Showing Tangible Value as an Agile Coach & Scrum Master vs. A.I.

Today I made an article/post on LinkedIn as I had several discussions during my day about the number of layoffs in the agile space. One thing that was discussed was how you add value as a scrum master and coach vs. A.I.

As an agile coach and scrum master, there are a number of ways to show the tangible value of your work and leadership abilities to executives within your organization.

Here are a few examples:

• Quantitative metrics: One can track and measure the team's progress over time with tools such as Jira such as the number of features delivered, the amount of time spent in each sprint, and the team's velocity. These metrics can be used to demonstrate the team's improvement and the value of my coaching. Some retro tools such as Reetro.io offer tools to track team psychological safety and happiness as well. If you are doing SAFe and are working with multiple teams and objectives, you will want to look into Jira Align.
• Qualitative feedback: You can collect feedback from the team members, product owners, and other stakeholders about their experiences working with you. This feedback can be used to highlight the ways in which you have helped to improve the team's performance and culture.
• Stories from the trenches: You can share stories about specific examples of how your coaching has helped the team to overcome challenges and achieve their goals. These stories can be a powerful way to illustrate the value of your work. In my coaching/training sessions, I always tell teams to celebrate their wins. This can be done by email announcements, intranet boards, or even team whiteboards or announcement boards if on site.
• Demonstrations of value: As an Agile professional, you can create presentations or demos that show how your coaching has led to tangible improvements/results in the team's performance. These presentations can be used to communicate the value of your work to executives in a clear and concise way.

In addition to these specific examples, you can also show tangible value by:

• Helping the team to deliver high-quality products and services on time and within budget.
• Improving the team's morale and productivity.
• Creating a more collaborative and innovative work environment.
• Helping the team to adapt to change more effectively via various methods. That is a whole article I will have to explore sometime

By demonstrating the value of your work in these ways, you can help executives understand the impact that you are having on the organization and the bottom line. This can help me to secure funding for your contracts and team budget allocation as we slide into Q3/Q4 and gain support for your initiatives, and build a strong reputation within the organization.

Here are some additional tips for showing tangible value as an agile coach and scrum master:

• Be clear about your goals and objectives. What do you want to achieve by coaching the team? What are the specific metrics that you will use to measure your success? This should be defined in the working agreements for your team and organization.
• Communicate regularly with executives/stakeholders. Keep them updated on your progress and the team's performance. You can even do this with real-time dashboards in Jira/ADO. Continuity, knowing that updated metrics will appear on the same link when they need it avoids confusion, and builds trust. Share stories and examples that illustrate the value of your work.
• Be proactive. Don't wait for executives to ask you for updates. Take the initiative to share your successes and the impact that you are having on the organization. Be the PR person for your team.
• Be results-oriented. Focus on delivering tangible results that can be measured and tracked. This will help you to demonstrate the value of your work and secure the support of executives.

Are You Laying Off Your Scrum Masters?

Think Again 🤔

In 2022-2023, there has been a trend of companies laying off their Scrum Masters in favor of self-sustaining teams. We saw large financial organizations laying off some of the most talented Agile professionals that a year ago were in high demand. Whilst the financial benefits may be great in the books in the short term, I feel this shortsighted decision will have negative consequences in the long run.

A Scrum Master can work with 1-3 teams at a time. This is because the Scrum Master's role is to facilitate and coach the team, not to do the work for them. To get around this, employers are looking for hybrid PM/Scrum Master roles. They want PMs who can also facilitate the ceremonies. One mistake that employers make though is assuming this is more of an administrative role vs. a technical, leadership role. Can a developer be a scrum master in a self-sustaining team....yes, but the org will have to accept there will be decreased capacity. The general rule of thumb is that a Scrum Master allocates 20 hour per team. That would mean the developer would have 20 hours to allocate towards development. That is a decision that some companies are making, some without thinking, yet expecting the same velocity as when a scrum master was involved.

When a company lays off its Scrum Masters, it is essentially saying that it does not believe in the seen/unseen value of facilitation and coaching. This could have cultural reverberations. This is a mistake because facilitation and coaching are essential for creating self-sustaining teams. Much like developers who continuously have to update their skills to be relevant, so do scrum masters and agile coaches. In order to keep our certifications up, we need to be practicing and doing a prescribed amount of training and professional development hours to maintain our certification and memberships.

Without allocated hours for availability for a Scrum Master, teams are more likely to make mistakes, not meet deadlines, and deliver poor-quality work. This will ultimately lead to a negative impact on customer experience.

In addition, laying off Scrum Masters will also discourage innovation. Scrum Masters are responsible for creating a psychologically safe space where team members can experiment and take risks. Without a Scrum Master, teams will be less likely to try new things, which will stifle innovation. True, developers are becoming more agile after 20 yrs of it as the norm, however, Scrum Masters help keep things moving along vs. being too close to the code at times and sometimes getting stuck in the weeds. Trust me I know as a former developer. Sometimes we are scientific and strive for perfection.

So, what is the future of the Scrum Master role? I believe that Scrum Masters will become even more important in the future. As businesses become more complex, there will be a greater need for people who can help teams to work effectively and deliver high-quality work.

Will AI replace Scrum Masters? I don't think so. As I have written in prior articles, AI can help Scrum Masters to be more efficient, but it cannot replace the human touch and perceptiveness. AI is only as good as what you feed into it. Scrum Masters are not just facilitators and coaches, they are also servant leaders, mentors, and guides. They help guide teams to understand the business and make the right decisions. So much of what we do revolves around psychology and what drives people. So if you are thinking about laying off Scrum Masters, please reconsider based on skillsets and experience. Maybe we need less administrative Scrum Masters and more Sr. Technical Agile Professionals. We do way more than facilitate meetings and move stuff around on a Kanban board.

Share your thoughts in the comments below...