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7 Harbingers of the Agile Apocalypse. Plague.

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4 minute read

Navigating the Plague of Incompetence in Agile Coaching 🚧

Hey Agile warriors! Today, I’m diving into a topic that stirs up quite the storm in the Agile realm—the plague of incompetence among Agile coaches and Scrum Masters. Yes, you heard that right! It’s a touchy subject, but someone’s got to address the elephant in the room. 🐘

The Incompetence Epidemic 🦠

In the vast landscape of Agile transformation, there lurks a significant threat - the plague of incompetent Agile coaches and Scrum Masters. These individuals, devoid of a deep understanding or practical experience in the work they’re advising on, somehow find themselves in positions wielding far more power than is wise. This often leads to chaos and devastation within organizations, particularly those with intricate hierarchies. 🌪️

A Real-World Horror Story 📍

Let me share a tale from either Seattle or Portland (the specifics blur, but the lesson is crystal clear). A Scrum Master was axed for insisting that “if you’re not standing up, you’re not doing Scrum.” This, despite a team member’s disability that made standing meetings not just impractical but insensitive. The team’s decision to sit, in respect for their colleague, showcased the true essence of Scrum values—collaboration, respect, and adaptability. Yet, they were penalized for it by someone who clearly missed the point of Agile entirely.

Unpacking the Damage 💥

This plague isn’t just about a few bad apples; it’s an industry-wide issue that breeds misconceptions and disillusionment with Agile practices. The damage manifests in various toxic beliefs and practices, such as:

  • Leaders dictating team actions under the guise of Agile.

  • Mandatory standing during daily scrums, regardless of practicality or inclusivity.

  • An overabundance of meetings, often devoid of purpose or productivity.

  • Rigid adherence to story points and unrealistic delivery expectations.

These misguided practices are far from the agility and flexibility that Scrum and Agile methodologies advocate for. Instead of fostering innovation and adaptability, they entrench teams in a quagmire of inefficiency and frustration. 🤦‍♂️

The Root of the Problem 🌱

The core issue at hand is a fundamental misunderstanding—or, in some cases, a willful ignorance—of Agile principles and values. We’re talking about individuals who’ve never cracked open the Scrum Guide, let alone kept abreast of evolving Agile methodologies. They operate on outdated or misconceived notions, often prioritizing form over function, to the detriment of the teams they’re supposed to support. 📚

The Impact? Catastrophic 📉

The repercussions of this incompetence are far-reaching:

  • Teams lose faith in Agile methodologies, branding them as ineffective or restrictive.

  • Organizations suffer from decreased productivity, innovation, and morale.

  • The Agile community is tarnished, with genuine practitioners fighting an uphill battle to dispel myths and restore credibility.

A Call to Arms: Elevating Agile Coaching 🛡️

So, what’s the solution? How do we combat this plague and restore health to the Agile ecosystem? Here are a few antidotes:

  1. Rigorous Certification and Continuous Education: Ensure Agile coaches and Scrum Masters not only gain initial certification but engage in ongoing learning to stay current with best practices.

  2. Experience Matters: Value practical experience and a deep understanding of Agile principles over theoretical knowledge alone.

  3. Foster an Agile Mindset: Encourage coaches and masters to embody Agile values, prioritizing adaptability, team autonomy, and a relentless focus on delivering value.

  4. Quality Over Quantity: Organizations must prioritize hiring quality over filling quotas. It’s better to have a few excellent Agile practitioners than a horde of inept ones.

Personal Reflections and the Path Forward 🚀

Every day, I meet incredible Agile coaches and Scrum Masters who deeply understand and effectively apply Agile principles. Yet, for every one of those, there are many who jumped on the Agile bandwagon unprepared, often swayed by its growing demand but lacking the passion or understanding necessary to make a real difference.

It’s time for a change. We need to demand more from our Agile leaders, ensuring they’re equipped not just with the title but with the competence, empathy, and dedication to truly guide teams to greatness.

Wrapping Up: A Journey Towards Agile Excellence 🌟

The plague of incompetence is a formidable challenge, but it’s not insurmountable. By raising the bar for Agile coaching and Scrum Mastery, we can protect and promote the integrity of Agile methodologies. Let’s commit to excellence, continuous improvement, and, most importantly, to nurturing an environment where Agile principles flourish in their truest form.

