What Kind of Responsibilities Does a Development Manager Have?

There are a number of variations that organizations can set up when thinking about the role of the Development Manager. The absolute basics are related to the development of people and their role in the success of teams:

Develop a “skills” runway based on upcoming work

Up-skill people based on upcoming work

If unable to up-skill, then work a recruiting plan (hire, contract)

Based on overall strategic staffing model

Develop succession plan to ensure continuity of value delivery

Work issues as a result of corporate initiatives (eg transfer work from one site to another, improve reporting structure, etc)

Help people develop their career

Help people develop their skills

Mentor people (both directly toward the role, and indirectly with regard to life)

Help the organization attract and retain valuable people

Help organization develop high performance teams

Work with HR to establish fair, open, and simple (from the employee’s perspective) policies

Help identify opportunities for people in the organization to increase their contribution

Evaluate performance of the individual, helping to identify and work items that contribute to participation in a high performing team (per organizational mandates)

Serve as an agile coach and advisor to teams

Provide enough space for teams and people to learn

Development Manager needs to treat her people like they are “volunteers” where the driving assumption is that if we don’t create the right environment for them, they will leave. For knowledge workers if they are not happy, this will happen mentally if not physically. In many ways the attitude we are looking for a Development Manager is we want her to see her people as a “volunteer army”. We need to treat our people as if the only reason they are working for us is because they volunteer their services. This helps create the right atmosphere.

The Development Manager should also work to make the Program(s) successful:

Help establish environment of sustainability.

Help ensure the environment is “safe” for people to bring up problems.

Help ensure transparency is maximized.

Help ensure economic decision making, decentralized decisions, etc are part of the program environment.

Help establish environment where people focus on problems and don’t try to blame people for problems (“facts are friendly”, empirical approach).

Assist in preparation for PI Planning event (eg message, themes) and the IP iteration (eg Training, hack-a-thon).

Participate in various Program ceremonies such as the retrospective (I&A), planning (PI Planning), demonstrations (team and system demos), etc to identify impediments and opportunities for improvement.

Help the people of the train to establish relationships with customers, stakeholders, and suppliers.

Assist in working people related program and team impediments.

Participate in Value Steam Mapping to help identify and work skills issues.

Help establish core values and principles (eg quality, shift left, etc).

Work with and support Communities of Practices to ensure discipline specific improvements of you people.