Predicting Leadership Success in Agile Environments: An Inquiring Systems Approach
Nancy A. Bonner · Academy of Information and Management Sciences journal · 2010
ABSTRACT In recent years a host of new software development have been introduced. These emphasize people over process, software over documentation, customer collaboration over contract negotiation and responding to change over following a plan. While there is still much debate over the effectiveness of these new methods, there is general agreement that they are quite different from the traditional process oriented approaches. One major implication of these differences is the need for a less rigid and formal approach to project management. Because of Agile's focus on people and collaboration combined with the need to embrace change, leadership requirements are vastly different than those using traditional process oriented approaches to software development. Personality characteristics of successful managers may contrast sharply with those of more traditional project managers. In this environment a leader's personality profile and way of interacting with others is at least as important as their intellectual ability and hard project management skills. In current management literature, the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) has been cited extensively as an aid in leadership development and identification of individuals most likely to be successful leaders (Fitzgerald & Kirby, 1997; Gardner & Martinko, 1996). This paper will discuss the MBTI approach as it has been applied in the literature. As we will see, while a good tool for assessing dimensions related to an individual's view and perceptions of the world, there is also a need for an evaluative approach that emphasizes an individual's mode of interacting in a team environment. In this paper, such an approach is proposed, an inquiring systems perspective, based on Churchman's five modes of inquiry. The MBTI will be compared to this inquiring systems approach within the context of leadership requirements. This analysis suggests that the inquiring systems perspective provides a more effective tool for assessing an individual's propensity for success in an software development environment. INTRODUCTION Throughout the last 40 years software development projects have continued to be over budget, overdue and lacking in both level of quality and desired functionality (McDonald, 2001). Various potential reasons have been cited for this lack of success, but there is one point of agreement. Something definitely appears to be broken in the software development process indicating that there may be a better way to engineer software. Some believe the answer lies in the host of new agile methodologies that have arrived on the scene in recent years. These emphasize people over process, software over documentation, customer collaboration over contract negotiation and responding to change over following a plan. While there is still much debate over the effectiveness of these new methods, there is general agreement that they are quite different from the traditional process oriented approaches. For example, in an environment, the overall project is not planned up front, but in small iterations and developers are self-organizing in that the teams determine the best way to handle the work. (Boehm & Turner, 2004). One major implication of these differences is the need for a less rigid and formal approach to project management. A very rigid and controlling type of manager, with a successful track record managing process driven software projects, may not be the right candidate to manage an project. Many studies have attempted to map personality styles/cognitive styles to analysts and programmers. Very few, if any, have examined characteristics of leaders in software development teams. The phenomenon (with its emphasis on self organizing teams, interchangeable roles, managers as facilitator/orchestrator rather than as controller) makes such an endeavor all the more important. …