With the advent of agility and agile methods in companies, more and more new positions have emerged. One of them is through the job description agile manager (aM). And with the hype surrounding this more modern form of work organization, more and more companies are also being transferred to a project-oriented approach.

The waterfall scheme, which had been precisely timed and planned for many years, had to give way to new approaches such as Scrum more and more often. This has fundamentally changed the structure of the work for employees. Because from now on they were assigned to work in sprint teams with completely new job titles and sometimes completely changing task packages. However, these changes also require good organization. And this is exactly where the professional field comes in agile manager in the game. In the following, I would like to explain exactly how its functions and responsibilities look.

Agile manager – classification in the organization

First and foremost, the aM takes care of a functioning system in the company. This requires a meaningful infrastructure in which teams can work efficiently and performance-oriented. In the context of agility, the aM is responsible for setting up exactly such an organization in companies.

One can imagine the professional field of agile managers like that of a gardener (cf. to Fig. 1 )

Fig. 1: Agile manager as the company’s gardener

As the leader and person responsible for the smooth workflow in the team, roles, responsibilities, but also resources and aids must be appropriately distributed. You can imagine the respective working groups like plants. These have to be cherished and cared for in order to bloom or to produce a yield. Means used by the gardener such as water, fertilizer or the control of temperature and light intensity correspond in the sense of the aM, for example, to the management of tasks or the setting up of chat systems.

Agile manager – range of tasks

However, this only describes a small sub-area of the range of tasks of agile managers. Because there are far more tasks involved in this professional field, such as

  • the Corporate strategy
  • the Corporate statics and
  • of the Corporate operation

Tasks in the area of corporate strategy

With regard to corporate strategy, aM is particularly concerned with selecting the right business model for the market and linking it to the right value proposition. At the same time, however, the agile manager must also observe the associated market, competition and risk factors and place them in relation to one another.

Tasks in the area of corporate statics

In the area of corporate statics, the agile manager must integrate the correct organizational structure into the company based on the products that are produced or to be sold. This means that he has to take care of a flawless and efficient cooperation between the respective product owners. As part of this, it is also important for him to make the right decisions with regard to guidelines and work specifications.

Tasks in the field of company operations

But corporate operations as a whole system are also under the watchful eye of agile managers. This is where tasks arise in the area of personnel management, cross-company cooperation, and the provision and correct application of tools and techniques for the development teams. In addition to selecting the right tools and aids for the workforce, the aM must also take care of employee qualifications, further training and the associated working atmosphere in the workplace. In addition, it is important for him to maintain contact with operational partners and to continuously optimize cooperation.

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Author

I blog about the influence of digitalization on our working world. For this purpose, I provide content from science in a practical way and show helpful tips from my everyday professional life. I am an executive in an SME and I wrote my doctoral thesis at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg at the Chair of IT Management.

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