AA144 - Your Scrum Manager Should Be... Your Manager?

Your Next Scrum Master Should Be Your Manager. Om um, I found this article and I thought it was super interesting. I wanted to discuss it on the podcast. Yeah, I remember reading the article when I was out of the country and this is a good one today, folks. It's fairly recent, November 20th, 2023 Ryan Ripley. I wanted to examine this because I posted the article to, to our channel so you could read it. I read it twice actually. One once, just before we started recording to make sure I didn't miss. Read it. And in the opening of the article Ryan says that they had a your daily scrum episode called can a manager be the scrum master, the in caps For some reason, I don't know why it's caps and, where they talked through it and the general consensus in that episode was no, they probably shouldn't. And then there was two years later. Some sort of reversal happened. It's a magic where they've changed their opinion. I think it's interesting to read this article on its own in a vacuum to see what our reactions are to see if we agree or disagree with the points in here. I'm not going to be going through the comments. Well, in all honesty, I didn't read the comments. I only read the article, so I'm probably at a disadvantage with that. I read all the comments, so that's probably a disadvantage for life. so he starts the article describing that their advice was to avoid the anti pattern due to the challenges of maintaining openness, focus, and effective self management within the scrum team. And then he says that they were wrong about that. So two years have gone by and now they're completely doing 180. That's right. And then he says the organization should stop hiring scrum masters and empower delivery managers and directors to take on the scrum master accountabilities. Alright, that's the opening statement the article this people should the organization should stop hiring scrum masters and I'm scared Well, I mean, this is this is quite a quite a salvo here. So if organizations stop hiring scrum masters, there's suddenly Give the accountabilities of the Scrum Master to their delivery managers, project managers, I guess and directors, I think he says that. Oh, right, yeah, he says delivery manager, but my brain translates delivery manager into project manager. Essentially. That's what they're doing because the majority of delivery managers I've ever seen, heard of interface. They're basically project managers. Agreed. Agreed with that. So, so let's think about an organization who's made this decision like today. They're not gonna hire scrummasters, right? They're gonna take these delivery managers and directors and they're gonna say, you all are now scrummasters. How does that happen? Because scrummasters have a certain how, how should I put this? Genesequa? Yeah, Genesequa. So they, they have they have this notion of servitude that they, they understand how to work with a team. They understand how to harness the power of a team. Those skill sets, I guess, or traits, attributes. They're not traditionally present. If you're a project manager or director, you're more used to directing, right? Command and control type of direction. Do this, do this by this date right? Scrum Masters shouldn't be doing that. Most Scrum Masters don't do that. So how do you get suddenly So, how do you, in very quickly have these um, delivery managers and directors act as scrum masters? How do you make the shift? That is something that I can't get my head around. Let's, let's get it. So, the article is pretty short. So, let's get into the meat of the article. Sure. The majority of the calories of the article. For those of you who don't eat meat. Get into the middle of the tofu. For years, I've expressed the standard advice that a scrum master should seek to lead by example to compensate for not having positional authority over. A scrum team by being a role model for team We as scrum masters could demonstrate the behavior attitudes and values we want to see our teams follow. Okay, so you're modeling behavior rather than telling or what I get it The point I was making, yeah, the theory is that we are, if we are humble, coachable, and leadable, leadables, I don't know if that's a word, we can encourage others to take on those qualities. Digging deeper into the theoretical discussion, you'll find distinctions made between using positional authority, often referred to as command and control or micromanagement and true leadership that inspires and motivates through the behaviors, attitudes, and values mentioned above. Establishing credibility as a scrum master can be tricky. Nothing is more critical in modern organizations than delivering product and value as soon as reasonably possible. The theory sounds lovely, but it isn't practical or helpful. I want to start back on distinctions made between using positional authority and true leadership. And what he claims positional authority as command and control or micromanaging. I don't, I don't know if that's true positional authority. I mean, yes, positional authority could invoke those behaviors, but he's gonna he's gonna go on in his points later. Spoiler alert He's gonna go on his points later to say that the positional authority May be used appropriately. And I think it's a lynchpin of the argument here is People need to use their quote power responsibly I feel like that's a slogan . Yeah. That's the Spider Man. Yeah. That's like with great power comes great responsibility. Yeah. But if you look at the players here, right, you've got scrum masters, you've got delivery managers, project managers, and the like directors who has historically been using this positional authority to their advantage. I mean, I've not really met that many scrum masters. I've met some rookie scrum masters that are just basically doing scrum by the book. But discounting those, it's usually delivery managers that are exercising authority, that's what I've seen anyway. So, he's saying that establishing credibility can be tricky, but that's true no matter what though. It's trickier if you're a delivery manager and you're coming in and trying to establish credibility, trust with your team, that's hard because that very team was used to quote unquote reporting up into you. And now you're just part of the team. I mean, it's it's a tough sell for me. I feel like the team maybe I'll save this for later. I