# Agile Leadership: What Managers Still Decide in Agile Teams

Author: Marin Niehues, Niehues Consulting · Published: 2024-07-11 · Transformation & Change
Source: https://www.niehuesconsulting.de/en/blog/agile-leadership-decisions-agile-teams/

Managers in agile teams decide on goals, boundaries and priorities, while the teams decide on the route by which they reach those goals. This division gives leadership a clear job. It does require that decisions are named one by one and assigned to a level of delegation, because without that assignment managers intervene out of habit or withdraw out of uncertainty, and both cost delivery.

This article shows which decisions stay with leadership, which a team should make, and how the line can be drawn with seven delegation levels and four test criteria. It centres on the question that managing directors and heads of department ask themselves in agile rollouts: what is left for me to do?

**Agile leadership moves decisions to the level that has the knowledge. Decisions with wide reach and low reversibility stay with leadership: direction and budget envelope, staffing and conflicts of objectives between units.**

## What do managers still decide in agile teams?

Managers in agile teams decide on the direction of the company, on the envelope for budget and capacity and on the staffing of roles. They also resolve conflicts of objectives that a single team cannot settle, for example when two product units compete for the same specialists. Everything inside that envelope belongs to the team: the order of work in the sprint, the technical solution and the way of working together.

The Scrum Guide 2020 describes the division for a single team. The Product Owner is accountable for the value of the product and the order of the Product Backlog. The Developers are accountable for the Sprint plan and the quality of the work. The Scrum Master is accountable for the team's effectiveness within the framework. For managers outside the team the guide provides no role, and that is exactly the job it leaves to the organisation: to create the conditions under which these accountabilities can be exercised, with goals and budgets as well as decision rights.

A leadership principle with a long history supplies the pattern. Mission command (Auftragstaktik), developed in the Prussian army of the nineteenth century, sets intent and boundaries and leaves execution to those on the ground. Applied to a company, it means that leadership states which result is expected in which period and within which limits, and the team chooses the path. A manager who prescribes the path personally ties up their own attention and takes away the team's chance to learn from context.

## Which delegation levels exist?

Seven delegation levels exist, described by Jurgen Appelo within Management 3.0 as Delegation Poker. They range from the level at which the manager decides alone and announces the result to the level at which the team decides entirely and leadership is no longer informed. In between are levels at which the manager explains the decision, hears the team beforehand, decides jointly with the team, advises the team before it decides or has the decision explained afterwards.

The value of the model lies in its language. The organisation names for each decision the level at which it is taken, and the blanket claim that a team is self-organising falls away. That allows expectations to be aligned before conflicts arise: a manager who wants to decide at level three after hearing the team and a team that assumes level seven will otherwise collide over the first major decision.

**Decisions and delegation levels**
Decision | Typical level | Who decides | With Niehues Consulting
Strategic direction and budget envelope | 1 to 2 | Leadership decides and explains | Goals with a measurable indicator and an owner
Staffing of roles and teams | 3 | Leadership after hearing the team | Clarifying roles, decision paths and interfaces
Order of work in the backlog | 5 to 6 | Product Owner decides, leadership advises or has the decision explained | Priorities by value and cost of delay
Technical solution and quality | 7 | The team decides | Definition of Done as a shared agreement
Way of working and rituals | 6 to 7 | The team decides, the Scrum Master supports | Testing the effect of rituals against delivery

## How do you tell which decision stays with leadership?

A decision stays with leadership when it affects more than one team or can be reversed only at high cost. Four criteria help with the assignment. Reach asks who is affected: if the effect stays inside the team, the team owns the decision; if it spans several teams, the level that connects those teams decides. Reversibility asks how expensive a step back is. A sprint order can be corrected within two weeks, the staffing of a key role or a contract with a supplier cannot. Knowledge asks who understands the matter best, and for technical questions that is almost always the team. The conflict of objectives finally asks whether a balance between units is needed that only someone with authority over both can bring about.

A simple rule follows from the criteria. High reach with low reversibility sits with leadership, low reach with high reversibility with the team. The two mixed fields receive an intermediate level: with high reach and high reversibility the team decides after consulting the affected teams, with low reach and low reversibility the team decides and reports back to leadership.

**Checklist for a decision inventory**
- Collect the 15 most frequent decisions of the last three months, with date and decision maker.
- Classify each decision by reach and reversibility.
- Compare the actual delegation level with the intended one.
- Discuss deviations with team and leadership and record a target level.
- After eight weeks, check whether the target levels were kept.

## What do managers do when teams decide for themselves?

Managers clarify goals and remove obstacles. They also create the conditions under which teams decide well. A goal needs an indicator and a period so that a team can measure progress itself. In practice, obstacles are usually dependencies on other units, missing approvals or capacity conflicts, and all of these lie beyond what a team can solve. How escalations can be designed so that they speed up decisions is described in the article on [escalations in agile programmes](/en/blog/escalations-agile-programmes/).

Another task is neglected in many organisations: looking after the environment. Amy Edmondson's research on psychological safety in work teams shows that teams with high psychological safety discuss errors more openly and learn more from them. Managers set the example by responding to bad news with questions about causes and help. Teams that hold back problems give leadership a false picture, and decisions based on it lose quality.

