AA69 - Gatekeeping Agile

We needed to rant and get this out of our system about all the gate keeping agile coaches that are out there are I mean. I don't know if they're really agile coaches I don't even know what they would be called , people trying to get attention on LinkedIn. Like self-professed Angeles, I guess. I don't know. I guess like I mean, people paddling where's so selling services, so selling themselves on the internet, I don't know, selling their services I guess selling the service. So I've noticed a trend on LinkedIn. People undercutting agile and agile coaches, or really anything. It could be anything of their undercutting this week, it's agile, agile coaches next week, who knows it could be product people. It could be whatever and they'll undercut it in public with questionable reasoning or, or with statistics that are not backed up by anything in order to get attention. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So this is going to be a rent cost. Oh, rent cast cost. yeah, I agree with you. I've seen that it's not just this week, I've seen that ongoing. Right? Some people will come in and say, yeah, that stuff doesn't work. Try my way. And unfortunately, it's the reason why I say it's unfortunate is because. It's narrow in scope. Firstly, secondly, those people that are coming up in the industry, just learning about things, they get the wrong message from this, they get the wrong message because they're just blatantly told 48% of this is wrong and whatever else, and these are absolute numbers, it makes it sound like it's based on some sort of data science or some research. And, and frankly it's not, it's just pulled out of the air. That's, that's very unfortunate, Let's get fired up here and go into a specific post I saw on LinkedIn let's so again, we're not naming and shaming, so this is all I've blown the screen up, so it's random. For those of you listening, who can't see on the screen, it says the post is agile. Coaching is in trouble and his first reference point to give us information about why agile coaching is the supporting evidence is first point of supporting evidence is 99% of agile coaches, mostly talk to each other and are therefore convinced they know how to solve the world's. Wow. So the author obviously has done some research by the look of this, and he's discovered that 99% of agile coaches talk mostly to each other, really. And he may be only knows two agile coaches that talk to each other. Well, he's like, let's, let's run through everything that's on the screen, just so we can get we can snip back camera angles. So he says 90. So it should be saying 99% basically means all of the agile coaches. They basically only talk to other agile coaches. So then they're convinced that they know how to solve the problem. So basically saying every agile coach firmly believes they know how to solve all the problems that they encounter. And then he goes on to say, 90% of agile coaches got a certification. So they got the certifications so that they can tell. What agile processes to follow processes, presses, press the process. He says process, but that's not right. 80% of agile coaches claim to have C-level coaching experience. Hyphen, because that pays more, not because they have the experience. I'm kind of with him on that one, but I w we'll come back to it and he says 75% of attitudes. So the overwhelming majority, that's why I send you our percent of agile coaches thinks mindset, psychological safety and Lego workshops will do the trick. Isn't there a specific instruction methodology that uses Legos. He's obviously he's attacking that. Okay. Okay. He's not the only one I've seen other people do that to say you can't be serious about business. You playing with Legos. What, what about the Lego corporation? I mean, they made quite a bit of money over the years they do are they not owned by Hasbro yet? Like Hasbro you're missing out on a gold mine. If you don't a Lego yeah, just saying hot, hot stock tips on the agile podcasts with every penny you didn't pay. That's right. Let's see if there are any other data points. Let's argue a bit on the one that I actually want to argue about and he says 80% of agile coaches. So one out of five agile coaches. Well, I don't know, not, oh, I'm sorry. Four out of 5, 5, 4 out of five agile coaches claim to have C level coaching experience only because it pays more money. Not because they actually have done it before. so he's saying 80% of agricultures are liars basically is what I'm saying in this. Right. That's what I read here as well. And I challenged that because let's say they're saying that let's, let's just give him for a second giving Benfield out. Let's say he's right. Four out of five are lying. How do you think that will go down when they actually stand in front of a C-level person and have to deal with stuff? Right? How is that going to go, Mami? Maybe that's what he's saying. Maybe you saying they're woefully unprepared to stand in front of a C-level executive. I mean, I like, I, if I'm going, if I'm going to support, I don't know why I'm done I guess I enjoy pain. That's why I'm supporting it is what he's saying here. I'll be in, I'll be in his corner here. Okay. The majority of agile coaches. Say that they have coached at the I didn't, I'm like I have to, in order to support what he's saying after, rephrase what he's saying, which kinda is like a ding on him to start with. But what he saying is the majority of coaches out there are claiming that they can coach up in the organization to the leadership level, what the leadership level means, whether it means actually the C-level level or not let's take that out of the equation for a second, because like you, you're being a little ridiculous. When you say you're coaching the sea level. If your organization is like 10,000 plus people, cause the C level is probably very elusive to get ahold of, you probably not really getting a hold of them. Maybe you're getting some, a hold of somebody as a director level. If you can coach the people that are your senior managers or whatever, that's probably good enough for your positioning your organization. So let's take his, let's take the incendiary inflammatory definitions that he's using offline for a second. And talk about the spirit of what he's talking about. If you're saying that you have skill in coaching up in the organization, skill in doing it and success in doing it need to be separated in this discussion point. And I realized that I'm really taking the entire car apart to explain like one, you know