feel like the team isn't going to I don't know. Openly embrace you in that role, even though it's a title that you're a scrum master now, but you really were a delivery manager. It's going to be hard for you not to continue acting as a delivery man. Well, let's, let's let's sort through the rest of the article. So he says theory sounds lovely, but it isn't practical or helpful. Bottom line is the point of scrum is getting to done, done in caps. Delivery manager is best suited to help a team deliver or gets done instead of setting up the delivery manager or director as at worst the enemy and at best a person who doesn't understand what it means to quote be agile we must empower the delivery manager to take on the scrum master accountabilities to increase the scrum team's effectiveness and help them okay. I didn't, I, this paragraph, I can't, I can't come along with this paragraph because I didn't understand that there was a jump that was made to say, Hey, the bottom line is getting things done. The delivery manager is the best person suited to get things to done. Which I don't know if I agree with that because again, this is a project manager We're talking about sure and then instead of setting them up to fail Which is the these two sentences let's have them take on the accountability of basically having them take the scrum teams effectiveness on and then let them improve their skills in that pursuit Which if framing the frame that way I can come along with the rest of the Discussion. Yeah. Okay. So how to do that would be my very next, like if we were sitting together having this conversation, I'd be well, where are you going to start? I would rather start with a director than start with a project manager. I would think that I could like the director has some skin in the game. The project managers is they're assigned temporarily They don't need to replace people on the team. You know what I mean? They can burn some people, marginalize some other people, as long as they're getting through their deliverables to the end of the project and looking good on paper. I guess you could say if your project manager has a budget and hired the team, then they would be the delivery manager. I guess that, that maybe in that kind of world. When we talk about delivery management a little bit later, let's talk about it from that perspective. Is it the idea that your project manager has the budget, and they've hired the whole team, and everyone on the team basically works up through them. So who better accomplished goal than the manager of the team? Many argue that such a role conflict will negatively impact a scrum team's empowerment, self management and continuous improvement. The manager can make decisions traditionally made by scrum teams and they might not be well versed in scrum practices. It could be difficult for managers to serve the scrum team and fill their organizational responsibilities. Okay, I mean both good points. If I'm going to side with the author here and say positives for rolling the manager in, To the scrum master responsibilities and with the manager the manager can just say this team is not working using Kanban. You're gonna use Scrum now. And then that's it. The we don't need to have sessions and we don't need to show proof and we don't need to bring it up and down the chain or whatever and, and convince everyone's managers, manager or whatever. I just made the decision. Yeah, that's true. I mean, they are a manager first and foremost, so they're gonna make a decision and maybe the team agrees with it and maybe they don't. Yeah, but, but we don't, the point is the, the time that we save if, if you're putting money to the time that we save, I just saved us a bunch of money as a manager yes, it will be a while till we can see if my decision was a good one or not, and there are many factors outside of did Brian make a good decision or not, that, that can be considered, but speed to decision is, I feel it lends itself to the argument he's making. No doubt, no doubt. But are those decisions sound and appropriate? That's really the question. I mean, it depends on if you're, if your firm is owned by private equity and it's nobody's gotten raises in five years and they're trying to squeeze every dime out of your organization, like the cost cutting measure of not hiring employees in any way, shape or form until people start quitting and you know, like I've been, listen, I can only talk trash because I've worked at those firms before I worked at a firm before that they, they refused to hire product owners for their scrum teams. They would point at managers in the organization and be You, manager, you look like you aren't working much over 50, 60 hours. You need another responsibility. You're now also a product owner for this team, or whatever. You make the calls for product for the That's a, that's real, you know. Oh yeah, absolutely. I've seen that. You know, again, I mean, I could go back to the effectiveness of doing it that way, right? Same thing with this, the effectiveness. if I'm on Ryan Ripley's side right here, I would say effectiveness is not, much like we talked about software development and producing products for the government space effectiveness might not be their number one concern. This is true. You know, just, just like compliance organizations, regulatory, that's what I'm trying to say. Regulatory is their number one concern in the business. They don't care that they have to spend more money. Sure. If they can do it in a way where they get all their regulatory objectives all those boxes ticked at the same time while getting their software delivered. And they're okay with delays. They're okay with constantly shifting dates. You know, there are things that are more important to them. And maybe this is one of them, you know? Yeah, I mean, look, definitely saving money on a Scrum Master's role. Immediately adds to the bottom line. Sure, yeah, looking good on paper. Some of the chatter about this article was about all of the reductions in force, and all of the scrum masters and what not getting laid off, and agile coaches, scrum masters, and you know, some of that is people see articles like that. In a vacuum and they they they gloss over the fact that like these were just badly run companies That they needed to look good on their bottom line for the quarter So they ran out and they fired 5 percent of their staff Which made