We've seen a dramatic downturn in scrum master and agile coach roles in 2023. It's mainly been driven by the dire state of the economy, the numerous crisis in many countries around the world and the cost of living increase both to individuals and organisations.
But what does this mean for agile? Is it dead like many are proclaiming? Has it failed to deliver on its promise?
So, what's the current state of agile in 2024? Let's talk about it.
For 20 years agile in all its flavours and the rise of the so-called scaling frameworks have been thriving and many have capitalised and cashed in on this with certifications.
Certification after certification after certification! Now I'm not knocking learning, of course not, we all need to learn but the agile certification industry is just a jungle. You could spend your entire life in the agile certification circus without actually getting your hands dirty in the real world of value delivery.
What was it George Bernard Shaw said?
Those who can do those who can't teach
And not to mention big consultancies promising fast agile adoption. There was a blip in terms of agile adoption back in 2008 during the financial crisis but just a few short years later people came flooding back.
This tends to happen every time the economy takes a downturn and organisations have to tighten their belts. It happened again about 5 years ago, and now in 2024 organisations are again questioning the benefit of agile.
It's no wonder really, they've spent millions of dollars on transformations and most haven't seen any benefit at all so why is that?
Well in part it's due to a lack of understanding about what agile is and what it's not and it's partly due to the tidal wave of newly certified scrum masters and agile coaches lacking the experience and understanding of how to help and so ultimately not helping at all.
Plus big consultancies up to their usual tricks of swooping in with promises of agility only then to leave companies struggling with the mess that they have made.
Interestingly in the second annual state of agile culture report there's a huge disparity between C-Suite, senior leadership and the workers.
The C-Suite and senior leadership, when asked, believe that they both promote and apply agile ways of working and are role models for agile behaviour.
Unsurprising when the workers were asked the same thing they did not believe this was true, at all.
This just highlights the disconnect that leadership still have between themselves and the people who actually do the work. Organisations leadership must also take their fair share of blame for agile adoption failure or rather their inability to get value from it.
This was also reflected in the 16th state of agile report which stated the lack of leadership engagement. 42% of respondents identified inadequate leadership participation as a significant barrier to agile adoption.
I'd urge you to give this report a read as it's got some really surprising observations.
Look, the point is that you can own a guitar but that doesn't mean you can play like Jimi Hendrix you have to put the work in if you want to get good at it.
You've got to be fully invested in it and buying a guitar then leaving it on the shelf to gather dust isn't going to work.
It's the same with everything else, agile included.
You need skin in the game for this to work
So what's that? Well, it's having a vested personal interest in its success, so make sure you've got the right people in place and that they've got the right level of empowerment and they aren't going to do a runner when things get difficult.
If you don't have skin in the game then you've got nothing invested, nothing to lose, so why would you care one way or the other you're just there to collect a paycheck.
Simply deciding you need to to go agile making a few changes and putting a process in place like scrum or kanban isn't going to make you agile unless you put the effort in.
You often hear people bang on about how you've got to be people centric, put them first, be caring in order for agile to work. Now don't get me wrong I am a big believer in servant leadership myself but look, all this Yoda woolly stuff is really starting to annoy the hell out of organisations.
Even the terminology, “being agile” rather than just doing it, scrum master, agile coaches, agilists or worse still agilistas! It’s an industry within itself.
I don't mean to cause offence to anyone using these terms, I call myself a scrum master and agile coach after all.
But there's just too much baggage with these words that leaves a sour taste for many, particularly those who've either spent millions of dollars on transformations or those who have been personally affected by either losing their job or having to change their role to something else such as project managers being rebranded as either product owners or scrum masters. Being given a quick course and then left to fend for themselves with the occasional help from a so-called agile coach.
So let's think for a moment, what is the prime purpose of an organisation? It's to make money, be profitable, they aren't doing this for free.
I'm sorry I have to break it to all you Gen Z’s out there but hard work is what it's all about, the bottom line, profit.
If a byproduct of this is to make people happier at work then great but it is not the objective. Organisations have been sold a pack of lies for years but it's also partly their own fault. They've only half-heartedly tried to implement agile expecting the lower ranks to make it work without senior leadership truly buying in and driving it.
For this to work, to make lasting change then leadership have to drive it.
But let's rewind for a second, what do we even mean by agile?
If we mean following the agile manifesto using a framework like scrum then agile is arguably dead for many.
Although in my experience most people claiming to be agile are not even close, so how can agile be dead when it hasn't even been tried properly?
One thing is for certain the concept of business agility is most definitely alive and well.
Helping organisations to deliver regularly, the right product or service to the customer, at the right time, creating value for them, being able to change quickly based on feedback and market conditions and doing all of this faster than the competition to gain competitive advantage.
This has always been the goal long before it was called agility so if you're a leader at an organisation then agility should be first and foremost on your mind - not agile from some snake oil salesman.
Do you need to use scrum? Have an army of teams and a first reserve of scrum masters? No, you really don’t. Do you need to have a brigade of agile coaches? No, of course not.
But you do need people who can help you deliver value and positive outcomes to your customers regularly and people who can show you this in practice, put checks and measures in place to actually track and validate if what's being delivered really is adding value to the business and to customers.
So how can you do this? Well at a basic level put effective feedback loops in place with your customers so you can measure what value is really being delivered, understand the total cost of ownership so you can decide whether this thing you're producing is making or losing you money.
If you want to get bit more structured consider using EBM evidence-based management. EBM is an empirical approach that helps organisations to continuously improve customer outcomes, organisational capabilities and business results under conditions of uncertainty.
There's a lot to cover on EBM and there are already a lot of videos out there, I'd suggest checking out the Agile for Humans YouTube channel as they talk about it quite a lot and they've just recently published a book on it.
Organisations need to recruit wisely, don't be swayed by a plethora of certifications, look for real world experience, where people have made a positive impact.
There's no need to call people scrum masters or agile coaches, call them whatever makes sense to your organisation.
A Scrum Master is a set of accountabilities not a job title or role in itself
It's always been about context but so many people want a quick fix thinking they can just buy an off the-shelf package of agility.
Well I'm sorry to break it to you, it simply doesn't work that way. So if the term scrum master or agile coach doesn’t work for you then call them something that does work for you.
If they need to be the team lead or the delivery lead then so be it. If they need to be the line manager of that team then fine. The important part is making it work for your own context.
There are so many scrum masters and agile coaches out there who can help you but unfortunately there are many that can’t, so you need to know what you're looking for.
So stop putting generic job descriptions for scrum masters and take the time and effort to describe what you really need.
And if you're a scrum master or agile coach then up your game, the situation we're currently in is partly your, our, fault.
Don't sit there all zen like spouting agile nonsense get involved, roll your sleeves up and start delivering value yourself.
You're not there just to facilitate, setup meetings, write status reports and move Jira tickets about, anyone can do that, so focus and deliver.
Poorly implemented agile where leadership don't buy into it and don't drive it, where you just turn the wheel and deliver garbage week in week out, where you've got scrum masters and agile coaches with all the certifications in the world but with no real depth of experience and where you don't monitor and measure the value to the customer, this should most certainly be dying if not already dead and good riddance.
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