This was an interesting session.
The issue that several participants have experienced is the potentially negative interference that micro-managing managers can have with the "self-organizing" "ask-the-team" style of management applied in SCRUM.
The question then turned to the whys of micro-management. Without going into deep psychoanalysis, we found a few simple causes:
- Thirst for information: when changing practices continue to feed a steady flow of appropriate information so that managers feel that they are kept informed.
- Satisfy constituents with data in a format that they may be more familiar with (like a gant chart, ...) even when it may be seen as wasteful
- Provide on-going education about the Scrum process
- Don't jam the Scrum jargon to people that are not familiar with it. Repeat step above. Translate to terms that they may be more familiar with
- For managers that are impatient about results, reduce Sprint length to two weeks and make clear that once started it is frozen and that it cannot be changed
- Decompose tasks to a level so that any one task can be done within three days, preferably one day - this will help everybody in the organization to know clearly what is "done" and what is not. These micro-deliverables may not be deployable, but should be testable.
- Channel micro-managers urges to meddle in the project to a designated channel in order to insulate the "team"
- When education alone fails, add politics, diplomacy and going out to a bar to smooth out conflicts, issues and concerns