12 Agile Principles — #5 of 12

“Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.”

The next principle emphasizes the importance of properly motivated individuals on a project. Too often in the past, some project managers have used high-pressure, command-and-control tactics to pressure project teams into delivering results faster. Many of us have been involved in “death march” projects in our careers where people are given an absolute deadline for getting something done, and have to work nights and weekends if necessary to get it done. When you’re in an environment that requires high levels of creativity and innovation, that approach just doesn’t work very well.

The philosophy of agile is based on a high level of empowerment and individual initiative by the people on the project. Instead of being told speciﬁcally what to do and being pressured into doing it to meet deadlines, agile teams are given general direction and are expected to ﬁgure out how to get it done most effectively and efﬁciently themselves. Making that kind of approach work requires a people-oriented leadership style. However, it doesn’t mean that there is no need for leadership whatsoever.

An agile project manager needs to adapt his or her leadership style to ﬁt the situation and that will typically depend on several factors including the nature of the project and the level of maturity and experience of the team.