their numbers for the quarter look pretty close to what they wanted them to be and then they spend the next Two years trying to ramp back up I mean to get over the brain drain. Mm hmm that you know whatever Or or or they continually downslides that you know, so like I can't remember the company So that next quarter they'll run out and hire and fire ten more percent and then you'll see articles like Oh whatever company reduced You know, further reduce their Agile, whatever by 10 more percent or 17 percent of the company I mean, it's, it's pretty easy to make the numbers look good in that case. And then chances are those execs probably aren't going to be around in two years. They're going to take their bonuses and leave. No, they're probably not. Listen, I mean, you don't need an MBA degree to understand that if you can fire 20 percent of your company and pull in more money. And all the people are picking up the work for the other people that you got rid of yeah your MBA teacher would tell you hey, I have empathy and everything, but you know, those yachts are not going to buy themselves. That's right, that's exactly right. So, I, I. I'm going to extrapolate just a little here, taking his side, too. Companies that go down this path of empowering delivery managers to be scrum masters and not hire scrum masters, presumably they will lay off scrum masters, they already are? I don't know. Will they stop there? Or will they say, okay, next level, right? Developers are doing testing now, we don't need testers. Absolutely. Like this, this, this slope, just just slides into oblivion. Yeah, absolutely. Why don't your managers just, why don't your managers also serve as development architects and tech leads? I mean, AWS certifications have a cost. Why not send all of your, Managers through AWS uh, like, oh, Brian, you sound ludicrous. Now do I? No. It depends on what your priorities are. I think at the end of the day, if your priorities are to save money, there are ways to do that, right? I mean, that's what we're saying. You know? Anyway, he says who better to accomplish. These goals and the manager of the team, right? I don't think we ever did the podcast, but I had a podcast idea that was does one manager or member of leadership basically who comes to your daily standups or whatever, retros or whatever? Can one person undermine? All of the transparency, openness, all of it just dropping, just parachuting in that one person. Because I've seen it. I've seen just one single person showing up and now suddenly everyone's quiet. Sure. I mean, it just takes one. It just takes one, which is so wild you know, to kind of sync with this. So especially when it comes to the retro. You know, anyway, so let's try to finish out the article. Reality role conflicts will happen if a manager or director takes on the scrum master accountability. So he says the role conflict may happen. Unfortunately, we see many of these issues in scrum masters today. Oh, so he says that. Yes, it may happen, but also we see it happening with scrum masters right now, which is probably right, because it's the very same sort of people that train people for two days and say, You're now an ordained scrum master certificate carrying scrum master. I could see that. So somebody who doesn't have a lot of expertise about the work coming in and now they're treated as a what was it called? A proxy of management. So they're not trusted. I could see that. I can see that. buT I'm, I'm probably the worst person to dispute or discuss that item because I'm not sure how people could ever do the Scrum Master job without. Like a wealth of expertise and even if you're well, they don't need expertise in development. Okay, well, then they need a wealth of expertise in interpersonal communication facilitation and all the guys regardless. They're coming okay, well, they don't have the developer skill set. They don't have developers experience and skill set. Those that can pick up to the extent they need, they don't have to develop, right? But those soft skills, how do you learn those? You don't go to class. I mean, you don't get them through your, I was going to say, you don't get them through your MBA. Like I said. You don't. This is true. Yeah. They're not teaching you that. So manager who fills the scrum accountabilities will have a strong understanding of alignment with the organization's strategic goal and can help teams stay aligned. lEt me, let me highlight that sentence for a second because again, I'm going back to my product management role on the podcast of saying I find it very difficult to align the other product managers and the leaders in the organization, like the people running the organization with the organization's strategic goals. I'm not disputing what he's saying here. Your middle managers should be aligned and should understand your organization's strategic goals. The part of this I dispute is Go, go, go show me the list of all the work items that your team is working on. And the, and what they roll up to. So I'm probably asking for epics and stories, right? Now go show me what strategies and goals your leadership is working on. And I mean specific people and specific teams. And show me how it breaks down. And I will guarantee you, most people do not write that down. Most, strategy, in a lot of companies, is implied, not written. So, if you want to solve this statement, you've got to solve a problem that's usually at an executive level, not at a middle manager level. Most middle managers, have incentives. Correct. And they are running their departments, their groups, their teams, or whatever, based on their incentives. And, and their incentives have a little circle drawn around them in an org chart. And that's a huge point of dysfunction. So, I, I doubt very much that, I'm not saying that this undermines his entire Example, I'm just saying this specifically, this is not where I would want to plant my flag if I were making this case of your manager should be because I would almost feel better deploying a scrum master who can move independently of department manager, incentive structure, etc. To say, Can you go into my organization and vet out? What the strategies are that people think that we're engaged in and try to find out climb as high as you can. Because of your communication skill and whatnot, you should be able to climb as high as possible to figure out exactly what we should