tech·nic·al·ly agile class·i·fic·at·ion

Technical Leadership

Empowering teams through expert guidance and best practices for effective software development and delivery.

Guiding development teams with technical expertise and agile best practices.

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https://nkdagility.com/resources/technical-leadership/

Overview

Technical leadership is the practice of guiding development teams through the application of technical expertise and agile best practices. It plays a crucial role in fostering an environment where teams can deliver value predictably and sustainably. By providing direction and support, technical leaders help teams navigate complex challenges, ensuring that technical decisions align with organisational goals and customer needs.

This concept emphasises the importance of long-term thinking and systemic approaches, enabling teams to build robust solutions that are adaptable to change. Technical leaders cultivate a culture of continuous improvement, encouraging experimentation and learning, which are essential for innovation. They also facilitate collaboration across disciplines, breaking down silos and promoting shared ownership of outcomes.

Unlike Agile leadership, which focuses on team dynamics and facilitation, technical leadership centres on the technical acumen required to make informed decisions about architecture, design, and implementation. It is not merely about managing tasks but about empowering teams to excel in their craft, fostering an environment where technical excellence is pursued relentlessly. This commitment to quality and sustainability ultimately enhances the organisation’s ability to respond to market demands and customer feedback, driving long-term success and resilience in a rapidly evolving landscape.

Learn More about Technical Leadership

Blog

Great Scrum Masters Need Technical, Business, and Organisational Mastery

Scrum Masters are most effective when they combine leadership skills with technical, business, and organisational mastery to support teams, Product Owners, and change.
Blog

There Is No Such Thing as a "Junior" Scrum Master

Argues that the Scrum Master role requires proven mastery and real-world experience, not entry-level skills or certifications, and should be earned within the team, not assigned.
Blog

The Scrum Master is accountable for Delivery

Explains how the Scrum Master is accountable for enabling effective product delivery, fostering team success, and ensuring each sprint produces a usable, valuable increment.
Videos

Cultivating a Culture of Engineering Excellence: The Essential Role of Technical Leadership

Explores how technical leadership shapes a culture of engineering excellence through clear standards, continuous learning, collaboration, and ongoing improvement in organisations.
Blog

Balance of Leadership and Control in Scrum

Explores how Scrum Masters and Product Owners balance leadership, authority, and team autonomy to ensure accountability, effective self-management, and organisational alignment.
Videos

Hiring an Agile Coach: What You Need to Know

Learn what to look for when hiring an Agile coach, including key qualities like teaching, mentoring, and inspiring teams to adopt Agile practices and drive transformation.
Videos

What are the top 3 things a Scrum Master needs to bear in mind when adopting the coaching stance?

Summarises the top considerations for Scrum Masters adopting a coaching stance: building trust, understanding team context, and leading through influence, not authority.
Blog

The Role of Agency in Scrum: Why Self-Management Without Agency is a Lie

Explains why true Scrum requires real team agency, not just self-management in name, and how lacking agency leads to ineffective, ritualistic Agile practices.
Blog

Why Most Scrum Masters Are Failing and What They Should Know

Many Scrum Masters lack core Scrum knowledge and technical skills, leading to poor team support. Learn key competencies needed for effective, measurable impact.
Blog

You are doing Scrum but the Scrum Master tells the team what to do!

Discover why a Scrum Master shouldn’t dictate tasks to the team. Empower self-organization and enhance accountability for better project outcomes.
Videos

Why is Satya Nadella a better example of agile leadership than Steve Jobs?

Compares Satya Nadella’s and Steve Jobs’s leadership, highlighting Nadella’s agile approach that fosters innovation, decentralised decision-making, and lasting organisational change.
Videos

Hiring an Agile Coach: What to Look For in Both Technical and Leadership Engagement

Learn what qualities to seek in an Agile coach, including technical expertise, business acumen, and the ability to engage both technical teams and leadership for effective transformation.
Videos

Redefining the Scrum Master: From Boss to Empowering Facilitator

Explains how effective Scrum Masters empower teams through facilitation, support, and coaching, moving away from authority and micromanagement to foster self-organisation.
Videos

Is a Scrum Master an Agile micromanager?

