„Dr. Agile“, right?
As usual in many professional groups, agile experts also meet for workshops, further training or simply for an exchange of experience. In the breaks, the small talk often begins with anecdotes from everyday life, and I hear phrases like “the management is not agile”, “the PO was not at the retro” and the like. It is also joked that as a Scrum Master you are not taken seriously and this is attributed to the fact that you are asked questions such as “What does a Scrum Master actually do when he does not have a meeting?”. Of course, there is also a certain malice in the question, but one could of course also deduce from this that one may have never carefully communicated the roles and tasks.
However, the “Agile Gods in white” would rather praise each other than the omniscient ones, who would simply have to inject the stupid and ignorant with the necessary dose of agility to cure the disease. What arrogance! Yes, so-called agile experts often seem arrogant and self-righteous to me: 2 days Scrum Master beginner course and you explain to the management how it has to do its job. This is so arrogant that I wonder if it never occurs to them that something cannot be quite right. But even more experienced agile coaches like to fall into the trap of implementing rituals from Scrum or Kanban blindly and according to textbooks, without seriously taking employees or leadership with them. Agile until the doctor arrives, who then has to cure the wrong transformation.
On the other hand, unfortunately, there are often not much less arrogant executives who think that agility is such a “developer thing” and that it is none of their business. Also disparagingly classified as kindergarten pedagogy supposedly downgraded. Right here, the strenuous but all the more important coaching begins and not with the introduction of Sprint Planning, Sprint Review and Sprint Retro. Isn’t it our job as Scrum Master or Agile Coach to inform and coach these executives and to convince them as Executives 3.0 of the advantages of agility? Yes, of course, is the answer to the actually rhetorical questions.
Who, if not us, knows that being agile is a mindset, an attitude. Who, if not us, knows that agility is only the way, but not the goal. Of course, we have to undogmatically get the “management level” on board. We need to convince them of the benefits of working as a supporter, mentor and coach and how superior this approach is compared to the traditional behavior of acting as a decision-maker, work assignor and controller. Here and here are a few stimulating thoughts and inspirations.
The transformation to an agile company is a long, rocky road, which must be taken with agile values such as respect and openness. There is no room for arrogance and dogmatism there. Rather, empathy, pragmatism and foresight are required. Paired with the often forgotten knightly virtue of gentleness and a lot of patience. By pragmatism, I definitely don’t mean the renunciation or softening of agile rituals and values, but pragmatism in the implementation of those very ones. And this is exactly where a Scrum Master finds himself maturing when he asks himself what a Servant Leader looks like for his team and what is meant by developing his team and the organization as a facilitator. It is precisely at this point that the wheat separates from the chaff: on the one hand, the praying down of the memorized vocabulary on the way to the physician and on the other hand, those who have understood that it cannot be alone. Have an “Agile Mind”, but don’t be priests. Get on your way and keep learning.