Technical knowledge for Agile leaders.
How important is it for an executive or agile leader to have technical knowledge about the work that the teams are doing?
If you work in a domain where people could die or there could be serious consequences in the event of a failure, you need to be aware of the technical risk. You need to have deep domain knowledge and expertise.
In this kind of a domain, you may have great skills but if you don’t understand the technical risks upon which your decisions are based on, it could be a rough ride for the organization.
Whilst the consequences of not having deep technical expertise in your domain may not be so severe, there are risks associated with a lack of technical knowledge and expertise in an agile environment.
Agile environments
So, my recommendation is that you need to discover more and acquire as much knowledge of agile environments as you can if you want to succeed.
Whilst you don’t need to be an expert in the technical domain you serve, within an agile organization, it isn’t too late for you to acquire as much knowledge and expertise in the technical elements of the organization.
You don’t need to be knee deep in the nitty and gritty of it all, but you need to understand what your teams are talking about so that you can have sensible, productive conversations around the opportunities and risks in the environment.
If we look to brands such as Tesla and Microsoft, the entrepreneurial product owner such as Bill Gates or Elon Musk tend to be the best kind of product owner that there is.
Their understanding of the environment and deep technical knowledge in the domain provides them with a competitive advantage over other organizations and allows them to actively engage engineers and experts throughout the organization in a valuable and productive way.
If you have people with deep financial skills and expertise, that is also incredibly valuable.
They help guide the financial path of the product development, in conjunction with the technical lead guiding the technical evolution of the product, to produce great results in the market.
As an executive, you have already mastered the business domain.
You certainly will have very strong financial skills and capabilities that support your mastery of the business domain, but you do need to invest time and effort in mastering the technical domain.
Again, you don’t need to be the lead developer on a product. You simply need to acquire the technical knowledge and skills necessary to effectively lead an agile team or team of teams.
How do you acquire that knowledge and skill?
In my opinion and experience, an executive taking time out to meet the teams and show their vulnerabilities in the technical domain goes a very long way to building rapport and establishing trust.
Ask questions.
Learn from your people and allow them to educate you on the technical risks and challenges they face and how their decision-making is impacted by the technical constraints of the environment.
Allow yourself to be a novice in this space and slowly grow your technical skills, knowledge, and capabilities in the context of the organization and customers you serve.
You may well be pleasantly surprised by what you discover and learn.
About John Coleman
John Coleman has deep experience and expertise working with executives, #leadership teams and product development teams to achieve increased #businessagility and create environments where creativity and collaboration produce high-performance teams.
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