3 Best Practices For The Ambitious Agile Delivery Lead

Agile is changing! In 2024, companies have realised that sticking to Scrum doesn’t do them any good. Companies need teams that take more responsibility for how they work. And that’s where the role of “Agile Delivery Lead / Manager” comes in! Here’s a guide to best practices for fulfilling this role.

An Agile delivery lead or manager is someone who leads Agile teams and ensures that they can deliver value to customers and stakeholders. They are not only coaches or facilitators, but also responsible for the delivery process and results. They are responsible for ensuring that teams follow Agile principles and practices while adapting to the changing needs and expectations of the business and users.

Read more in the article: “All Agile Delivery Roles Explained”

Tasks and responsibilities of the Agile Delivery Lead

As a leader or manager of agile development, you have various roles and responsibilities that span different aspects of the development process. Some of these are:

• Planning and prioritization: You will work with the Product Owner, stakeholders, and team to define and prioritize the Product Backlog and align it with the project’s vision and goals. You will also help plan and coordinate sprints, releases and dependencies with other teams.
• Coaching and mentoring: You coach and mentor team members on agile values, principles and practices and help them improve their skills and performance. You will also foster a culture of collaboration, feedback and continuous improvement within the team and across the organization.
• You moderate and communicate: You facilitate various agile ceremonies, such as daily stand-ups, sprint planning, sprint reviews, and retrospectives, and ensure that they are effective and productive. You will also communicate with stakeholders, customers, and other teams, providing transparency and insight into progress and delivery status.
• Removing obstacles and solving problems: You identify and remove any obstacles or roadblocks that prevent the team from delivering value. You also proactively address issues or risks that could impact the quality or timeliness of delivery.
• Measure and improve: You will measure and monitor the performance and results of the delivery process using various metrics and indicators, such as speed, quality, customer satisfaction, etc. You will also use data and feedback to identify opportunities for improvement and implement changes to optimize the delivery process.

While there are many certifications for Agile delivery leaders or managers, such as. Certified ScrumMaster (CSM), Professional Scrum Master (PSM), SAFe Agilist (SA), etc., but they are not a requirement or guarantee for success in this role. What you really need are the practical skills of an Agile Delivery Manager that will help you lead your team effectively and efficiently. Some of these skills are:

• Technical knowledge: You must have a solid understanding of the technical aspects of the product or service you are delivering, e.g. architecture, design, development, testing, deployment, etc. This will help you communicate with your team members without skimping on details and troubleshoot technical issues.
• Deep understanding of agile approach: You need to have a deep understanding of agile values, principles and practices like Scrum, Kanban, XP, Lean, etc. and how to apply them in different contexts and situations. This will help you identify flawed processes and coach your team members towards an agile mindset.
• Understanding of the company’s goals: You need to have a clear understanding of the business objectives driving your project or initiative and how these align with customer needs and expectations. This way, you can ensure that your agile implementation contributes to business value and results, and you can communicate effectively with management and stakeholders.

Of course, you can learn these skills in training courses, but you will probably get the best experience in practice!

The next graphic leads nicely into our next section - one-on-one meetings.

Best practice: One-to-one meetings with developers

Leading software developers in regular one-to-one meetings is absolutely central to Agile Delivery Leads. They are perhaps your most important meeting. Do you take these meetings seriously?

I would like to take this opportunity to draw your attention to our free one-to-one meeting software, which has been specially developed for Agile Delivery Leads. Make your 1:1 meetings exciting, measure trends and most importantly, make progress in your employee development!

Feel free to try out one of our templates, see below. The following template is a standard template for, for example, bi-weekly one-on-one meetings. It also includes a measurable “mood check” at the end, which you can of course customise:

If you would like more templates for your one-to-one meetings, take a look at the following post: 15 proven templates for 1-to-1 meetings .

If you are interested in learning more about software for one-to-one meetings, check out this page: The top three employee review tools compared . For a compact overview, our 1:1 Meeting Software Comparison is also suitable .

To be a successful Agile Delivery Leader or Manager, you need to follow some other best practices that can help you optimize your delivery process and results. Here are some of them:

• Empower your team: As a leader or manager of agile delivery, you must empower your team members to make decisions, take responsibility, and stand up for their work. You must trust them to do their best without patronizing them or imposing unnecessary rules or restrictions. You also need to support them by giving them the resources, tools, feedback and recognition they need.
• Work together with others: As a leader or manager of agile development, you need to collaborate with others who are involved in or affected by your development process, such as product owners, stakeholders, customers, users, other teams, and so on. You need to establish clear roles and responsibilities, expectations, and communication channels with them, and include them in the planning, review, and feedback cycles of your delivery process. You also need to foster a culture of transparency and trust with them and share information and insights openly and honestly.
• Adaptation to change: As a leader or manager of an agile organization, you must adapt to change quickly and effectively, as change is inevitable and constant in an agile environment. You must embrace change as an opportunity to learn and improve, rather than resist or fear it. You also need to help your team members and others manage change by providing them with the necessary rationale, guidance, and support.

If you aspire to the role of an Agile delivery leader or manager, you need to be prepared for some common interview questions that can test your knowledge, skills, and experience in the role. Here are some of the questions you should have good answers for in an interview:

• What experience do you have as a leader or manager of agile delivery?
• How do you plan and prioritize the Product Backlog and Sprint Backlog?
• How do you coach and mentor your team members on agile values, principles, and practices?
• How do you facilitate various agile ceremonies, such as daily stand-ups, sprint planning, sprint reviews, and retrospectives?
• How do you communicate with stakeholders, customers and other teams?
• How do you identify and remove obstacles or blockers that prevent your team from delivering value?
• How do you measure and monitor the performance and results of your delivery process?
• How do you use data and feedback to identify areas for improvement and implement changes to optimize your delivery process?
• How do you empower your team members to make decisions, take responsibility and stand up for their work?
• How do you collaborate with others involved in or affected by your delivery process?
• How can you adapt to change quickly and effectively?