Leadership is an aspect that has evolved over time to accommodate the constantly changing working environments. Today’s leadership qualities of leadership involve not experience or expertise but the ability to balance various difficulties at the workplace. Agile leaders ensure that individuals and teams achieve peak performances and organizations have sufficient connections necessary to keep undertakings running smoothly. Several capabilities make impactful agile leaders in any given setting. Principal among them is connection, delivery and adoption. Agile leaders must appreciate the essence of creating connections for their firms. Thus, they are expected to foster meaningful collaborative environments that differentiate them from their peers. Also, agile leaders must exhibit the ability to deliver the desired outcomes for their firms. Effective agile leadership promotes high performance by teams within an organization who focuses on creating value for consumers and shareholders. This paper will elucidate the key concepts of agility that encourage appropriate handling of documentation needs, necessary factors of becoming an agile leader and the recommended approach of managing offshore resources as well as performance and quality measurement strategies.
Handling Documentation Needs Using Agile Concepts
Documentation is key among controversial facets insofar as agility goes. Confusion may exist depicting agile leadership as an approach that discourages documentation, while in actual sense, agility provides an entity with an approach that handles documentation in an entirely different and more effective way (Parker, Holesgrove & Pathak, 2015). Agile documentation entails three critical aspects: executable specifications, single-source information, stability and communication. First, in agile leadership, executable specifications are preferable to static specifications so that clean code models such as JavaDoc as well as C.I. and ATDD are employed instead of documents like Word and Excel. Second, agile leaders employ single-source information such as Web 2.0 solutions all through the company’s procedures and processes. Third, the approach promotes document stable concepts so that documentation lasts as long as possible in the life cycle. Lastly, while agile leadership recognizes documentation, it also regards it as the least appropriate means of communication.
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Necessary Success Factors for Becoming an Agile Leader
Organizations and scholars have made significant attempts to define crucial agile leadership success factors. While these characteristics vary among companies and scholarly studies, there exist several factors that seem to be common from all perspectives. Such factors are enshrined in the agile manifesto principles and include (but are not limited to) customer satisfaction, a supportive environment, delivery and face-to-face communication. Customer satisfaction entails the capability to deliver the desired quality and quantity to consumers on a timely basis. Also, agile leaders must prioritize customer needs by carrying out market research and strategizing on the approaches to employ to ensure optimal customer satisfaction at all times (Rigby, Sutherland & Takeuchi, 2016). Further, agility encompasses business environments that are highly receptive to change to cope with the dynamic corporate world. Agile leadership, moreover, promotes a learning environment for both employees and leaders. The management encourages personnel to learn from their mistakes so that all internal stakeholders can thrive in chaos.
Recommended Approach to Managing Offshore Resources
Offshore resources come into place when an organization is involved in activities that necessitate remote teams. Agile leaders must exhibit an exceptional capability to handle their juniors regardless of their physical locations. Organizations employ remote teams especially when there is the need to outsource labor. While the costs of acquiring the services of offshore workers may be significantly lower than local employees, affordability is not the only concern. A language barrier may pose a threat, hence the need to have employees who exhibit strong English skills. Also, managing all offshore workers may be challenging especially if the number revamps due to increased activities. This challenge can be mitigated by designating team leaders who are location-specific to oversee operations in their respective locales.
Performance and Quality Measurement Strategies
Agile leaders must ensure that they employ the most appropriate performance and quality measurement models. Key among them include statistical models, balanced scorecard and flowcharts. These approaches enable organizations to strike a balance between their goals and customer needs (Ng, 2017). Throughout such processes, leaders must define quality so that they can identify the process that needs significant efforts for improvement.
References
Ng, T. W. (2017). Transformational leadership and performance outcomes: Analyses of multiple mediation pathways. The Leadership Quarterly , 28 (3), 385-417.
Parker, D. W., Holesgrove, M., & Pathak, R. (2015). Improving productivity with self-organised teams and agile leadership. International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management , 64 (1), 112-128.
Rigby, D. K., Sutherland, J., & Takeuchi, H. (2016). Embracing agile. Harvard Business Review , 94 (5), 40-50.