Until next time, keep challenging the status quo, and let’s elevate the practice of Agile coaching together. If you’re passionate about Agile, Scrum, or DevOps and want to dive deeper into these discussions, don’t hesitate to reach out. Let’s grab a coffee and chat! ☕

Liked this post? Follow, subscribe, and engage. Together, we can navigate the complexities of Agile transformations and emerge victorious.

So one of the harbingers of the agile apocalypse is plague. And what plague am I referring to? The plague of incompetent agile coaches and scrum masters. And yes, I’m using that word very specifically. I’m talking about those folks that have no clue or understanding about the work being done and yet seem to be elevated to a position where they are responsible for the effectiveness of the people doing that work. And they often, especially in large organizations that have a lot of hierarchy, have more powers than you would ideally like an agile coach or scrum master to have. And they wreak havoc and devastation in your organization by leveraging those powers.

This looks very much like… what’s a good example? I worked with an organization in Seattle. I think they might have been actually in Portland; it was just that part of the world I was in. This organization had just fired their scrum master. Why had they fired their scrum master? Well, their scrum master had decided that if you’re not standing up, you’re not doing scrum, even though standing up has nothing to do with scrum. But if you’re not standing up, you’re not doing scrum.

The team had decided that they would sit during the daily scrum because they had a team member who was disabled and in a wheelchair, and they didn’t want to tower over that person during the event. Which of those two options is the very epitome of scrum and agile in that mindset? It’s the team that self-organised to pay respect to their teammate and had the courage to talk about it and decide on a way of doing something. That is the epitome of scrum and the scrum values. This scrum master, total charlatan, didn’t have a clue what was really going on, focused on mechanical scrum and practices.

And I’m seeing right now, this is quite topical because I am seeing a ton of posts about “here’s why agile’s [___].” What was the one today? “Agile is a cancer” or “scrum is a cancer.” I think it was “scrum is a cancer.” And he goes on to talk about why scrum is a cancer. Although, you know, that terminology has its own weight, right? But it was because it gives an excuse for leaders to tell teams what to do. It gives… you have to stand up during the daily scrum; you have too many meetings, right? Too many meetings.

What were the other things? Man, there was a whole host of those things today. And there’s been a number of posts that seem to go in waves. So this plague that affects scrum and agile in general is this mis… not even misunderstandings; they’re just abject failures of competence. Abject failures of competence. These are people that have maybe never read the scrum guide, never kept up to date, never actually read the agile manifesto, don’t actually understand what are the underlying principles that we’re talking about here. And they just make decisions and do stuff based off nothing.

And then you have the impact, right? What’s the impact on the organization? What’s the impact on the teams? You can see these posts from people that abjectly hate scrum or hate agile or just think that agile just doesn’t work, right? And mostly when you ask them what are the things that you’ve seen that is the reason why agile doesn’t work or scrum doesn’t work or many of these things, they describe scenarios that are the very opposite of agility. Agile doesn’t work because we all have to do story points and guarantee the number of stories delivered per sprint. These are things that are part of this plague.

You can see that I’m quite annoyed by this one. It annoys me every day. And I meet such awesome and amazing scrum masters and agile coaches every day who really understand what they’re doing. They’re lean agile practitioners, and they have a complete deep technical understanding of the processes, practices, and tools that are needed for the teams that they engage in and coach with for them to be as effective as possible at the job that they’re doing. But unfortunately, for every one of those awesome coaches, there are ten people who decided yesterday to become a scrum master after their… I’m being a bit sarcastic… their arts degree, right? And they have no clue. They want to change their career and become a scrum master, and they have no clue about the work that the team does. They have really no clue and certainly no experience about how to engage with those teams.

And because there is a shortage… this is a big rant because there’s a shortage of qualified people in the industry. Most organizations, they need scrum masters; only two good ones apply, but they need five, so they hire three crap ones because that’s who’s available. We can do better. Organizations need to stop hiring for just their need; they need to hire for the quality of the people that they get as well. This is a good example of technical debt in organizations, and it’s a great example of a plague affecting our entire industry and organizations.

Thanks for watching the video. If you enjoyed it, please like, follow, and subscribe. I always reply to comments, and if you want to have a chat about this or anything else agile, scrum, or DevOps, then please book a coffee with me through Naked Agility.

Scrum People and Process Organisational Agility Technical Excellence Resilience and Change video Scrum Master Agile Apocalypse Scrum Values Team Collaboration Technical Debt Continuous Improvement Team Motivation Agile Methodology Organisational Change Employee Engagement Agile Product Management Systems Thinking

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