The question of external support also belongs to leadership. Agile coaches can accompany teams and leadership, but their role needs clear limits and an end, as the article on [agile coaches](/en/blog/agile-coaches-help-or-dependency/) explains. The structure of the teams themselves, meaning how they are cut along the flow of work, is likewise a leadership decision, and [Team Topologies](/en/blog/team-topologies-organising-teams-for-flow/) supplies a vocabulary for it.

## Which relapses are typical?

The typical relapses are intervention in the sprint, status requests that bypass the team and goals set as deadlines. In an intervention, a manager adds tasks without agreement and undermines the commitment the team made to itself. With a status request, the manager asks individual developers for progress, bypasses the results of the Sprint Review and produces parallel reports. With a goal set as a deadline, a date is fixed before anyone knows the scope, and the team has to answer in daily work for a decision it did not make.

The counter-measure is an agreed channel. Leadership uses the Sprint Review and the backlog as sources of information, brings wishes in through the Product Owner and asks questions in the review. Escalation stays open for decisions that a team cannot resolve alone and follows a fixed route. The counterpart of intervention is withdrawal: leadership that falls silent after Scrum is introduced leaves teams alone with conflicts of objectives. A single rule avoids both: the manager decides only at the level that was agreed beforehand.

Related concepts that consider leadership without classical hierarchy appear in the article on the [Beta Codex](/en/blog/beta-codex-leadership-without-hierarchy/). It describes decision rights tied to responsibility for the result and can serve as a touchstone for how far delegation should go in your own company.

## The approach in four steps

A leadership organisation for agile teams can be introduced in four steps. In the first, leadership and teams gather the decisions of recent months and assign them to levels. In the second, leadership agrees a target level for each type of decision and records it visibly for everyone. In the third, it names a contact in leadership for each team who collects obstacles and answers within an agreed period. In the fourth, after eight weeks, it checks against the actual decisions whether the target levels hold, and adjusts them where a team can take on more responsibility or less.

## Agile leadership with Niehues Consulting

[Niehues Consulting](/en/) is a consultancy for AI management and organisation design from a delivery perspective, based in Düsseldorf. Founder Marin Niehues builds organisations that deliver, in projects from VC-funded scale-ups to DAX 40 corporations and in more than 20 countries on six continents. In the service area of delivery management and organisation design, clarifying roles and decision paths as well as interfaces is daily work, in the role of delivery manager, project manager or product owner.

The approach follows the Niehues Delivery Model with three phases. For the question of leadership, two of its test questions matter: Who decides, who delivers, who uses? Which roles and decision paths as well as interfaces does operations need? The entry point is a free 30-minute initial consultation, which you can arrange through the [contact form](/en/#kontakt). The scope and terms of an engagement are discussed in the free initial consultation.

**Conclusion**
Agile leadership means placing decisions at the level that has the knowledge and keeping the rest with leadership. Seven delegation levels and four criteria make the boundary visible. Managers clarify goals and remove obstacles. They look after the climate in which teams report problems, and they decide only at the level they agreed beforehand.

## Frequently asked questions

### Do agile teams still need managers?

Yes, because goals and budget envelope as well as staffing and conflicts of objectives between units cannot be decided inside a team. Managers make sure that teams work with a clear direction and a clear path. What changes is the style of leadership: it sets intent and boundaries and leaves the route to the team.

### Which decisions do managers make in agile teams?

Managers decide on direction, budget envelope, the staffing of roles and conflicts of objectives between units. Within that envelope the teams decide on order and solution as well as way of working. The assignment can be tested with the reach and reversibility of the decision.

### What is Delegation Poker?

Delegation Poker is a technique from Jurgen Appelo's Management 3.0 in which leadership and team agree on which of seven levels a decision is taken at. Both sides play a card face down and compare. Differences lead to a conversation before a conflict arises.

### How do you lead an agile team without micromanaging?

Lead through goals with an indicator and a period, use the Sprint Review as a source of information and bring wishes in through the Product Owner. Interventions in a running sprint stop, except in a real emergency. The team keeps its commitment, and leadership stays informed.

### What does a manager do in Scrum?

The Scrum Guide 2020 knows no manager role inside the team, but managers create the conditions for Scrum outside it. They set goals and budget envelopes, remove obstacles and staff the roles. In the organisation they decide on conflicts of objectives that the team cannot resolve.

### How long does the shift from traditional to agile leadership take?

The shift begins with the first decision inventory and becomes visible after about eight weeks in the actual delegation levels. It is complete when managers respond to bad news with questions and teams report problems early. The period follows the behaviour of the top level and cannot be shortened by a programme.

### How do you recognise micromanagement in an agile team?

Micromanagement shows in interventions in a running sprint, in status requests to individual developers and in deadlines set before the scope is clarified. Check at which delegation level the decision in question was agreed. If the actual level is lower, leadership is intervening too much.

### How many management layers does an agile organisation need?

An agile organisation needs as many layers as are required to settle conflicts of objectives and budget envelopes, usually fewer than a traditional line organisation. Each layer must make a decision that nobody below can make. Layers that only pass on reports can be identified in the decision inventory.