Chapter 3. Teams over Tasks

Agile leaders lead teams, non-agile ones manage tasks. How many project managers spend hours detailing tasks into Microsoft Project and then spend more hours ticking off task completions? Unfortunately, many project managers like this task oriented-approach because it is concrete, definable, and completion seems finite. Leading teams, on the other hand, seems fuzzy, messy, un-definable, and never complete. So naturally some people gravitate to the easier—managing tasks.

APM focuses on team management, from building self-organizing teams to developing a servant leadership style. It is both more difficult, and ultimately more rewarding than managing tasks. In an agile project the team takes care of the tasks and the project leader takes care of the team. This chapter has four major themes related to building teams: leadership, building self-organizing teams, collaboration (including decision making), and customer collaboration.