In the previous chapter, we learned the perspective behind the Agile way of work in dtac and how we slowly transformed our organization for Agile. In this chapter, we will focus on responsibilities of each agile role and their career paths.
Ranks don’t matter, everyone in a team is equal.
Traditional way of work requires far too many ranks, positions and hierarchy, whether it is manager, supervisors or heads of department. On the other hand, Agile aims to do the opposite by reducing those roles to flatten the organizational chart. By doing this, Agile aims to fuel organization to move faster and decease the level of decision.
This leads to Agile way of work having only 5 main roles : Product Owner, Scrum Master, Agile Coach, Chapter Lead and Tribe Lead. Nevertheless these five roles are still considered a trivial part to the Agile structure as it mainly focuses on team members and in Agile way, their teams are comprised of experts from various fields come to work together.
Chokchai Phataramalai, Agile coach of dtac, claims that in Agile, no one is superior to others in term of roles and positions. Everyone in Agile is responsible for their tasks and deliver the progress to the group of executives called “C-level of dtac”. Therefore, whether they are untitled agile members or the aforementioned 5 positions, everyone in Agile is equal.
5 roles in Agile way of work
- Product Owner is responsible for prioritizing procedure of products or services in Agile team to ensure the efficiency.
- Scrum Master is responsible for educating team members about Agile way of work and try to keep up with the team so they can learn and grow strong together.
Agile Coach does not normally deal with team members but work directly with Product Owner and Scrum Master. Their responsibilities are educating and communicating with organization about Agile to facilitate the best atmosphere of work.
- Chapter Lead is giving a guidance to the team members who have the same responsibilities in each team just like Business Analyst because they normally do not have a chance to talk to each other.
- Tribe lead is the one who keep communicating with the executives in order to deliver information to team members. Tribe Lead also contributes goal for each team.
“The heart of Agile is that all members are equal which is drastically different from the traditional way of work which cater too many ranks and positions. Think of yourself as a decent senior, once you are doing good as a senior, Next step is you will be promoted as a manager. Unfortunately, you are not really good at administration and cannot fulfil role as manager. The result is the organization will lose great senior but gain a new disqualified manager.” Chokchai Phataramalai
If we want to visualize the Agile way of work, it could be compared to cell. The executive level will sit at the center as nucleus while Agile teams surround. These teams will be connected to the executive level by Tribe Lead while they are more exposed to the customers. Agile way of work reduces any processes and increase efficiency in working with customers.
Shine by yourself with increasing income
“I would define Agile’s career path as organic. People in Agile team receive fair share of salary. Working in agile, you can continue being a senior, get to work in the thing you love and receive continually higher salary, no ranks are concerned. Some of the organizations are starting to let their agile members name their ownpositions which signify the decrease of ranks’ importance. ”
To put it easier, the career path in the traditional way of work is like climbing a ladder. You have to keep climbing and climbing while agile, their career path can be compared to playing a chess because every roles are equally significant and they share the same goal to bring success to organization.
Dtac is now opening for interested teams to have a pilot in agile. Those teams will join Agile Newbies Package to learn the basic proponent of agile before going full package.
