- Too many rules and regulations!
- Lack of transparency - what is known and what isn’t known.
- The project manager assigning tasks is not the Agile way. Team members should work together to decide who will do what task on the Backlog.
- Overlooking Values - agile practices use agile values. (4 values/12 principles)
- Creating predictions as truths. The PM Triad (Predictable) of Cost, Time, Scope doesn't work in Agile because an Agile protect isn’t predictable. Agile teams estimate and remain agile.
- Focusing on issues that are out of your control. Guide the team to work on things they can control/resolve. See Circles for exercise/tool.
- Minimizing Planning. Failing to plan (is planning to fail). See planning cadences in tools.
- You are avoiding Stakeholders. As the PM, you need to keep your stakeholders updated. If they don’t know about it, it’s not getting done.
- Lack of/avoiding feedback or giving crappy feedback (e.g., the feedback sandwich: this is what you do good, this is what you do back, this is what you do good). See feedback tools.
- Avoiding metrics or gaming them; people don’t want to be compared by nature. See metrics tools.
- Falling into a rut. Know several ways to run a retrospective (not just what went well, what didn’t, or what we want to change?). For an idea, see play money in tools.
- You are not focusing on hand-offs or dependencies. Be sure to work with the senior members of your team to discuss dependencies. Also, be sure to talk with those you’re going to hand off to; build those relationships.
- Waiting times. (having to do with the above ☝)
- Unclear priorities. The order of tasks should always be available/known to the team. See examples to deal with this in tools.
- Never finishing work. Agile teams always finish current work before starting new work. Finished work, even one, is always going to be more valuable than lots of started work. Start finishing, and stop staring.
- Overloading your team is a significant mistake. It can lead to errors. Are they working nights or weekends? Are they able to take a vacation or go to medical appointments?
Many of these items are from a great Agile Coach, Michael de la Maza, Ph.D.