It’s a bubble and it will burst
So, last time I did some research about the current state of Agile, and Scrum Master as a job I stumbled over this:
In America, as of 2017 Scrum Master is 22nd highest payed job.
https://www.forbes.com/pictures/feki45eigdm/22-scrum-master/#1ceddb7f5062
What the f*ck.
I was confused. From my experiences most people ask me if a full time Scrum Master is really needed.
Ok, after some research I noticed that this circumstance seems only to be true for the USA. In India and Germany Scrum Masters seem to have a much lower income than their American associates. (German Source: https://entwickler.de/online/agile/scrum-master-gehalt-579815773.html)
But still, it kept me going because the USA is still somewhat trendsetting when it comes to everything IT and agile related. In my mind the real work is still happening in the development teams. Scrum Master to me seemed like a cautious approach to a new kind of job, where everyone asks what this person is even doing. The most people don’t get servant leadership anyways, or situational leadership respectively.
My point is that they’re right, in traditional thinking sometimes Scrum Masters really do have times where they don’t have to do that much (which is funny because per definition a good Scrum Master is trying to make himself obsolete because his team is self-organized and knows how to transcribe the agile method of choice).
But it’s other times, often crucial times, where things are at stake, or major change has to occur, where a Scrum Master has a lot to do. It’s his task to keep constructive communication alive, to connect loose threads and to step up and be a servant leader by pushing and pulling between his team and management or even C-level personal. He has to keep the process alive and breathing while doing that. He has to be the first one to adapt to change in order to process it to his team. Somehow you should sometimes feel like a unionist for your team.
At least that’s my definition.
Usually, I often hear that an agile framework is something corporations want to adopt because they heard the buzzword “agile” floating around, and you want to stay competitive so you have to be as “hip” as all the others. High management says let’s do this, even if they have no clue what that actually means or what’s the ethics behind it, and boom you have your pile of problems.
Maybe some theory is given and it should then be a fast selling item. After some amount of money is burned it is decided that consultation is needed, or maybe even someone who really overlooks the process of implementation (aka an agile coach).
Now, the second thing I often hear is: How do you become a Scrum Master?
I will now tell you a true story: one of my friends told me about a friend of his who really doesn’t know what to do in his life. His studies seem to fail, and then my friend dropped this (and I quote):
“Maybe he can become a Scrum Master, too? I mean you became one really fast.”
I was baffled. It seems like when you explain your job to people the first thing they assume is that basically everyone could be a Scrum Master. You just do it.
And here is the twist, the assumption is right: in the end you just do it. And that’s where the core problem is.
As a Scrum Master you need core skills that aren’t easily taught: You need to be at least good at speaking in front people, in thinking creatively, in being able to work situation-based, to be self organized and most of all have the balls to talk to your team openly as well as to your CEO. That takes courage.
The certifications you can have say nothing more but that you know the theory. Not if you can handle a group of people that don’t want to waste their time by not working productively. Not if you are able to process the needs of a collective of individuals as one voice to the right ends.
Sure, you can just stand there at your 15 minute daily and say: It’s daily time.
Sure, you can go to any site for agile games, copy one and fill maybe an hour of retrospective with it.
And to be fair it’s part of your job. But let’s be real, it’s a small one.
Then I get why other people will ask: What is the job of this person?
Being a Scrum Master or agile coach is a passion-based job. If you have none for what you do you will fail harder than in most other jobs. If you write code, an do so without passion, well, the product will be shitty but maybe you still get something to work. When you are a Scrum Master who doesn’t give a sh*t nothing will change or move. You’re basically obsolete form the very beginning, not because you brought up all the energy you had to see your team flourishing, so that in the end they don’t need you anymore (which is utopia because in a world of ongoing change and process your work is never done).
For me the passion comes from the idea that slowly but surely our whole way to think about work is changing, and agile methods at least try for the better.
But you have to convince all kinds of people. Managers, teams, CFOs and CEOs… you name them.
And if there is a flood of people who have the mindset: “Anyone can do this, just be certified, read some theory and it’s ok” it will slowly but surely die. You’ll convince no one.
I even get why it is so hard for people to evaluate the role of a Scrum Master or agile coach because here we go again with the KPIs.
A developer can be measured by the code and the product he makes.
A manager is measured by metrics based on money and decision making.
An agile coach or Scrum Master is measured by … by what?
Sure there are KPIs which can be applied to the success of a Scrum Master. velocity for example. But you see velocity is such a good example why it can be also a terrible KPI: the person judging you in relation to the velocity of your development team has to know that it’s not just a metric that goes up and down. It’s context driven, it’s complex. You can have sprints where you accomplish more than your normal velocity but what if one third of the story points you made were bug tickets that you can’t make money with? Or when you work in an agency, like I do, your velocity is lower than usual but not because your developers were lazy, but simply because you have to wait for your clients to deliver crucial information.
When a CEO looks at velocity and he sees it going down for a month or so, he will assume something’s foul in the team, or that you as a Scrum Master don’t do your job right. And to be fair, these could be reasons. But in order to truly understand these metrics you have to
a) understand the agile framework of choice and the tools and processes the team uses,
b) and know the context.
So in conclusion, yes there are certain measurements a Scrum Master’s success could be tracked with — but the person judging your success should at least be on the same experience or knowledge level as you when it comes to agile frameworks.
I will tell you right know by what a Scrum Master should be measured in my opinion: By convincing and proving to each and everyone, every day that the agile framework of choice has benefits (for everyone). All across the board. And that requires active engagement and large scale transparency, not just within the team you’re the Scrum Master of but at your whole workplace. Let’s not forget that agile is something that should affect work culture as a whole.
And here is where I come back to my headline. If Agile should become a success story as a whole, people in corporations have to be proven that it really benefits the whole company in certain ways. Sure there are shades like company size, the product, the company structures, the location, etc. that have to be taken into account, but I’m convinced that regardless, you as a Scrum Master can and should do more than just watch over your team and keep track of velocity and Scrum meetings.
When this doesn’t become a significant part of a Scrum Master’s job, it will be contributing to the notion that Agile doesn’t work. Because then it will become a bubble where people are hiring costly Scrum Masters and sooner or later they will ask:
“What exactly was the benefit?”
People that aren’t in your Scrum team but work in the same company as you must, too, perceive some kind of positive change or they can’t acknowledge it. There are already examples for solving this problem, like Scrum Master communities of practice in larger corporations.
I suppose what it wrote here is a bold claim and I would be interested to hear what others think about this!
Thank your for time and as always
We are all not agile enough.
