The delegation is a leadership tool, you already know Delegation Board?

What is Delegation Board?

"Delegate is not the same as assigning tasks"

The Delegation Board is a tool created by Jurgen Appelo. It was described for the first time in his book, Management 3.0. The idea is very simple. Draw a matrix and place the decision areas in rows and delegation levels in columns and you're done.

And with the delegation poker there are more possibilities and the team is encouraged to discuss with the Project Manager / Delegator and to think about their roles and responsibilities.

What is it useful for?

To explain its usefulness I'll do it with an example.

A Project Manager tells a worker Pedro: "please, call provider X and put it on the phone."

Or if I say: "Pedro, please call the supplier X and arrange with him the details of the final contracting for services, that he communicates the payment terms and under what payment modality will be established. Activates from that all the management of procurement and logistics; is it okay? Is there any of this that you cannot do? If you have any questions, just ask me. “The difference is evident, one is simply to tell the other to do his job and the other is substantially different in telling him to take care of mine. Pedro has to call the supplier because it is his job, but he is not obliged to manage the procurement and logistics because that is the responsibility of the manager.

Not having this difference clearly, many managers make deplorable use of the delegation.

You will notice the utility in any situation where responsibility is delegated or transmitted.

The delegation opens possibilities of development and talent of the people.  

How did I experiment? 

As a member of the team, we use the delegate board to manage the internal activities of the company to promote transparency and self-organization of the work teams.

Example: New workshop to the Venezuelan market.

Project Name: Agile Education

Once the 7 levels of delegation are understood, as a team, we identify the delegate and the established rules

Example:

Delegate: Project leader (Noelia)

Delegates: Professor, Commercial Director, Programmer, Designer)

We write the Delegates (Roles) identified on the board.

• We apply several games to brainstorm on the different tasks necessary to take into account (examples: Competency design, Content writing, slides design, web page design, School search for the first experiment, Simulation 1, Simulation 2, Purchase of Materials, Disclosure, Establish contacts with Universities of the Country), write them in sticky notes.
• Draw on the blackboard the columns of the established roles of the project
• Draw the rows on the left side for the tasks initially identified.
• Enough sets of delegation poker cards (one apiece).

Pokers Cards

• We started the session as a planning poker
• The project leader presents the activities. Example: "Design the slides from the workshop, what do we decide about this activity for this role?" We all have a set of poker delegation cards and we decide for ourselves. As soon as everyone has decided, the selected cards will be shown to the count of 3. If everyone has the same card, the number is written in the cell related to the role that was presented to discuss. If different cards are shown, the higher and lower numbers discuss their reasoning. They agree on a number and write it down. Then continue with the next roll.
• Finally our board remained in the following form.

From Model RACI to Delegation Poker

What I learned? 

By doing this type of activity as an organization of a project, everyone understands the required efforts and makes the tasks more understanding, encourages collaboration, transparency and self-organization, provides more scope for reasoning, negotiating and understanding among all.

Make it clear that the delegation scores are based on the team needing to make a “big decision” in each area.

What is truly done is the act of "delegation", a tool that opens possibilities and expands leadership towards the team.

More details about Delegation Board

• The effects of delegation and empowerment on your team
• Delegation Poker (Free Exercise)