what I mean, to really get behind see it works, see it work like the engine works. Yes. The rest of the car didn't work and the wheels don't run. And this doesn't really like, I really, I have to take the whole thing apart I have to dissect the whole, the whole bit of his little straw man here to talk about it. But, I'm kind of behind. This is hiring an agile coach who has proven experience influencing the leadership and really changing their opinion and connecting them to a vision and building on that. That's a unique skillset and a lot of people think they have that skill. But maybe not, they may not know this, so, absolutely. That's true. So it says we've taken out C-level from his assertion here. Just coaching up. Yeah, exactly. It's up is enough, I think, right. For a purpose, a discussion. So any agile coach worth his or her salt should really have some skills to coach up. If you're not a scrum guide, even says, you should be doing that as a scrum master. If you don't have that, then you're off to a non-starter. You've gotta be able to do that. Now do all of these agile coaches have the skills to do that effectively? Probably not. Right. Because people are at this different levels of their own maturity. So yes, of course. Right. So someone who's been around for like 15 plus years and they've done it a while. Yeah. They've come up through the school of hard knocks. They understand what's going on here. They know when to push when not to push, whereas a young gun is that four or five years of a scrum master experience is now just delving into agile coach. They may not have what it takes to coach job, especially at the C level, but they can still coach up. Right. That middle management level to your point directors. You can do that. Yeah. So, yeah. So I think the underlying theme is valid that not everybody would have that kind of experience to be able to do that. And forget about the percentages I think here cause that's that's big. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. While I was perusing the, the screen here and I was reading his 90% of agile coaches got a certification, so they can tell companies what agile processes to follow I was thinking about that one and I was thinking about myself and I'm like, I remember I went to my CSM course because the company had gone agile and the company had gone. For, for many years, a company was using, they adopt the scrum. They like, we're agile. Now we're adopting scrum. We're not going to do documentation. They fired the documentation guy. And I was like, this can't be the framework that takes the methodology, whatever the mindset, whatever you want to call it. But I was like, this can't be the methodology is taking the world by storm and be so bad. I was like, it can't be, we don't do documentation and we're going to do whatever the developers say, and we're not gonna have testers anymore. And like, I was like, this cannot be the way that it is. I want them to figure out like, oh, what, what, what are other teams doing that are using scrum? And kind of what is the book saying? And I want to talk to people and be around people and network with people that are doing this on their teams and talk to them about what they're doing. Sorry. I mean, I guess this, I guess he would lump me in the 99% of veggie coach to talk to other people, but like, well, like he's saying that I only talked to other agile coaches. That's not true. I got to talk to product people. I talked to developers, I talked to business folks. I talked to executives and founders of companies like to, to talk about their perspective in what they want and what they need. And I compare that against again, my experiences and what the book says and what I've seen on teams and stuff like that but I bring that all up to say, the reason I got my cert is because I was like, wait a minute. I don't think I'm crazy. I think your, I think all y'all that are all the developers and the project managers and those people that are like asking for things that they've come up with deadlines is I was like, I think y'all are crazy. Well, I still believe that because people are just picking dates out of the air. Yeah. Basis in anything really, it's not evidence-based or anything like that. No. Pick a date and go tell me why you can't make this date. And so for that matter, I just say, pick any date it's as good as any other, right. You're just making believe at the moment, but the accusation here. That's right. I said that the accusation here is you only got your, a CSM, so you can go back to your company and tell them that you're doing this wrong, or you're doing this wrong or whatever that that's the accusation. So I think some of that is probably valid in that you've got some people that simply just sit through the two day class, get their cert and say this is it. This is what we need to do. I'm going to go in and I'm going to install. You can use that word, right? I'll install this framework, XYZ, whatever it is. Right. And that's what we're going to use particularly when it comes to scaling, because these people, I find that these folks that do. They've not really run successful projects were worked with teams or had any success at a core level. Great. Let alone at a scaled level. All I know is I got this certification. It says, I'm a scaled agile it's. Now I can scale agile. So I'm going to do it this way, because that's what my certification was in. As opposed to some people that basically say, forget about all those certs, whether you have them or not, let's just assess the culture of the organization. How are teams working? Are we doing the basics? Right? Focus on that first, before we start to scale up because that's a magnifying glass, right? So he probably is right in to a certain degree. His percentage is a way. But I think he might've done that to me in San Diego anyway. Sure. So yeah, some people just go in and preach and say I am a cert carrying legit, agilest dial shall do this. And that's just not true. Yeah. My I think this is about the time. I probably should have opened the podcast with this my hypothesis with this topic is that this gatekeeping of agile coaching hurts the whole community and undermines agile coaches more than it helps. I don't even know how you would help with, , by throwing it out this way. Not trying to blast specific people, so we've cut out the name of this specific post, but I've seen a bunch of posts like this and it comes up all the time when I talk to people in person. And they see things like this. I know stuff like this is