be doing to find out if we're aligned with it or not. Go help us figure this out. You got the interpersonal skills. Help us out. Yeah. So this paragraph says a manager who fulfills the Scrum Master accountability. Would be more likely, I guess to be aligned with the organization's strategic goal. Why not the scrummasters? Without even making the managers a scrummaster. Yeah. Why can't the scrummasters be aligned, right? They should be. They should understand. The work of the team and what it's rolling up to, to your point. Why are we doing this? If they don't understand that, then the scrum masters are weak to begin with. I mean I would expect a scrum master to sniff that out very quickly in the organization. To say, hey, it doesn't seem like we have Organizational strategy or goals that we're all punched out these features, quote, getting to done as fast as possible. And it seems like all of our teams are on different pages. some teams are implementing the same thing that we're we did a couple of months ago. You know, instead of lifting stuff from our projects, they're doing it on their own. Right, right. Like I they would see this stuff. Whereas maybe a manager, again, with that incentive structure being so close and everything can't back away. You know, and take that view. I mean, if you think about like a scrum master community practice, even if there's like two or three scrum masters organization wide, right? Like a big, a larger medium sized business is what I'm thinking about. The scrum masters can get together and say, Oh, we're going to bring the director product, or we're going to bring the VPO, whatever, or the VP of sales. We're going to bring them to our. community of practice every month, whatever, and say, Oh how, how is this work from your perspective? And they can start really breaking down the organization. I mean, you're, you're arguing point back here is well, the managers can do that too. And they're better aligned to do that because they can throw their weight around to be Oh, you got to show up to my meeting because I'm, I'm, that's certainly true. It's what They're referring to as positional authority, but I think yes, the managers can do that, right? There's no doubt but to your point about that's that circle that's around them. So they're only working within that circle Yeah, and ultimately that harms the organization But it benefits them. Scrum masters to your point if they're freed up they're not reporting through one of these managers Yeah, that that's gonna be much better. I feel yeah Yeah, maybe maybe I was gonna say maybe harms the organization because I've also worked for a lot of managers that they're they're just They're not gonna ruffle feathers So they would never do anything like that. They would never say Oh get it get a meeting get with sales to find out What they do with positioning hate Brian, why are you bothering sales with that? That's right. Why, why, positioning is their job. What are you, what are you trying to do? You trying to do positioning with product? That would be a real conversation with a real manager from Brian's real life in product management. These are the turf wars you play when you, when you're when you, when politics is part of your full time job responsibility. Yeah, which is more likely to be the case with the delivery managers than scrum masters, I would think. Yeah. All right. Back to the article. The influence that a manager or director title brings makes the decisions and organizational changes needed for a scrum team to flourish Much more straightforward to execute Thanks to a manager's influence and authority In uh, organization, I have to say authoritah, that can only pronounce it like Cartman. I don't know why. It's a personal failing of my own. I'm sorry for everyone. Thank you. Good night. Thanks to a manager's influence and authoritah in an organization, teams did not have to wait for decisions or impediments to be removed. If you've ever worked in a large company, and I mean hundreds of thousands of employees large large company, you know this is not true. Like the, one director's ability to remove impediments is quite limited. Zero, yeah, exactly. Quite limited. I think some of this is true, if I'm just trying to Play the other side. Maybe you can make decisions on things, but not necessarily budget, perhaps, because as a delivery manager, if the team needs budget, augmentation needs more money. Do you really have the power to do that? Right. Or do you just play with the number you're given? Right. Right. Right. So, that's true. However, in some cases, they can make lower level decisions, and you can say, well, we got to these decisions quicker. I don't think that that's any quicker than the teams making the decisions for themselves notwithstanding budget issues, et cetera, right, which is a bigger issue anyway. I think of all the managers I've ever worked with like that. They refuse to go back to the organization to ask for more money. They just flat out refused and project managers, the double, triple, quadruple down on what I've experienced with managers. Project managers will just be you would expect them to go back to the customer to leave it to the customer to say, hey, listen, we came up on this discovery. It's up to you. You can pay a little more and do X, Y, Z, or you just commit the original X that we agreed on paper. And you know, this is the timeline or whatever. But I just had some project managers. No, I won't do it., they don't wanna be confronting. Yeah. They don't wanna be in that situation. Or, or they're uncomfortable. Or, or maybe, or maybe they've gone back for funding again.'cause milestones dates, slip, milestones slip, things change. Maybe they've gone back for funding more than once and they're just like office space. They've got yelled at by their five bosses. You know, how come the original estimates weren't right? How come this, how come that blah, blah, blah. Or, or in the project manager's case where they've had to. Cut entire teams or they're on a second round of a project where they you know, I had to go back for okay We're gonna cancel the first round. We're gonna trash it. We're gonna go back and get another team We're gonna change vendors because you know, whatever Yeah, absolutely. I could see the project manager being timid Let's see if we can get through the rest of this evolution of agile scrum practices and modern