Explains why a Scrum Master should facilitate and empower agile teams, not micromanage, highlighting the importance of trust, autonomy, and effective team dynamics.
Blog

Hiring a Professional Scrum Master

Covers key responsibilities, skills, and requirements for hiring a Scrum Master, including leadership, coaching, facilitation, and fostering effective Scrum teams.
Videos

Unlocking Agile Leadership: Transform Your Skills with Scrum.org's Essentials Workshop

Learn practical agile leadership skills, foster team alignment, and drive cultural change with Scrum.org’s workshop to support agile transformation and organisational success.
Videos

Navigating Agile Transformation: Empowering Teams for Success in a Rapidly Changing Landscape

Explores effective Agile transformation by empowering teams, improving collaboration, focusing on value delivery, and fostering continuous improvement in fast-changing environments.
Videos

Mastering Site Reliability: Insights from Azure DevOps on Building a Resilient Live Site Culture

Explore proven strategies from Azure DevOps for building resilient, reliable software systems—covering transparency, automation, telemetry, incident response, and team culture.
Videos

Free Workshop 04: Introduction to Sprint Reviews [Review & Retrospective]

Covers key concepts of Sprint Reviews, interactive workshop delivery using Teams and Mural, technical challenges faced, participant feedback, and retrospective insights.
Blog

Create your own path to Organisational Agility

Learn how to achieve organisational agility by tailoring change to your unique context, building a guiding coalition, and engaging all stakeholders in continuous improvement.
Videos

Empowering Teams to Maximize Value and Return on Investment

Explores how empowering Agile teams to adapt their processes boosts flexibility, continuous improvement, collaboration, and maximises value and return on investment.
Course

Professional Agile Leadership - Evidence-Based Management (PAL-EBM)

Scrum.org created the Evidence-Based Management™ (EBM) framework which is an Agile approach to help leaders guide their teams toward continuously improving customer outcomes, organizational capabilities, and business results. EBM focuses on customer value and intentional experimentation to systematically improve an organization’s performance and achieve its strategic goals.
Course

Professional Scrum Master

Our Professional Scrum Master Training Program features PSM Training from Scrum.org, delivered as an Immersive Learning Experience. It combines live, instructor-led sessions with additional offline exercises, covering the principles of the Scrum framework and the Scrum Master role. This multi-week format integrates real-world applications, encouraging continuous improvement through practical assignments.
Videos

Why the Concept of a "Junior Scrum Master" is a Misguided Myth

Explains why the Scrum Master role requires experience and competence, debunking the myth of a “junior” Scrum Master and highlighting the need for proven skills in Agile teams.
Course

Professional Scrum Master Advanced (PSM-A) with Certification

Professional Scrum MasterTM II (PSM II) course is a 14h advanced Scrum Master class designed to support Scrum Masters in their professional development. The PSM II course is intended for Scrum Masters with at least one year of experience who are looking to grow their knowledge and abilities as a Scrum Master. This course is one step in that journey.
Course

Professional Agile Leadership Essentials (PAL-e) with Certification

Professional Agile Leadership (PAL) Essentials is a 14h workshop, delivered over four half-days that provides a foundation of the role that leaders play in creating the conditions for a successful agile transformation.
Videos

Building a culture of Quality

Explores how fostering a culture of quality and engineering excellence across teams leads to better, safer products, highlighting the impact of leadership and shared values.
Videos

The Power of Technical Excellence in Agile Development

Explores how technical excellence in Agile development reduces risk, prevents technical debt, and boosts product quality and delivery speed through strong engineering standards.
Videos

Transforming Chaos into Clarity: How Optimising Systems Fuels Engineering Excellence

Explores how optimising systems, reducing technical debt, and strong leadership improve engineering quality, productivity, and innovation while minimising chaos.
Videos