swirling around. And also somebody mentioned to me in an organization that I was in one time where I think I was on a contract and I was shuffling out of the organization and I was like, have you guys go to hire an agile coach? Or if you guys want to bring in another contractor, agile, I think I was. That's that it's it's all flooding back to me now. I was a product person in that organization and I was there on contract doing product work. And I remember telling them if you want to bring in a permanent employee to be your scrum master or to do agile coaching when, cause I'm kind of like one in the same to sure I was like, I would ask that you run it by me cause I've actually done that job. And I I'd like to have , some opportunity to ask questions because there's a lot of people out there that really don't understand the job and, and don't understand the job before your perspective. And, and I remember I still, to this day at six with me, they're like, that's funny. Cause a lot of people tell me that a lot of people tell me there's a lot of pretenders or people that are advertising that they have the skill that really don't have the skill. And I, and I thought about that. I was like, huh, I wonder why someone who's not even in the industry Would have already been told and warned so strongly about this. I'm trying to see which side to take first on this, right? Oh, I'm like, I don't know, but if, if it helps you pick a side, my thinking goes out to all the organizations that are out there that are like development centric organizations that don't have scrum masters. And like, I would just think that like, they hear this kind of trepidation this kind of a double guessing, or all the negativity from this gatekeeping. And they are like, oh, well I don't, I don't, I don't even want a scrum master. And to them, it's just see these people who are sales coaches. Right. Both of these things are saying that agile, essentially in a nutshell doesn't work. Right. Right. I just don't work. So it just gives them fuel to just resist even more and fall back to what they know. Which is the old way of working, which doesn't actually work all that. Well, I never worked. So yeah, unfortunately it fuels the fire. Sadly sometimes these people that are posting lists have their own methods and where's the oh boy sometimes but like if I'm going to throw out an incendiary percentage of like, I should put that in the show notes, I'd be like 99% of people that are agile gatekeeping are trying to sell you their book. 98% of agile gatekeeping people are trying to get you to buy their services. 97% preferred diet Coke. I don't, I don't, I have no idea we're holding it. Raleigh say that. Cause we're all drinking diet Coke. Yeah. What other incendiary nonsense here? Now, 75% of agile coaches just think that mindset and psychological safety will do the trick. All right let's pause here for one second I like to think that in every perspective, there is something that can help you. And, and in this one, we find that like in here in the ranting I'm like, actually, if you're an agile coach and you're properly placed in the organization and you go to the leadership and you're like, this person on this team or this person in the hierarchy they're disturbing your psychological safety. They are constantly yelling at people and stomping your feet and demanding things. And they don't understand how teams are constructed. They're not taking feedback and they don't understand that. Being a bully in meetings is not going to, that's not the way to innovate and create new products. And we're like, okay, actually I think that having a deep understanding of mindset and psychological safety, if your leadership is listening could go a very long way in the organization to help your leadership understand. I have to deal with these problem people yes, I have a CTO director development, whatever that they got my company to this point and they are very critical. And I decided as a leader, I was going to tolerate their behaviors or whatever. And till this point until I got this agile coaching and they started highlighting you can't deal with this business risk anymore, you have to act. And now they've presented something to me where I, the leader have to choose. Do I want to let this person keep being a bull in a China shop on my teams? Or do I want to act now you in support of his article, you could say, as a leader, you escalated it. And this happens in companies all the time. There's a problem. You point out the problem you're blamed for pointing out the problem. Okay. Also, there's a problem. You point out the problem. Nothing happens because that, that person is the only one that knows this code base. That person is the only one that knows the systems inside. Now that person is the number one person that everybody calls when the system goes down or when the middle of the night, whatever something happens that person is a hero developer or whatever. Like, and then the company lets a lot of stuff, slide a lot of stuff, slide. And we're not even, we're not even tipping over to like truly a moral, bad stuff that companies let slide. You companies, you know who you are we're not even going into the really bad situations that companies let persist, even though they know a problem is going on. But I would have to argue with his 700% of agriculture's thing, mindset and psychological safety will do the trick because actually they we'll do the trick at a certain level of the organization. When the rest of the organization doesn't care about those things. Then I am back in line with him. If he's saying if your executive leadership and your directors, whatever your leadership, your organization doesn't care, how people are treated. Yeah, you're right. You're right. Agile coaches can't really make a lick of difference with psychological. Literally you're a doctor in organizational psychology, right. And your organization doesn't care about that. Yeah. You're going to make very little difference, but that's the biggest, like an argument I can think of right now. Like you can apply that, that ridiculous logic to just about anything you're a doctor in data science but every executive at your company chooses what to build based on their gut reaction to how they feel about something of course, you're going to feel like nobody cares about my in-depth analytics and my like, of course, of course the company doesn't care about it. Yeah. So I think what a couple of things here, I want to say one is this, this idea about the mindset, that word is overused