AGILE TRANSITION - Fachbereichsleiter

Setting goals: Better NOW than TOMORROW.

What are the goals of the departments? What is their value proposition?

Areas of expertise are often wrongly overshadowed by the more visible business lines or customer projects, as they do not sell anything to the end customers and their share of the company’s success is not so easy to identify. If, on the other hand, everyone in the department is clear about the objectives and their own contribution to achieving the corporate strategy, their own self-esteem increases. This, in turn, leads to a higher positive demand on oneself and thus increases the probability of finding and leveraging previously untapped potential.

Therefore, it is extremely important that the head of the department communicates a clear vision and objective.

KANBAN helps to present these goals in a more understandable way for all members. For example, the goal of reducing the average processing time of orders can be clearly anchored in the current actual data: today 3 months – target for “tomorrow”: 2 weeks. KANBAN can also provide valuable services in the formulation of a quality goal. For example, clearly formulated “Definitions of Done” in the individual processing steps help to make delivery quality more independent of people and thus reduce customer complaints.

If these goals are attractive, which requires that they have been clearly proclaimed, then teams can excel at these goals. KANBAN is a methodological impetus for departments to draw a positive picture of the future and helps them to achieve the proclaimed goals.

Setting priorities: The head of the department is the Product Owner.

Market, technology, project management – these three dimensions are covered by the Product Owner Team. What’s it like with KANBAN?

The project management competence is covered by the clearly described work process on the KANBAN board with complete fulfilment criteria for each work step.
Each team member can take on the technical perspective through his or her specialist competence, as the degree of innovation (uncertainty of requirements x uncertainty of implementation) is lower here than in the cross-functional development work in the AGILE core team.
As a PO, the head of the department must therefore primarily take care of the priorities of the strategic departmental initiatives, as well as escalations from the SHOPFLOOR meetings. The priorities of the development projects remain valid and may not be overwritten by the head of the department under any circumstances.
The head of the department receives two important pieces of information via the transparent presentation of all projects on the KANBAN board:1. How much capacity does the company currently demand from us and how is this trending?2. What is required of us in terms of content and what technical expertise will we have to provide more in the future?

From this, the fields of action for future strategic initiatives in the field can be derived: “How can I develop my field of expertise so that we will continue to be well positioned in the future?”

Developing a Specialty: Time for Leadership.

Due to this reduced role of the department head, which explicitly allows NO SUBSTANTIVE PARTICIPATION in the projects, KANBAN managers finally have more time for good leadership again:

1. Create focus and set goals,
2. Leave room for manoeuvre and create framework conditions,
3. Give feedback and develop people.

This possibly new design of one’s own leadership role is an exciting journey on which the manager is accompanied by an AGILELEADERSHIPCOACH.