Virginia Commonwealth Agency Agile Conference (CAAC #15)

Commonwealth Agency Agile Conference · CAAC 15

Yes, It Really Works That Way: Self-Managing Teams as the Foundation of Agility

Volunteer planning team

Full recording, 2 hr 31 min. Watch on the VSP YouTube channel ↗

1. Welcome and audience polls 0:00:03

   Stephen Manley (Virginia State Police)

   It's Pi Day, so the morning opens with a pie chart. Then the real polls: close to 40 percent of attendees work at agencies that have been doing agile for about a year or less, and about two-thirds call self-managing teams a great idea.

2. Demystifying Self-Managing Teams 0:12:14

   Todd Kamens (Virginia DMV), Ariyo Ojagbamila (Virginia DMV)

   Two DMV agile coaches define a self-managing team, compare it with a traditional hierarchy, and work through the benefits, the common myths and the pitfalls, then take questions about roles, accountability and struggling team members.

   • A self-managing team works toward a common goal with minimal direct supervision, deciding its own tasks, roles and processes.
   • The traits of a self-managing team line up with the Scrum values of commitment, focus, openness, respect and courage.
   • Set the boundaries first: agree which decisions are the team's and which are not, and write them into a team working agreement.
   • Leaders shift from directing to guiding: say where to go, step back, remove obstacles, and show by their actions that they trust the team.
   • Accountability is collective. When someone struggles, pair them with a more experienced teammate instead of blaming them.
   • Even the speakers differed on where the line sits. One described leaders steering legislative work to senior developers; the host expects teams to bring new developers up to speed themselves.

   In the Scrum Guide: The Scrum Team · Scrum Values · Developers

3. What Do I Do Now? Supervising Self-Managing Teams 1:20:28

   Tim Roesch (Virginia Department of Education)

   Tim turns to the people above the team: what line managers and supervisors do once the team manages itself, with examples from his coaching and from Spotify, a Navy submarine and Netflix.

   • Leaders move from command and control to coaching, mentoring and facilitating, and from giving orders to removing roadblocks.
   • A manager still running the team day to day undermines it. In one case the fix was a different role for the manager, as an architect.
   • Judge teams by outcomes such as customer and employee satisfaction, not hours or velocity. Never compare velocity between teams; whatever you measure, people learn to game.
   • Leaders should be learning too: ask what they are reading about the change their teams are going through.
   • A supervisor coaches individuals, reminds the team of its boundaries, and encourages experiments and retrospectives without sitting in on them.

4. Conference retrospective 2:10:35

   Andre Karpov guest

   Attendees post what went well, what didn't and what to improve on a shared board.

   • Requests: longer breaks, more breakout discussions, and an in-person or hybrid conference. The planning team's past polling says most attendees prefer to stay remote.

About these pages: curated and reviewed by Michael Vizdos, on the volunteer CAAC planning team since CAAC 4 and a speaker at CAAC 5, 10, 11, 17 and 18. Summaries and takeaways are drafted with AI (Claude) from the recording's captions and reviewed by Michael Vizdos before publishing (how I use AI). This is not the official conference site; the Virginia State Police hosts CAAC (vsp.virginia.gov/caac). Last reviewed October 20, 2026.

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