Transforming Engineering Excellence: The Power of Naked Agility in Quality and Leadership

Explores how adopting naked agility boosts engineering excellence, quality, and leadership by addressing technical debt, shifting left, and fostering a culture of improvement.
Videos

Cultivating a Culture of Quality: Lessons from Boeing and Volkswagen for Engineering Excellence

Explores how fostering a culture of quality and engineering excellence prevents failures, using Boeing and Volkswagen as examples, and highlights the impact on software development.
Videos

The Crucible of Learning: Transforming Organizational Effectiveness Through DevOps

Explores how DevOps transformation, refactoring, and ownership reduce technical debt, streamline development, and boost efficiency, team satisfaction, and business value.
Videos

Navigating the Unpredictability of Software Development: Embrace Agile for Success

Explores how Agile principles, technical leadership, and engineering excellence help teams manage unpredictability, adapt to change, and deliver quality software projects.
Videos

If a client hasn't considered DevOps consulting as part of their Agile Consulting needs, why should they?

DevOps consulting enhances Agile by improving collaboration, accelerating delivery, and ensuring quality, making software development more efficient and resilient.
Videos

The Crucial Role of Competence: How Knowledgeable Scrum Masters Drive Team Success

Scrum Masters with deep knowledge and competence enable teams to deliver better products, drive business outcomes, and foster real improvement in software development.
Videos

Where Agile Went Wrong: Understanding the Competence Crisis

Explores how early assumptions about competence led to Agile’s current skills gap, highlighting the need for continuous learning, better hiring, and deeper expertise in teams.
Tags

Evidence Based Management

Evidence-Based Management (EBM) is a strategy for improving an organisation’s ability to deliver value by making decisions based on evidence, not opinion. It enables data-informed investment in agility, innovation, and outcomes rather than output.
Blog

Are technical skills required to be a Scrum Master?

Technical skills are not required to be a Scrum Master, but understanding technical, business, and organisational contexts helps Scrum Masters better support their teams.
Videos

Transform Your Scrum Team in 90 Days: Strategies for Continuous Delivery and Empowerment

Learn practical steps to help Scrum teams achieve continuous delivery, clarify business value, integrate feedback, and build empowerment within 90 days for lasting agility.
Videos

Focusing Beyond "Agile": Building True Capability in Organizations

Explores why building organisational capability, competence, and continuous learning is more effective than focusing solely on Agile roles, frameworks, or labels.
Blog

There is no "do agile" there is only "be agile"

Discover why true agility is about being, not just doing. Embrace deep organizational change for lasting value in your agile journey. Learn more!
Videos

What is the hardest part of working with a brand-new scrum team?

The biggest challenge with new scrum teams is overcoming misconceptions about scrum and shifting focus from process mechanics to core agile principles and empirical learning.
Blog

Evolution not Transformation: This is the Inevitability of change

Change in organisations is a continuous, evolutionary process driven by experimentation and adaptation, not a one-time transformation or fixed end state.
Videos

Empowering Your Team: Why Quick Fixes in Agile and DevOps Are a Myth

Explains why lasting Agile and DevOps success requires empowering teams and building internal capability, not relying on quick fixes or external consultants for solutions.
Videos

Agile Leadership: Empowering Managers with the Right Skills

Explores how agile leadership and evidence-based management training help managers develop servant leadership skills, delegate effectively, and make data-driven decisions.
Videos

Mastering Scrum: Essential Insights for New Teams from a Scrum Master's Journey

Guidance for new Scrum teams on building strong foundations, embracing empiricism, Scrum values, continuous learning, and the Scrum Master’s role in fostering team growth.
Videos

Understanding the True Role of a Scrum Master

Explains the true responsibilities of a Scrum Master, how to maximise team effectiveness, teach Scrum principles, and address organisational challenges for better outcomes.
Videos