today. Everybody's just says that now. And I think now it's got to the point where it means nothing. Yeah, honestly. Yeah. Right. Big data. Yeah. Same thing. Exactly. Yes. Big data. Yeah. So we've got, I think we've got to be careful using these terms that can easily be turned around. It's incremental gains cause you're not gonna win. It basically says the first pushing a rock up a hill I lost my train of thought here. Hang on. It'll come back to me. You're in the right place. In the right place. Yeah yeah. Psychological safety. That's another phrase that is overused today. Yeah. Right. Those that really get it. They just simply make it happen without even like explicitly calling that out. This space is now psychologically safe. Yeah. You know? Cause I said, so that doesn't do it right. Because he's vocalized it. So the other team members now are supposed to know that it's safe to speak up. Right. What else are you going to say? I'm not recording. I'm not taking notes, right? It's that's that's not going to do it. There are lots of other things you can do. I do have an open door policy. Anyone can walk in and say anything they want don't you dare. I have an open door policy, but my calendar is triple booked. Get, get back to work. All right. So now he goes into the low, the lower percentages. 50% of agile coaches are somewhat confused about also being considered a life coaches I don't think I'm gonna read the rest. I don't think I'm gonna leave that one just the way it is. Cause I, I sort of, I dunno about 50%, but I sort of agree with him on that one he, and then he goes to the 20% or less of all agile coaches have the right personality to be a coach to begin with. They either talk too much. Oh, okay. His kind of point is they either talk too much talk too. Talk when, and to whom it is not appropriate, cannot keep confidentiality and many don't impress with either their knowledge or personality. His point is 20% of coaches have the personality. They have the right personality to be a coach that needs to be a topic all its own. We'll, we'll talk about that for a second. And then he talks about, well, what, what people do that, that is so, and, and many don't impress with either their knowledge or personality. Okay. so he's saying 20% of coaches actually have what it takes to be a coach, but the majority don't impress with either knowledge of their personality without like, I just told a story to own the people listening or the people watching, you're not going to hear the whole story, but basically the summary of the story was, when a recruiter told me recently, cause they were looking at my background or recruiter told me reading. That they sent a candidate on a job interview and they blew through all the interviews with no problem. And they got to the final interview. And in the final interview, when they were talking to the actual team members that they would work with, the team members started in depth asking them technical questions and they, they just failed all the technical questions. They couldn't hang with what the, the actual work that the team was actually doing. The technical work that it seems they couldn't understand it. That's, that's really what it is. Cause I mean, a product person, this is probably a much deeper conversation and we could have that separately, but the, the product person doesn't need to understand, like if you're writing code in Python, you shouldn't be asking coding questions to your product person. Right. however, you product person should, I mean, at a high level, understand. Why you're using Python as opposed to another language? Maybe. Yeah, maybe. I mean, if you're looking for, if you're looking for just, just, just for a quick reason why someone might be like, oh, I don't understand anything about why Python is different. Like, if you're looking for a lightweight light barrier to entry language that that's pretty quick to do what you need to do, like Python might be a good one for you. Also also Python is a, is a language of data science as well. So if you're doing quick data transformation, data science type of stuff, Python is a really good language. And there are Python notebooks that you can publish and let users interact with and at different stages in the, in the runtime but but that Python might be a good choice for you over like a heavier weight language, like Java or C plus plus or something like that. When you need like real fine granular control of every little thing, again, like. A lot of product people. I don't know if they would, I know this, guy's not talking about product people, but I would expect with his leaps of logic that he's taking product people would be two, three steps ahead of where he's at, because he's talking about like the agile coaches are sitting closer and represent the team than most product people, product people have a division from the team normally. So I would expect whatever I'm talking about for product. The Agile Coaches would be even closer to the team. I worked with the team one time that were the team was establishing DevOps pipelines to deploy their software. And I had done that before. Right. You know, so-so the team was looking for a product person that understood like, well, these are the reasons why we need to transform from doing manual deployments to doing automatic cause they're automatic deployments to their pipelines were a combination of deploying software to environment, but also some, some data transformation, ETL kind of stuff. Sure. They would, they would take from a source, consume it. It would go through the pipeline. It would get deployed to the environments that we were that we were hosting and some data transformation and stuff would occur along the way. Most of our customers wouldn't need to. To a technical level, how things work, but it might be helpful for them to understand the terms and what they are. Sure. So when, when somebody mentions Python, they should just know that that is a tool that the team is using for whatever. Yeah. That's it, they don't have to worry about the, how or anything like that. Right. That's what the teams they have for, those broad donors that basically say, well, that's just technical stuff. I leave it to the team. Okay. They're also right. Cause it's not their role to understand the technology and the detail to the detail. I do have a bone to pick on this particular topic with this fellow though, when he talks about many don't impress with either their knowledge or personality. Now, now this is where things go the opposite direction for