As of writing of this post, Lionel Messi is considered one of the best football (soccer) players in the world, having scored 635 goals and 256 assists in 735 games in his career in FC Barcelona. A .87 average which helped propel his team to the top of the league time and time again.
Now imagine the following scenario: One day, after practice, Ronald Koeman (Barcelona’s manager) catches Messi as he’s coming off the pitch and says something like “Lionel, we’ve been watching you play and we think you’re an excellent player and a natural leader. We’d like you to advance your career in new directions by also coaching the team during games. You would still be playing as usual, but about a third of the time, we’d like you to also stand on the sideline and coach the team.”
Of course, our Lionel is a team player and he trusts his manager, so he does what he’s told and stands on the sidelines for 30 minutes out of every 90 minute game. The rest of the time, he plays in his usual spot, but something’s not quite right: because he has to keep going to the sidelines his muscles get cold and tight, and it takes him a couple of minutes every time to get back to full playing strength. Though he only coaches for a third of the time, his effectiveness as a player drops to nearly half.
Furthermore, his managers are not happy. They had calculated that if he plays only two thirds of the time, his average would drop to about .57 (.87*.66), and they figured a strong player like Messi could probably make up some of the difference and hit at least .65 if he worked hard. But in reality, he only manages an average of about .4, and often looks distracted and unfocused on the field. A couple of years later a dejected Messi leaves Barcelona vowing never to return…
EVERY TEAM NEEDS A COACH
This scenario seems fantastic and unrealistic, and of course it is. But take everything I wrote here, replace “Messi” and “coach” with “lead developer” and “scrum master”, and you get a scenario that plays out again and again in development organizations around the world.
Like the coach of a football team, the Scrum Master’s job is to help put plans into action, to teach the team how to respond to changing circumstances, and to drive constant improvement. The Scrum Master is a domain-expert in the field of agile process. By being ‘the grease on the axle’ of the production process, the Scrum Master acts as a power multiplier, helping the team function smoothly and helping the entire organization deliver better and faster products for its customers. A good Scrum Master frees developers to develop and managers to manage, all within a fully agile framework.
DON’T EXPECT A DEVELOPER OR MANAGER TO BE SCRUM MASTER, TOO
A lot of companies try to adopt scrum by taking a manager or senior developer and christening them “Scrum Master.” This tendency comes from the dual notions that the Scrum Master typically doesn’t need to be a full-time position (true) and that the Scrum Master “should be a technical part of the development” (false). Unfortunately, this does a disservice to both the Scrum Master and the organization. The Scrum Master is expected to carry on their regular duties as well as their new responsibilities, leading to frustration and stress. The organization meanwhile settles for a Scrum Master who has only a partial understanding of the process that they are tending and neither the time nor the incentive to invest the effort into getting proficient in this ‘part time’ endeavor. (I know this from experience– many years ago, I was this Scrum Master!)
THE CYCLE OF FAILURE
Agile transformations are challenging. The addition of the new scrum rituals and the unique structure of every organization lead to a sense of bewilderment in many development departments. By and large, developers prefer to be left alone and not be bothered with a new-fangled way of doing things. And when the transformation runs into a rough spot (as every transformation will) and the manager or developer cum part-time Scrum Master doesn’t have the knowledge and experience to deal with it, the bewilderment turns into disbelief, cynicism, and apathy. The development process, which was supposed to go faster, gets bogged down, and everyone is upset
Management typically responds to this situation by putting more pressure on the developers and the Scrum Master (often one and the same) to ‘get with the program’. This helps for a while, and eventually everyone settles into a routine that isn’t agile, but has all the trappings. Faced with the fact that the process is not delivering as promised, many companies turn to doing an “agile restart” – changing agile methods and often appointing new Scrum Masters, while making the exact same mistake as before. And the cycle continues.
ANOTHER WAY
A lot of companies explain the use of part-time, homegrown Scrum Masters by saying that they don’t have enough work for a dedicated full-time Scrum Master. Often this is true: A startup with only one or two development teams would generally not have enough going on to keep such a person fully employed, and would not want to pay someone a full-time salary for part-time work.
But what if you could get the benefits of an experienced professional Scrum Master who is dedicated to your team’s success, at a fraction of the cost? Well, there is. A professional freelance Scrum Master (like myself) will be able to take the mantle of service-leadership for your team, while bringing depth of knowledge and experience in Scrum and agile that you are not likely to ever get from a homegrown developer/Scrum Master from inside your organization.
Further, the average salary of a Senior Software Engineer is 121,521 USD/YR, so cutting one of your engineers to effectively half-time to be a Scrum Master costs you over 60K in wasted salary alone (and a lot more in loss of quality and later delivery). Imagine you have three teams in your department — a Scrum Master for each would cost you on average 180K in lost salary, and about 3000 hours of development time lost per year. Instead, for half of that amount, you can hire a full-time professional Scrum Master to lead those teams (at 97,319 USD/YR average) and get better results and faster delivery. If I showed this calculation to Josep Maria Bartomeu, FC Barcelona’s owner, what do you think he would choose?
When my wife read this post she said that based on this article I should volunteer my Scrum Master services to FC Barcelona. Sadly for them, though, I have been a Manchester United fan since I was six. Ole Solskjær, if you’re reading this call me and I will be happy to stand on the sidelines of your matches anytime you would like.
Does anyone else want to join me in protecting the Red Devils from bad Agile?