is a trick you can play on yourself to succeed. What you do is think of a blue elephant instead. Similarly, your Line Manager will find it hard to stop being a Line Manager unless he has some way of filling in the role differently. Perhaps you could introduce him to the concept of 'Servant Leadership': https://www.greenleaf.org/what-is-servant-leadership/ and point out what aspects of a good manager fit inside the Scrum framework.

If you have an advanced team that are used to describing their own needs, you might consider letting your team handle it themselves. In that case, you could simply organise a retrospective in which team members tell each other what they need more of and less of from each other. I have employed a 'speed dating' retrospective in the past where each team member talks to every team member in turn, giving each one an incident, a compliment and an improvement from the last sprint. At the end everyone can name the improvements they would like to implement.

Hi Dennis,

thanks for your extensive reply.

Yes, I know there is no LMs in Scrum Framework.

For LM empowerment, he is sings-off holidays, his inputs impact on salaries, he prepares growth plans with his reports.

From what I understand from your reply - as long as LM doesn't affect contribution of team members - it is acceptable to have a LM (in terms of organizational role) within a Scrum Team, as Scrum says nothing about team leadership. Self-organization is what matters.

On a side, I would personally prefer not to have a LM and his reports within the same team. Even if team is mature the Heisenberg's 'Uncertainty principle' could manifest itself is such setup.

Haven't heard of 'blue elephant' principle before. Sounds good, thanks!

Does the Line Manager recognize the importance of empowering the team, and if so can you help him?

Ian,

yes, he does. Good question, thanks.

No one in the team should report to anyone in the team. All Scrum team members can report to LM but he cannot be part of the Scrum team.

Technically he may be really great now he should groom his team members to be as good as he is.

Regards
Sanjay

Hi Sanjay,

you wrote:

No one in the team should report to anyone in the team. All Scrum team members can report to LM but he cannot be part of the Scrum team.

Is that your opinion or you refer to some scrum.org official guideline?

In both cases could you point me to the source of it?

Thanks!
Bartek

Hey Bartek

This is my personal opinion. Based upon my personal experience if your reporting manager is in the daily stand up, team members start behaving differently, same goes for planning or retrospective meetings. If the team is reporting to PO then they will start accommodating his adhoc requirements while compromising on the Scrum process, Quality etc., if they report to SM then they will be driven by the Scrum Master compromising the self-driven principle of Scrum.

Let everyone in the team challenge and support each other.

Regards
Sanjay

Thanks Sanjay.

I've had similar conclusions - if there is a choice, there should be no direct managers in a ST.