coaching. This is where it breaks down. So it breaks down because a lot of people are. Well, when you're coaching, let the team find their own solution, right? Don't feed them the solution. Right? What do you do there? You talk less, you let them come up with provide guard rails if you want, but let them come up with it. Some would even say it's okay to let them fail. I'll jump in and defend his point here. Let's let's rip this point apart. So his point here that we're talking about is 20% or less. Again, his, his percentage numbers are just garbage, he's saying very few agile coaches, one out of five. That's his number? I don't know. I don't know about that number, but a one out of five agile coaches have the right personality to be a coach to begin with. Right. They bring the right skills, the right natural skills to the career field to start before you stack on expertise or training or certifications or whatever. He says, eh, talk too much or talk to you a little, or are they talk about things that aren't appropriate to talk about or break confidentiality, or they don't come across to impress people with the skill or the knowledge or their personality. I am going to get behind him and defend him for a second, a second, because yeah, there is a gosh, there's an agile coach on Lincoln that had a great post, but I should, I should stop and try to find it for a second. But then he's like, if these things are in your personality, you have the potential to be a great agile coach. And it's difficult to challenge your own assumptions. Yeah. Yeah, I get that. I just always we've thrown away the percentage. Right. So having the right personality, how do you know you have the right personality? A lot of the agile coaches come up through becoming a scrum master and then up, they go the chain, right? When they gather more experience, I would say just that by definition would mean that you've molded your personality. You're a scrum master, right? You're a servant leader of all things, right? So you would have the personality. You wouldn't last long. If you didn't. Now, granted, there are some people who were against it through the class and go, Hey, I have a cert here that says I'm an agile. Right. Those are the same people more than likely they did the same thing with their scrum master or Product Owner certifications. These are people that really didn't walk the walk anyway. So yes, that's, there's a percentage of that. Is it one in five? I don't know. But there, there are those to his point, of course, you're going to get that right. But I don't think it's a big number because they don't survive , in the field. They will get weeded out Where this one connects with me is I do feel there's a lot of people out there that have a very tough time putting their ego aside. Yes. Okay. Because none of this is about you. It's about helping the team evolve. And like also it might not even be fair to say putting your ego aside because, we've talked about this before, long, long, long time ago about meet them where they are, you know I have a very difficult time with meet them where they are when you know that where they are is in a very bad place. Yeah. We have talked about this where I think, I think I might have said something like, well, I don't want to meet them where they are, because where they are is not ideal. I'm here because they don't like where they are. Yeah that's another phrase that's overused. So that's three now, today, right? These are overused. Meet them where they are. I think to me, I interpret that as just don't force anything. Right, right. And bring them up gradually, just don't come in and say, I'm going to grow by agile. Yeah. Yeah. This is the part where we're we'll we, we will kind of dig in and, and we're, we'll hit some friction to try to figure out how we get past it. As a scrum master, agile coach, whatever, whatever you want to call it if I see a bunch of things that I consider problems, this, this is a judgemental thing that we get into, right? This is where Corey was yelling at me on the podcast where she was on like there issues like it, and people will be like, oh, who, Brian, who are you? Just say that there are issues. Like if you're doing all manual deployments and pajama party deployments, instead of having good CICT, that's a problem. If, if I can't deploy, but once every eight, nine months or even weeks, let's say I can't employ you. But every, every quarter I do one deployment, a quarter to production, no matter how many deployments go to Sage or whatever one deployment to production per quarter, because I'm so scared. And it causes such a havoc on production. When I really testing is so bad or whatever, or quality is so bad, it's not testing. That's not unfair. It's quality. So quality. That it's a huge problem when I deploy to production that's a problem. Like these are all business risks. So, I mean, I guess if you truly were like the agile coach, Zen master, they're all problems, but like, oh, like he let them flow through you and ignore them all I can't, I can't ignore them all. There are like a how if I'm part of the organization and I know a better way, like I have to let people know, Hey, this is what, what we should be shooting for. And we're here now, but, but I, but we need to be aligned on we're here now. This is where we could be. Do we want to get there? let's at least have the conversation of, do we want to get here? I think you nailed it. So oftentimes some people say as an agile coach, you're just going to let things go. Right. So just don't impinge anything on the team. No process changes. Just let them figure it out for themselves. Yeah. What do you think they will, they would have done by now. So why are you here? Right. Seriously. So pick something and improve on that, right. And then say, okay, what else can we be doing? Make something else, keep going. That's what I would say when I was part of it, when I was a scrum master slash agile coach on a, on a very large by actually I wouldn't even really a ScrumMaster cause I did product as well. So it was more like a program manager on a larger program I remember a particularly a demanding stakeholder was like, why are you asking what we could be doing better? Haven't you been on enough programs you just tell us what to do better. Right. So that's where you're guiding. Method comes in. Right. Not telling them so much as w what do you think this might work for you? You think you could try that for a sprinter? So, yeah as opposed to I'm here now, right? This is what you need to do, because