organizations demands adaptability in our approaches. While traditional scrum masters can offer value, integrating the scrum master accountability with those in management positions provides a promising pathway to enhancing team dynamics, accelerating delivery, and aligning closely with organizational goals. I if you put maybe in front of every one of those. Yeah, exactly. I'd be, I'd be, it sounds very definitive. I'd be, I'd be nodding my head along. I'd be yeah. Aligning square master accountabilities with those in management positions. May, might, might provide a promising pathway to enhancing team and it might accelerate your delivery and it might align your teams with your organizational goals. I'm 100 percent on board with maybe in every single one of those categories can happen, but this is more definitive here. I liked that the last thing that he kind of points out is, we got to think about the role, think about how to change it. It requires careful consideration, training. And a mindset shift. I I like that. That's what the article lands on and ends on. I honestly, I, I like this hot, this is a good hot take. I like this hot take. I liked, I read all the comments. A lot of them do not like the article. Probably written by Scrum Masters. Just to throw that out there. the idea that it requires training and a mindset shift at the end of the article. That's problematic for me. Well, train, the training part you could address, right? It's basically dollars spent now with a promise to save a lot of dollars in the future. That's the problematic part for me, is why are these companies these companies could be training their developers right now. Okay, I easily could take this article. Rip it apart. Find and replace manager with development lead or senior developer on the team. Sure. Or whatever, senior tester on the team or whatever. And I feel the article would lose none of its buoyancy. My takeaway here is, the real answer is probably not binary. It probably is like a mix, right? Cause why, why, why wouldn't I hire somebody that I know that can do the job? And they can just train all my people. They can just train all my managers. And that way you retain that person within. Right, yeah. So it's that, that old you know, hire versus buy, right? You know, but I mean, if I think about like a company with 10, 000 people like a Spotify or whatever the head, whatever, 17, 000 people and they've like fired seven, 7, 000 or whatever, whatever they had, I don't remember what they had. Like they're not gonna train 10, 000 people even if the management is 10 percent of that, they're not going to train a thousand people. You know, at the cost of training a thousand people, they'd be better off just hiring scrum masters at that point. I agree with that. And keeping them on staff. So I'm, I'm confused as to the pitch here. Is it, we don't need scrum masters anymore? Which is weird coming from trainers. And we'll just train all your managers is a higher more management yeah, I guess the cynic in me says, Of course, you're going to train more people if you're a CST, right? That's better for you. PST CST basically scrum trainers. Yeah. So there is that side of it. But even though this is addressed in the article, or at least raised a couple of times, the fact that you need to be careful, et cetera, et cetera. I just don't see how you could quickly change that mindset shift that he's talking about. How do you empower all of your managers with the soft skills they need to work with your teams and, and create that certain leadership attitude, right? I don't understand that given the fact that where they're coming from. Is command and control primarily if you're delivery manager, that's what you've done all the time. How do you, how do you pivot that? That's going to take time. It's going to take dollars to basically train everybody. So yeah, I understand the money saving aspect, but I also think you're going to spend money. Before you save money. the pros of having the roles together, having your managers all be scrum masters are cost cutting. Like you, you don't need to pay for two roles now, right? I mean, you're, you're already paying your executives and your managers you know, a healthy stipend with bonuses and, and yachts all around when they meet their objectives. And like we can't do that for employees too. I mean, how would the company ever make money? And then and then the hope that your middle managers are also aligned with your businesses. In strategies, which again, like let's pretend that they are for a second, just for the purpose of getting through this discussion. Those are the pros, right? The, the cons here are but like whatever the manager's full time responsibility is, they're not managing while they're doing the trade, while they're executing the traditional capabilities of the scrum master. Absolutely. So while they're knocking down impediments, while they're building teams, while they're doing all that kind of stuff. They're, they're whatever leadership needs them to do in the realm of quote, management, that stuff's not getting done or you just do it on nights and weekends and then it's fine during your spare time. Yeah, exactly. No, I thought it occurred to me. Reading this article is why not just empower your scrum masters with the ability to do all of those things that the managers are doing. That's probably going to be an easier ask than the other way around, I would think. At the end of the day, the question is, to your point, right? What are these managers doing? Are they creating status reports? Well, scrum masters could do that too. Ideally, scrum masters could leverage their ALM tools instead of polishing PowerPoints and whatever else. So what else are these managers doing, really? Managing budgets. Okay, so that's a good point, right? So managing budgets. Budgetary skills can be learned by Scrum Masters for sure. Mm hmm. Right? Agile budgeting. Mm hmm. So there's that too. Hiring, firing. Hiring, firing. So if you're going to empower your Scrum Masters to, you know ensure that the team consistency is as optimal as possible. Mm hmm. Right? They can be, they can be hiring and firing too. So what I'm saying I guess is that I don't think a scrum master can't do anything a manager is not doing. There is a small doubt in my head which is around the politics of it all, right? Managers are attending meetings. They're pleasing