Elastic Leadership: Growing self-organizing teams First Edition

Can use a refresh to adapt to the remote/hybrid workplace.

‘Elastic Leadership’ is an effective primer for new software team leaders, particularly developers stepping into management roles for the first time.This isn’t a book about idealized Agile teams: game-playing, velocity-increasing, plenty-of-time-to-philosophize-about-the-whole-thing unicorns who fill the pages of soft-cover trade-sized textbooks – and whom I’ve yet to encounter first hand in all my years in the field.On the contrary: What I really like about ‘Elastic Leadership’ is Osherove is upfront about two things:1) He suspects (and I agree) the overwhelming number of teams out there are struggling in what he calls Survival Mode: no time for education or tackling increasing technical debt, power politics, functional burnout, lack of cohesion, knowledge silos, cliques, turnover – all very familiar to me.2) The ‘self-organized’ teams Osherove envisions are for most of us far more a worthwhile goal than a common reality.Osherove is also not afraid to describe dead-end scenarios where the best move is simply to leave and find a better position elsewhere.‘Elastic Leadership’ is very conversational in tone – it’s actually borderline artless - but Osherove sounds like he’s worked in places I’ve worked and his observations ring true to my experience.The key takeaways for me are the descriptions and applications of three styles of leadership – Challenging, Command-and-Control, and Facilitating – and the idea that none is ‘one-size-fits-all’: an effective leader should understand when each approach is appropriate (and when it’s not) and how to combine and transition effectively between them.Without getting overly psychoanalytical, Osherove makes salient points about survival-mode being self-fulfilling, particularly for those who thrive on seat-of-the-pants drama and derive satisfaction from playing the hero.Putting out fires becomes a convenient way of avoiding adhering to longer-term methodical processes – it’s a short-term rush and I see it all around me on the team I lead as well as those I interact with.The ‘notebook’ experiences of industry practitioners that make up the entire last third of ‘Elastic Leadership’ are in many ways more insightful, from-the-trenches, applications of the abstract ideas presented by Osherove in the main text. Averaging a couple of pages each, followed by the author’s take, they cover from code reviews, best practices, problem-solving, leadership – a real smorgasbord sure to pique the interest of anyone in a software leadership role.One criticism I’d offer is what I call The Reality-That’s Less-Spoken-Of: Software teams where some members are employees while others are contractors simply do not function the same as homogenous teams of either type – and the reasons are clear to anyone familiar with such a context. To deny it helps no one.Fortunately the ‘manifesto’ Osherove touts is minimal and not excessively harped upon. There’s an awful lot of me-too-ism in Agile Land and the biggest challenge for readers can be checking your cynicism at the door.Bottom Line: ‘Elastic Leadership’ is full of from-the-team-room experience and tips that often had me nodding, ‘that sounds a lot like my place’. Frankly I wish Osherove sat in my area so I could pick his brain more.I’d go so far to say, if you aren’t intrigued enough to read – and to apply - some of these ideas, you probably need to slow down and be more reflective of what you and your team are doing because it’s likely not optimal.

While reading the book I had mixed feelings while some parts are brilliant and worth reading, some appeared to me far from ideal. The main idea of book that development is done is three phases thus modes:1. survival mode2. learning mode3. self-organizing modeSurvival is when project is somehow endangered, needs strict control. The learning mode is something between former and the next. It is phase when there is some space for learning and making less or more controlled mistakes. The third one when team is able to work on itself without strict control, everyone knows what to do, making decisions doesn't require to control by TL, who become facilitator otherwise who would become bottleneck at that stage. Every phase requires different approach for TL. Book also describes how PM can help to develop team and hence project. It is stressed widely that good, motivated people create a good team which in turn produce brilliant projects.Other notion which is widely described is so called bus factor. This is a person, for e.g. TL or other person who became knowledge silo to be so crucial that in case of losing such person, project is dead, or at least in big trouble. The best thing is to avoid such situations.A good leader will challenge the team and the people around them to solve their own problems, instead of solving everyone’s problems for them.Roy also writes a lot about true leadership requires to grow people, and this in turn requires to push them from their comfort zones. That learning could be just part of normal sprint, summary of it part of retrospective meetings. The product will be as good as your team is. So team is worth of paying attention.He also doubts in effectiveness or even counter productivity of traditional appraisal, when the former is rather focused on personal performance and results not results as team.Last part of book consists from short excerpts from well known people in industry which describes one of facet of leading people, growing teams and so on. All are chosen by author and then shortly commented.Author provides a lot of wisdom and hints for e.g. how to provide really valuable feedback. Not just getting at someone.However I as reader can find a lot of nuggets in the book, all in all it could be better written. For me a lot of knowledge is spread over the pages, book could be shorter more concise, concrete. Or maybe divided in other way into chapters.All in all recommended.

It is short book that is a good start for team leaders coming from technical world (like developers, architects) and allows to change the gear from technical into organizational thinking or at least realize the big difference between technical thinking and organizational thinking.

Awesome book!! When you are transitioning into a leadership role.