I say so, yeah, that seldom works. Even if what you're saying is the right thing, because there is no buy-in there. You're just forcing it. Well, that's, that's what he's saying here only one out of five coaches know when to talk and when not to talk, he's not talking about, he's talking about skill. I'm talking about when to step in to coach and when to lean back and let things happen when to meet them when they are versus when to drive to the goal. I would kind of argue with him if I'm going to break, I know I was supposed to be representing his position, but Hey, it's, our podcast. So I do whatever I want. If I'm going to break with what he's saying, like. If your alignment in the organization has a big part to play in. If you can do this, if you're aligned at the team level and your opinion is not a desired at the leadership level, you're not going to say anything about like, maybe your leadership should have a leads level combine board where I can put my blockers on and I can put things on for you to get help my team with or whatever it's like, yeah. We're not really about helping other people around in this organization. Just stay quiet and do what we pay you by the hour to do a, you know yeah. I mean, these are organizations that hire yes. Folks, right? Right. Yes. Men, yes, women and th and that point at that point, the agile coach has to make a decision. Is that what they're there to do? Yeah. Sometimes you don't move the needle you don't right. You got to decide what are you going to do? You just leave it alone or just break the needle? Yeah, that's that's the old again I can't believe a we're 60 plus episodes in and mark has not been on the podcast yet. That's that's the old mark mark ism is a you should always be on the edge we getting fired and that's how you're being effective as a scrum master. You don't know, you don't know if they're going to ask you back next week. Yeah, we should. I should. I should leave that name drop in the podcast and just tag him on LinkedIn. Let's cut back to , the end of his article. I can't believe there's still article happening. Anyway. He says, so 20% we talked about 20%, 5% of agile coaches are truly agile trainers that teach agile coaches. How to, well, wait a minute. What are we talking about now? I'm so confused. They get paid by agile coaches for passing easy digit. Oh, so he's accusing. I get, I go. So 5% of the people who are agile coaching get paid to propagate the industry is what he's saying out of this. That's what he's saying. They get paid by agile coaches for passing easy tests, digital badges, and certifications. Supposedly providing the air quotes, secret sauce. I know it's quotes, but I like seeing air quotes that make companies successful and fail to realize that once you offer a public training, The secret sauce isn't secret anymore. I don't really know what, who he's accusing here, but I think he's, I think he's, he is going after the, and like 5%. I mean, like that seems a pretty low, got most of the trainers that I've met here have their own, I want to say nuance, but that's too mild of a word. They're their own way of impressing upon people the way they want to train, basically. And I think that's maybe where he's heading with this. All right. I do want to argue one or the other side. I I don't want to get involved pleading the fifth. I kind of want to leave this one alone. I like these accusing trainers of propagating the whole issue, but or the problems or whatever, but I don't want to say Sam by the trainers though, right? The strainers and then their strainers. So now that's one of the unfortunate consequences of the pandemic is you can take remote classes, you can take remote classes for a fraction of the cost. Right. And there's a lot of trainers. They are certified trainers. There's no doubt about that, but are they effective? Have they actually been in the trenches and done the work and come up? I don't know. I've come across a few that yeah, sure. You'll get your certification on the cheap. And it's the same certification. Not any less. It's just what are you learning from these people? Right. Other than just getting a piece of paper, what are you really learning? So. Agile coaches, scrum masters product owners, get their certs from such organizations. Usually one man shows and then say, well, I'm now a certified so-and-so and it's like, you really didn't pick up much. Yeah, yeah. Not a dogma for sure. Yeah. You know, it's funny that this stuff kinda didn't come out in our certification podcast where , we sat down and talked about the certification industry, but like, I, I didn't, or maybe I just wasn't maybe I wasn't thinking about it when we were talking to that. Cause I was just a man crushing over Brent the whole time. I think about certifications like this, like they're a, they're an entry point and then depending on the person giving the certification. I kind of think the advantage of that. I mean, plus like with the amount of money you shell out for, you used to like 2018 before, you know what I mean? Not, not, not, not at pandemic. Sure. Yeah. Costs, before I kind of thing is like with the money that you shell out for it, it should be more like an entrance into a community than anything else. There should be some sort of like a mentor relationship or at least a at least community relationship I think of it as like Reddit, like if I'm going to go on our agile on Reddit and just ask random magic questions, it should be that only like all the scrum trainers should be there, but , what am I paying for? I should be paying for. Entrance into the exclusive community. That's what I should be paying for. And then the, the, the, the, the, the certification, it should just be the basic rules of the community on top of everything else. It should be like don't come into this community and ask how to do a proper Gantt chart. You're going to get bounced out of the community. They're going to be like, that's ridiculous. Why we, we don't do Gantt charts here. Right. don't come into the community and ask how I'm gonna make sure that I'm getting full, full utilization out of every one of my development resources. And that's ridiculous. That's not what we believe so if it's going to be like that, but it's not like that, it's not. So you're saying more like a journeyman type of model, or maybe it'd be like a trade school type of thing. Right. So, yeah, the community will support you for a while, but you're now immersed in with those. And I, and our experts and I've paid and I've paid for my sponsorship. I paid