certain people, they're saying all the right things, they're doing the tip a dee toe dancing. Right? Scrum Masters may not be able to do that, day one. But then, the question is, is that something that your organization should covet? Is that what you need to do? Get it out of there! If you don't need it. Is that what your organization needs? Yes. I mean, sometimes an organization needs to be staffed with middle management yes men. Yeah. That you know, senior management needs around them. If we want to pivot this podcast sharply and radically and talk about what big companies quote need Yes, yeah, like big egos keep a few of them that they need them Okay, so keep a few managers the yes men keep a few of them get rid of the rest the keeping them separate keeping Scrum Masters separate Even in the article it says it's easier for someone who is not a manager To build trust in and with the team. He pointed that out in the article about retro there was a line about retros and then we, we just pointed out the scrum master being dedicated to not doing these management no, it's not serving up the organization you know, in the traditional management role that they're doing, but they can serve the actual team full time and be unburdened from those other responsibilities. I think he points that out in the article. To be fair. And then what's not in here, so, so that, that's like a dedicated to the team, a focus, a focus, a, a, a job role focus thing. Okay. And then the other thing that I don't think he points out in here is kind of what you touch on is I'm hiring someone who is an expert in these skills that I need them to be an expert in. So if I take a, like a director of HR and I tell them, Hey, you're the, you're the scrum master now for this team that's doing. HR. That's the last person you need to do that with because he's going to start on the roles I'm a director. I don't do that. Yeah. I don't know. It's just like taking that person and say, oh, you're the product owner now for the finance. You, you, the finance, you, you, the CPA, you're the. You're the product owner now with no product manager training or anything like that. This this devolves into this. The, the, the idea that all you really need is a, a warm body and say you're now the expert. Like go to your, go to your director of finance and say, you, you're now the scrum master and they're gonna really nickel and dime.'cause that's what they do that and nothing wrong with that. Yeah. That's what they do. That's their core competency. I don't I don't even have a problem with saying that like some of the like. Some of the best people that I've worked with in, in product, they come from that business domain. But again, like they come from that business domain and they all, they all have the same story when I talk to them is Oh, I got dropped in. I didn't know anything about writing stories. I didn't know anything about managing backlogs. I didn't know anything about I didn't, I wasn't in business analysis. And they get a lot of help and they kind of muddle through it or whatever. Maybe they get some training and they they figure it out. I would believe the path being prescribed here. Drop somebody in as a manager. They're smart people. They made it to management. Let them figure it out. Everything here in the scrum, in the scrum master position is not the bedrock of management. Yeah, that's not what you don't learn this stuff. In fact, I would argue MB most, I would argue that most MBA programs are the opposite of this.' cause again, like go, hey, going back to Taylorism, going back to our Taylorism podcast. That's right. That's the root. Exactly right. The root of this management infrastructure is I'm gonna tell you exactly what to do and you are too dumb to know the best way. But that, that's, that's the thing that concerns me. It's do, do these managers have these skills that are much more difficult? Like you can go through a two day class, learn all about Scrum. Great. Two days and we've then set you on a career of learning and opportunity While you mess things up for all the teams Well, that's the same thing that applies to newly minted scrum masters sitting in today class Sure, the soft skills that it takes to succeed in the role. You can't learn in a class. That's the issue You need the experience and unfortunately those people that are in the traditional management role aren't the best at these soft skills They're more They're more likely to be command and control driven do this by this date, right? Because I'm telling you to what do you think about , he says the role conflicts happen like pressure from the team and leading to disharmony on the team because the, the project manager or manager is driving something and they tried to pressure the team and then he says, well, scrum masters do that right now anyway because he's basically saying Well, we should try it with managers because scrum masters have these problems too, the way we're doing it now. Assuming that the way we're doing it now is what we're kind of advocating, kind of falling into. Yeah, we have, we've seen this before, like scrum masters are falling into this because they don't have experience perhaps. Or, more likely, it's something I've seen lately a lot. The scrum master was really a project manager for many years and now they've been told, you're a scrum master. So of course you're going to see this, right? Just because that's happening today doesn't necessarily mean that the benefits a manager or direction brings to a scrum team outweighs the risks discussed above, like he says in that last line of the paragraph. I don't agree with that line. I think the risk is still there, right? I think ultimately it comes down to who you put in the role. What experience do they bring to the table? Yeah, yeah. That's what it comes down to, to me. It's kind of coming back to me with like one of the last lines in the article about changing mindset Like that you're gonna change the mindset of a manager into a leader basically, that's that's the that's the challenge here, but I like the number of managers Who are also good leaders. I mean I'm counting on one hand here, over a 20 year career. Those, those very, very special people that have both of those frameworks. You know what I've also stayed away from critiquing on this podcast is the quote positional authority. I've stayed away from really like if I'm going to take my