Scrum Master: the High Priest of the Agile Cult?
Are Scrum Masters the high priests of agile, leading worship for the elders of Scrum?
The death of traditional management
We all know that the old ways of working don’t seem to … ehm … work anymore. Partly as a result of the rising complexity of our world, partly because products of our work becoming intangible, old industrial management structures — commands from above — just don’t cut the mustard.
Rise of the cult of agile
The solution seems to be so easy — just start using almighty agile, possibly by applying the infamous Scrum framework (read more about why I don’t like it much).
Applying Scrum could be as easy as adopting new terminology. You could just rename your project managers as product owners, your requirements as user stories (are they user, or looser stories?) and you create a bunch of new meetings.
For all of this new crap to work, you need one more — magical — ingredient. The Scrum Master. Some time ago, the Scrum Guide said that the Scrum Master should enforce Scrum. They have changed it since and now talk only about promoting, supporting and helping, but you can still find the enforcer pattern in many other places.
Meanwhile, many people have started digging into the Scrum Master role and came up with many ideas what it should encompass. The list seems to be endless, containing skills such as:
- servant leadership
- facilitation
- coaching
- management
- mentoring
- consulting
- teaching
- removing some or all impediments for the team
- changing the culture and the organization
- technical mastery
- business mastery
Delusion
Many companies go and try to look for people having all the skills I have listed above. As far as I know, a person with all these skills does not exist. (Or I am still to meet one.) What a search for such people usually ends up with is pretty predictable — with narcissistic wannabe super-heroes who tend to not nurture agility, but exercise control over others.
Essentially, this is no better than waterfall, with its tight control by the project manager, it is the same thinking just with different names. Even worse, it creates the illusion of agility. This frustrates not only people working in such environments, but also agile practitioners like me.
It is a simple — and wrong — solution to a valid problem. Don’t fall for this simple solution if you want your organization and teams to prosper!
The hard way to deal with the world
The solution that works is — not surprisingly — much harder than having a bunch of new roles with superman-like skills saving the day. It requires primarily working with people so that they can do the work themselves — with whatever it takes — and don’t rely on external authority (or pseudo-deity) to guide them in their steps.
It starts with purpose
If you want people to truly work together and solve hard problems, their work needs to have a purpose they understand and find valuable. This is especially true in the age of self-organization — as that can lead to total chaos. Purpose is the essential and ultimate glue holding teams and their members together.
Continues with motivation
We all know that without motivation, innovation — or any kind of creativity — does not happen. And although you can’t motivate people directly, you definitely can create such an environment where they feel motivated and appreciated.
Also note that motivation does not mean the fluffy intrinsic stuff, but also extrinsic — money are important for most of us and only a fool would deny that. The key here is to pay people enough so that this stops playing a significant role in their behavior.
And ends with trust and respect
The third key ingredient you need to focus on when working with people and helping great teams to emerge is trust and respect. Respect for other people’s opinions is especially important, tied together with ability to constructively disagree with each other and build on others solutions to creating something even better.
The bottom line
Getting to purpose, motivation, trust and respect is hard work. One that will take tremendous effort and a long time. One that cannot be somehow commanded or installed into place. One that needs all the management functions — Scrum Masters and other Agile heroes included — in the organization contributing.
Scrum Masters definitely aren’t the high priests of agile, spreading the only right word and worshipping the elders of Scrum. They are mere mortals, with different skills and different strengths — and it is these skills and strengths you need to leverage if they are to help your teams improve. And they cannot, and will not, do it all by themselves. Amen.
