In a traditional environment, a technical team manager is responsible for prioritization, task distribution and progress control, among other non-technical responsibilities such as people management, new employees training and team representation to the rest of the organization.
As soon as a team becomes agile:
So, what’s left for the manager?
Besides the non-technical responsibilities mentioned above (people management, new employees training and team representation to the rest of the organization), there’s now room for other responsibilities:
There are cases where the manager assumes the role of Scrum Master, so she embraces 1. and 2. In other cases the manager assumes the role of PO, due to her strong business acumen, so she embraces 3.
It is not unusual to find a manager who decides to leave the organization, due to the fact that she is unable to find her place in the new agile organization.
However, as we could see, there are many responsibilities and new chalenges left to the manager. The key is to figure out where the manager fits better both in her perspective and in the organization’s perspective.