knives out and get into something, I'm going to get into positional authority like positional authority. What a phrase. If you have to roll out positional authority to get something done, like you're, you're, you're finished, you're finished. You really need it. You really need some introspection at that point to say, why did I have to do this this way? What's what's what's wrong with me and my organization that I had to do things by throwing weight around? Do you think that people would have done this? If it wasn't you asking for it to be done. And if the answer is no if what you're saying is true and what you're what you were saying to do Obviously is the right thing like you've used your founder slash CEO Business owner intuition just to cut through the noise and make a decision kind of what we said was the advantage of this. Mm hmm What's wrong? That all these people couldn't make that decision Okay, and I would I want to talk about that I want to talk about how come these people didn't recognize the value and then execute on it and pull together and execute on it Let's talk about that. What I just did was a leadership. That's exactly right. I think this is that discussion where do you bring work to the people? You bring people to the work. Your people aren't really empowered to First of all, they may not even be aligned with the organizational objectives, but even if they were not be aligned. That's right. The whole org, right? So even if they were even say mildly aligned, they're not empowered to make these decisions because you've got these decision makers in the middle that are kind of driving things almost by brute force. That organization isn't necessarily going to succeed by saving money. You know, laying off scrum masters because that's pervasive within the DNA of the Of the org, right? So get rid of scrum masters. Now what next? Because you're not going to make it just from that. Well, that, I mean, that, that particular reaction of, Oh, there's a slight downturn in the business. I'm going to run out and delete all my scrum masters and make up the money. So my bottom line looks better. Like that's pervasive next week. They're going to do that with customer service. And back in the day when everyone was sending their call centers to other countries or whatever, like it's the same thing. Businesses always are going to do that. You know, like the, the, my, the difficult part for me with that is how to insulate yourself from that. I mean, these soft skills are a great way to insulate yourself from that. Yep. You know, and, and also like the, the one thing that a lot of a lot of people in the comments for some reason took exception with his line in here about Delivery bottom line is that the point of Scrum is getting things done. That's, a lot of people took exception with that. I understand that's not exactly the bottom line of Scrum. But what he's, what he's pointing out is the people that are getting things done are perceived in a certain way. That's, I think that's where he's going. Again, I don't know exactly, but I think that's where he's going with that. Yep. And I with that, I gotta I gotta say. Or, or, as far as organizational design goes, as far as delivering actual products to customers go, even in product management, building your network of customers who rely on you for communication and go straight to you when they have problems or do, you know what I mean, who know that you're the go to person or whatever That's the that's the product management equivalent of this is they know you're the person to get things done So they're going to come to you right and that reliance is going to make you more and more and more valuable to the business You got to build that like the, the, the, the way the phrase here about the bottom line is a point, point of scrum is getting things to done. Like it's a little clunky. I can expand on it though. You can get a lot of things to done and they may not be the right thing. Right. Yeah. I mean, feature factories is an example of that. And the scary part about this article to me is the active calling for a stop hiring scrum masters. Just make your managers do it. And then the part about Scrum is about getting things done. The scary thing between those two statements is, people will read this to validate their crappy way of doing business. You know what I mean? And they'll just read into it what they want. Whereas, the point of getting to value, that's product management. That's a discipline of product management. So you've got all these product managers now, all these newly minted MBA product managers or all these people going through reforge classes and whatnot right now, right now they're being fed on all the developers that are out there hating on scrum because It's been done poorly. Right. And where their tech lead has been their scrum master, and it's just been used as a tool to whip them to do more work. And it's the scrum teams where your manager tells you what to work on and assigns work, and you don't peer anything, you work by yourself, and you know what I mean? That's a lot of people's experience. So, what people are going to hear out of this is, Look, even the scrum trainers say, Don't hire scrum masters. That's the danger in these kinds of posts, I feel. That's, that's my issue here. Yeah. And again, He touches on aligning with goals. He touches on changing leadership's mindset. None of that stuff, the product managers are picking up and running with. You know what I mean? They're, they're, they're seeing this and be Oh, I don't need to, I don't, I don't need to worry about this scrum stuff. Cause it, even the, even the scrum people say it's scrum master stuff is nonsense. That's my fear with this. That's, that's my fear with this. I agree. I think this kind of a blog has that risk, really, of people running with their impressions of it. Probably sort of false impressions, maybe? You know? Yeah, yeah. Well, the, the, the issue now is like the if you want Waterfall, this is how you get Waterfall. This is how you get product managers saying well, we're just not gonna deal with the Scrum stuff. Like we'll just we'll just you know, we'll, we'll get the customer on, on, on the phone and they'll just tell us everything they want. We'll write it all down once. And then you know, and then we'll hand it over to the tech lead because they do, they do tech lead things. They do development