The manager too busy for agile

(what follows is an actual account from the manager themself)

I’m a global head of a business line at a Fortune 500 company with 100 staff within my division.

Executive management have aggressively pursued a cost reduction programme over the last five years that has touched every corner of the company.

We’ve lost essential industry knowledge through staff attrition, we are all overworked, and zero fat is left anywhere.

I need to segment some of the sales reports to help me make better decisions, but my local supplier is no longer permitted to work on core systems, so I will need to speak to central IT.

Manager: I need to change some reports in the sales system. I emailed you the new report layout and business logic last week.

IT: We can initiate a new project for you once you allocate spend. We follow this new process where you will come to daily calls to answer questions and a few other weekly meetings where you tell us what to do.

Manager: The previous supplier has always worked off my emails and would have turned this around in 2 weeks with little oversight. I would review and tweak the report layouts occasionally, particularly towards the end.

IT: I’m sorry sir, but we no longer work from requirement specifications and our engineers need daily conversations with customer like yourself to speak their doubts and request clarification.

Manager: I have 100 staff in three different regions, and more important things to do than attend IT meetings during my 12-hour work day.

If you are unhappy with your development team, they may need more detailed guidance.

Better software requirements can help with this.