for it. Yeah. So I wish that were the model, because then you wouldn't have this issue where people just pay a couple of hundred bucks and self declare themselves this or that enterprise, agile coach I've seen it. So I've seen people that go back to back to back to back with all these certs and the more you take the cheaper by the dozen approach. Right. And suddenly they're now this super-duper executive agile coach, whatever. And it's only been two, three months yeah. For the whole thing. Right. So I painted the organization that hired them for that because they're not going to be successful. I also pity the people cause they'll get bounced out. Yeah. Or they'll float from position to position. The kind of bill drift. Yeah. let's close out what he's saying? Yeah. I don't know. Like I he, on one hand he says I are truly agile trainers, meaning people that are agile trainers, like they, ain't nobody out there. This agile trainer training and agile agility. Oh yeah. I see what you're training and agility there. Ain't nobody out there training and agility. First of all, you corner the market. If you came up with something at training Julie, anyway, anyway, let's go over that he, he, he does miss a category here about something like are truly enterprise agile coaches, cause that's missing in here because that's a different cut of agile. Agile coaches that are ready to supervise other agile coaches are different than trainers and are different than people that can coach teams. Anyway, I know he's not really trying to make solid points, but I don't know why I'm trying to make solid points at this point in the podcast he says 3% of agile coaches have technical backgrounds that allow them to speak about technical issues, such as software design and dev ops from real experience, they dismiss the other 97% is incompetent. He was going well until then. And then the other 97% that they are dismissing as a comment. It looks at the technical coaches with suspicion after all. Aren't they? Just those weird software people. we're stopping here is he showing bias in this? I didn't look at the articles, author and his background at all in any way. But I would expect these showing bias here. It'd be like, I'm awesome. Absolutely showing bias here. Right. He's calling all of those technical people pointing heads, essentially. Right. And he's saying that these agile coaches that are technical themselves are no different than those technocrats are these, these developers. Yeah. But let me look. All right. So you, you, you take his side no, I'm sorry. I'll take his side. Cause this is I'll take his side. Cause this guy, I don't know why I'm taking all the, I, I, I probably shouldn't but I'll take his side and you take the side of normal people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Same people. what he's saying here is like, you need like the people with the technical background. He's ease inferring. They're better than. To help people do the job because they've done the job. That's what he's inferring. I believe anyway, whatever and people who've never done the job. Like people ran out and got a certification or people who can talk the talk that never actually have done it before. Like then the managerial type of class of people, he's saying like, there's a reason you can't cut it because he never done the job. That's what he's trying to back up. So we go with that line of reasoning. I would say, I would have to agree with that. Right but then I'd say the other side of it, which is he's right. When it comes to working with teams, if you've been there, worked in technology and you're working with your teams, you understand their language, perhaps some of the challenges they're facing, but that's where it stops. Say at the enterprise level, you're working with other stakeholders, there's no training for that. No, we wouldn't have done that before. And if you have the newer already a coach at that, and I, I kinda, I kinda would think also, What he's talking about kind of stops at the team level. Yes. it might transfer a bit when you're at like a scale level where you're just interacting with technical teams. I in a product position I've been in a skilled product position before I think about like, if I'm a product owner on one team and I've got a like a scaled product owner, like chief product owner or whatever, I I'm chief product owner. I have several teams that are implementing, or maybe like a group product owner, because there is that to the, there's a, we're all under one application, but the different product owners have different subsets or pieces of the application that could be as well. But at some point you're going to scale up to a product owner but at some point you climb the ladder in the product owner role to get to a point where now you're not dealing with the product owners anymore, you're driving to other parts of the business. You drive in the interface with sales, you're driving an interface with a major customer stakeholders and the vendors and account managers and, business development people or executives or marketing revenue people and now you're taking in the viewpoints and perspectives of non product people. I get where he saying, and I get what you're saying. And when I put the two together, like I reach an apex in the organization. That what he's saying no longer flies anymore. Your technical background only takes you up so far in the organization. I agree. And that's, that's also, you mentioned that from the perspective of the product owner, but I think that applies, it applies from the perspective of an agile coach also, right. You soon run out of that technical stuff and then you're dealing with people. And at that point, the only thing that's going to help you is your people skills I'll give you a very real example of something that I've dealt with more than once as an agile coach in the organization, which is the topic of capitalizing software, because of the topic of capitalizing software, it usually comes down from an executive level because your finances fighting to do something and now your pushing back against, I dunno, probably the executive of your organism I'm talking about like the chief executive or the CFO level of your organization, the chief finance person in your organization, or the chief executive in your organization saying, Hey, you need to reshape your budgetary practices to fall in line with this strategy basically. Having a technical background won't help you at all in this request. And I completely could see a development department