How Immersive Learning Transforms Aspiring Agile Leaders

Immersive learning helps aspiring agile leaders overcome cultural barriers by providing time, practical experiments, and peer feedback to drive real organisational change.
Videos

Why Every Scrum Master Needs an Immersive Training Experience

Immersive training helps experienced Scrum Masters deepen practical skills, boost team effectiveness, and develop leadership through hands-on, real-world learning.
Videos

How to Be an Effective Agile Coach: Agnosticism in Practice

Learn how Agile coaches can empower teams by staying framework-agnostic, focusing on core principles, and enabling teams to choose and adapt practices for their needs.
Videos

Navigating Team Conflict: From Healthy Disagreement to Agile Harmony

Explores recognising and managing team conflict in Agile, outlining stages from healthy disagreement to destructive “war” and offering practical de-escalation strategies.
Videos

7 harbingers of the Agile apocalypse- War

Explores how unmanaged conflict in agile teams can escalate from healthy debate to destructive division, and offers strategies for resolving disputes and fostering collaboration.
Videos

Why the Scrum Master’s True Power Lies in Influence, Not Authority

Explains why a Scrum Master leads through influence, not authority, focusing on building trust, fostering team effectiveness, and supporting agile collaboration.
Videos

How does a Scrum Master or Agile coach motivate a Scrum Team?

Explains how Scrum Masters and Agile coaches boost team motivation by setting clear goals, fostering engagement, recognising achievements, and promoting continuous improvement.
Videos

Why do you trust Joanna to deliver Scrum.Org classes for NKD Agility?

Discover how Joanna’s technical expertise, clear teaching, and real-world Agile experience make her Scrum.Org classes at NKD Agility essential for mastering Scrum and Agile.
Videos

Unlocking the Power of Sprint Planning: Transform Your Agile Approach for Success

Learn how effective Sprint planning boosts Agile team performance, with practical workshops, coaching, feedback, and adaptable methods for continuous improvement.
Videos

Unlocking Team Potential: The Essential Role of a Scrum Master in Agile Success

Explains how a Scrum Master empowers Agile teams by bridging business, technical, and organisational needs to boost effectiveness, collaboration, and delivery outcomes.
Videos

Redefining the Scrum Master: From Misconceptions to Empowering Leadership

Explores common misconceptions about the Scrum Master role, highlighting the shift from tool admin to empowering leader who fosters team autonomy, growth, and self-organisation.
Videos

Is a scrum master an agile micromanager?

A Scrum Master empowers teams by facilitating, mentoring, and supporting—not micromanaging—fostering trust, collaboration, and continuous improvement in Agile environments.
Blog

How do you handle conflict in a Scrum Team?

Guidance on resolving conflict in Scrum Teams, including facilitation techniques, escalation steps, and the Scrum Master’s role in fostering healthy team dynamics.
Videos

Transforming Scrum Training: How Real-World Insights Empower Agile Teams at Great Calm

Explores how practical, real-world Scrum training at Great Calm improved team collaboration, alignment, and continuous improvement across the organisation.
Tags

Shift Left Strategy

A Shift-Left Strategy brings testing, security, and compliance earlier in development, reducing defects, accelerating feedback, and improving quality for faster, more reliable delivery.
Tags

Definition of Ready

Ensuring backlog items meet a clear, actionable standard before sprint planning.
Tags

Continuous Improvement

Continuous Improvement is the ongoing practice of relentless reflection and adaptation, driven by empirical evidence, aimed at consistently enhancing processes, products, and team effectiveness. It embodies a commitment to incremental and measurable advancements, fostering a culture of proactive experimentation, rapid feedback, and learning to achieve sustainable and strategic business agility.
Tags

Agile Product Operating Model

Transform your organisation with the Agile Product Operating Model, blending agile practices and product management to deliver consistent, customer-focused value.

Connect with Martin Hinshelwood

If you've made it this far, it's worth connecting with our principal consultant and coach, Martin Hinshelwood, for a 30-minute 'ask me anything' call.

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