Developmental Agile Leadership
SERIES ARTICLE
By Kam Jugdev, PhD
Athabasca University
Alberta, Canada
and
Timothy J. Kloppenborg, PhD
Professor Emeritus
Xavier University
Ohio, USA
This is the second article in our two-article series. Astute leaders use tried-and-true ideas from the past, such as project management and total quality management, and newer ideas that have come from Agile. Leaders remain responsible for delivering results, but they rely far less on command and control and far more on inspiration and facilitation. In our Developmental Agile Leadership approach, we describe several levels of leadership and how each can lead from different positions, emphasizing different behaviors. Leaders can actively practice and improve their behaviors to benefit their teams, processes, and results. Building on the framework introduced in our companion article, this article explores how those concepts translate into practice across three key roles.
“When leaders remove barriers and build trust, teams take ownership, solve problems, and drive success — step back, empower, and watch your teams rise to the challenge” (Kloppenborg & Jugdev, 2025, p. 103).
Sponsors and Product Owners operate mostly at the strategic level; Scrum Masters and Project Managers work mostly at the team level; and Team Members function at the individual level and with collaboration at the team level. People can serve as transformational leaders from the front, servant leaders in the middle, and developmental leaders from the back. For convenience, in this paper, we will refer to sponsors and product owners as sponsors. We combine these roles as both represent stakeholders and make decisions (PMI, 2025). We refer to scrum masters and project managers as project managers. The scrum master role, as developed in Agile, is more facilitating and less directive. We think that is good for project managers also, and so we combine the roles.
Sponsors work more from the front, but significantly in the middle. Project managers work extensively from all three positions. Team members often work collaboratively in the middle, but individually from behind a fair amount.
Regardless of their role or leadership position, we found that all leaders need to engage in four overarching sets of behaviors: communication, trust, courage, and understanding. These behaviors are often practiced differently by role. A sponsor exercising trust will look different from a team member exercising trust. The challenge is knowing how to practice the behaviors effectively from one’s position within the organization. Developmental Agile Leadership offers a practical roadmap on this. As these four sets of behaviors are interdependent, alignment matters…When a link in the chain is weak, it affects the entire system.
Exhibit 1 displays these with two specific suggestions for each. We elaborate in the remainder of the paper.
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Editor’s note: Tim Kloppenborg and Kam Jugdev are the authors of Developmental Agile Leadership: Empowering teams in a changing world. Learn more in their author profiles at the end of this article.
How to cite this paper: Kloppenborg, T. J. & Jugdev, K. (2026). Developmental Agile Leadership: How Sponsors, Project Managers, and Team Members Lead Differently; PM World Journal, Vol. XV, Issue V, May. Available online at https://pmworldjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/pmwj164-May2026-Kloppenborg-Jugdev-Develop-Agile-Leadership-Effective-Behaviors-by-Role.pdf
About the Authors
Dr. Kam Jugdev
Calgary, Alberta
Dr. Kam Jugdev is a Professor in the Faculty of Business at Athabasca University, specializing in project management and strategy. She is an active researcher who co-authors with international colleagues and publishes in leading journals, including the International Journal of Project Management and the Project Management Journal. She holds a joint PhD from the University of Calgary’s Schulich School of Engineering and Haskayne School of Business and is a Project Management Professional (PMP®). She serves as a collections editor for Business Expert Press. She can be reached at kamj@athabascau.ca
Dr. Timothy J. Kloppenborg
Cincinnati, Ohio
Dr. Timothy J. Kloppenborg is a Professor Emeritus from Xavier University. He earned his Ph.D. in Operations Management from the University of Cincinnati. He has written 15 books — mostly on leadership and/or project management. He is a Project Management Professional (PMP), an Agile Certified Professional (ACP), and a Disciplined Agile Senior Scrum Master (DASSM). He started the portfolio and project management book collection for Business Expert Press and edited 70 books in 10 years. Tim retired as a major in the US Air Force Reserve. He has trained, taught, and consulted on 6 continents. He can be reached at kloppenborgt@xavier.edu.
Their book — Developmental agile leadership: Empowering teams in a changing world — was published by Business Expert Press and can be found here. It has been accepted for co-distribution by Harvard Impact (formerly Harvard Business Publishing) and will appear on Harvard’s website in 2026.