things. They, they quote, speak developers languages. And then I'll go get lunch for the rest of my day, or whatever. Right, and then eventually, months down the road, when you deliver something to the customer and they say that's not what they want, you're gonna jump up and down and go change order, change order. No no, what's actually, what's going to happen is happening in product management right now is months down the road when you don't deliver, Or you deliver something the customer doesn't want, then they can your program and then the, your company reduces 20 percent of the product managers and then the, and then I get clickbait articles about his product management on the way out to, so again there's no, there, I don't know, thanks for listening to our no win scenario. It's I don't know, like there, there's a lot of points in here that, that I feel could be expanded on. Even them two years ago, we're saying the opposite of this. So there's some challenges to some traditional ways of thinking. Yeah. They're good to be explored. But I think if I was an organization. Rather than saying well, I'm just gonna full time hire these people come in and just train everyone in my organization Why wouldn't I also want experts in my organization at the same time like actual experts not not not people who are subbing in With the role like uh, let me put it this way. I'm going to try my hand at analogies. I'm not, I'm going to try it. I'm going to try it. You know that I'm trying, I'm trying, I'm trying to be a better person. I'm trying to change my, change my evil ways. Here's my analogy is we're all part of the adult baseball league. We're once a week we all come and we all dress in our co our baseball costumes and we pretend to to, to be pros and we have a fun time. We keep score, but no one's really too serious and it's just a fun thing to do. Stay fit, you know what I mean? But, e, every so often a professional baseball player will show up. They really show, show you how it's done and they will show us how it's done. That's right. And we will all be in awe. Right? Because none of us can hit profession. Like none of us can hit Major League or even minor league, like even a minor league player will show. Yeah, I know. I know. None of us minor, none of us can hit minor league pitching. You know what I mean? None of us can crack it out of the whole park every single shot, every single shot and, and that, that would be the difference here is, is you can do this. Okay. You can say, well, we're just going to have part time players on our team. We're all just going to be weekend warriors and we're committed because listen we got to keep the dollar value down. That's a great, however, just like product management. However, when, when the, when the professional players show up, you will know it. Oh yeah. Yeah. You definitely will know it a professional is a professional for a reason, right? I mean, they've, they've been through the experience curve, right? And so if you bring somebody like that in the organization and have them train your people, they're also there to act as a mentor, coach, et cetera. So that, that's a much better model by model as opposed to the rent model, you get people in train and then they leave. Because they have no skin in the game other than just the training dollars. Oh boy, like we didn't even touch on like companies that don't train anyone like that. There's a lot of them out there. I was gonna say, I was gonna say, aka the majority of companies that are out there. Yeah. Yeah, training is seen as one of those luxuries now. They say, well, we're hiring you in the role of. That's right. We expect you to come to the table with all the training, all the experience, etc. And no, we're not going to train you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I like there, there was a lot of directions we could have gone with this. But I guess we just, there's just not the time. I mean, unless we want to spend two more hours digging into, I mean, really dig into like. Is, is, are some of these concepts going to work in the culture of corporate America? Right. You know, I have a lot of reservations about that, but also I'm trying to make this as concise as possible. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this has the risk of expanding out into other roles as well. Like I said, the easy one is we don't need testers. Developers write code. They can test, right? Yeah. So get rid of your QA people. You don't need testers. And you can go down the path. Developers can deploy, which I like that idea. In theory, at least. But in practice, in large organizations, you have all these layers in the middle. Just because they're matrixed, etc. And DevOps people do the deployment. We don't need those DevOps people. Let the developers deploy. I'm surprised we didn't get to, we don't need middle managers. We don't need middle managers. All these people at the article lobbies, they should be the ones. We don't need any of those people. Well, I mentioned that earlier. Why don't, why don't we empower our scrum masters to be middle managers? To do some of the roles that the middle manager is doing. Maybe you don't necessarily get rid of all middle managers keep a few around that appease you. No, I mean, you'll keep, you'll keep leads. And you'll keep department heads probably for, for, for that For a while. For that, for that matrix of I need people that are the, the, the People managers. Like the, the first among equals kind of person. What, what does Amazon call them? Bar raisers? I can't remember what Google calls them. Anyway, they're, they're the people that I trust to hire a good QA person or a good developer or good, whatever, you know what I mean? That, that kind of, that kind of a thing. But leads makes a lot of sense. I mean, you can have, you're going to have a team of leads across all of your programs and all of your teams inside of those programs. That makes a lot of sense. You're going to have business heads. You know yeah, but so I'm but again, I think that's a different article. Yeah, different podcasts for sure So, all right. Well, this was fun. Hopefully we didn't come off negative I I think we tried to steer away from being negative on the article cool Well, hopefully those of you that are still with us, enjoyed the discussion let us know what what else you'd like us to tackle and don't forget like and subscribe