and be like, oh, agile coach scrum master, whatever. You deal with impediments, the organization. I don't want to develop her to deal with this. You handle it. I mean what are you going to do? What, like a technical background, doesn't help you at that point. No. I mean, you could say, well, maybe if you're technical, you have an analytical mindset that might help you, but that's a stretch. It's not your technical background. That's helping you at that point. But I agree with that. But like, people will be like, oh Brian, but that's fine. And it's like, oh, that's, that's a normal team member, even a scrum master or whatever member of team will have to deal with finances. It should be handled by somebody else. Sure. Yeah. It could be. Yeah, you're right. But how many other situations like that will crop up dealing with vendors who's got to deal with vendors. Who's got to go vet, Hey we need a new tool we needed a new design tool to use. We've got to go buy a new tool, go vet. I did this when I was a QA manager for automation frameworks. Hey, should we create our own. I'm a big fan of saying roll our own. Should we create our own automation framework and learn from the ground up? Or should we try to buy an out of the box framework? Or should we try to offshore this work, like go figure out cost benefit and make some recommendations. I was lucky cause I was in an organization where the leadership of the organization would w they would demand three well-thought out options before they would even consider spending money. So you actually would have to do some good you may have to obtain beds and all of that stuff. Exactly. How's the technical background guy. It's not, it's not going to help you out. I agree with that, but that is definitely in the wheelhouse of a product owner or an agile coach at that level. Right. So yes, you as soon run out of the technology piece that he's talking about then. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think he's he's, he's being a bit pedantic, but also a bit shortsighted in his examples but you know, again his level of inflammation on the internet talk to you. Absolutely nailed it on that, right? Yeah. Okay. He finishes by saying a 1% or less of agile coaches have the relevant technical business and executive backgrounds to allow them to influence C-level executives and most recruiters hiring managers or executives have no idea how to find a professional with relevant experience. Instead they're drowned by resumes from Bush tail fresh certified coaches with one year experience or less. Well, there's two things there, right? So 1% of, or less of agile coaches have the relevant technical business and executive backgrounds, w I'm not surprised to a lot to allow them to influence see loud influency level. Exactly. But those, those three relevant technical business and executive backgrounds, that means they must've been around for some time. Together. Those kinds of backgrounds that goes into your second point. Okay. Hang on, hang on. His second way here. 0% of agile coaches would turn down a job because they feel they're not qualified for it. Like, let let's, let's knock that out. I know. I know. I know. But let, let's knock that out before we get into this. Cause I feel they're one in the same. I don't feel they're different. 1% or less. He's saying almost no, he's saying almost no agile coaches have the proper relevant experience to coach seal executives. That's what he's saying. Almost none. And he's saying no, agile coach would turn down a job that even though they don't think they're qualified for it. Okay. So they're, they're kind of the same to me. And then he also makes a remark that says. Basically recruiters, hiring managers, people that are hiring for positions, they don't know how to qualify people. Right. It's nice for other people to be attacking HR people other than us like that. It's that's kinda nice like that. I've got to give him that point though. Right? Recruiters don't have a clue sometimes just painting everything. That's such a big, wide broad brush. I mean, if we're going to go after the profession of recruiting I mean, not like, I mean, they do that for agile coaches, but I mean like what other jobs they do that like the point of a recruiter, especially a head hunter is to position your candidate as the best that you can. To get the job. So at a certain point, I I'm kind of discounting everything he's saying, if he's saying, if he's making commentary about, the agile coaching profession is kinda so wild and all over the place that people don't really know what they're looking at. When they look at candidates, that's something that I can get behind and we can talk about that's true, because I feel that like, like strap yourself in, because you feel that way about agile coaching. Let me tell you about product managers oh my goodness. For sure I agree with that. And you agree with that but he's saying everyone is like up to the job and we'll sign up for it, even if they don't have the skill for it. And then he brings it back to say, 1% of agile coaches actually have the skill to coach to the sea level. This is one of the things they added to the scrum guide was you're supposed to be coaching up in the organization. So theoretically, if you're at a small company, 40 people and you have access to the C level, even if it's your first job as a scrum master, you should be looking for opportunities to connect with your C-level, figure out what they want, figure out what your team's doing and figure out how to connect the two. If you need some mentorship and some coaching to figure out how to do that. That's one thing, should you not even try? I'm not sure what point he's trying to make here. He's not sure what he's done, but you're right. So with with this right, 1% of less, and his point is almost none. You can challenge that there are some agile coaches that have been around and I don't know, I couldn't tell you the percentage. Right. But I don't think it's almost none. I think it's now, now we've been working in an agile way for a lot longer than we had five years ago. I think there's, there are coaches around that can actually influence the C-level staff. I think there's, there's some traction right toward that. So I don't think it's 1% and it doesn't really matter what percent it is. His point here is that people will just jump at the jobs, even though they're not qualified for it. Right. And recruiters don't know how to match. Right. That's what I'm seeing here. So on the recruiter side. Yeah. I mean, I couldn't tell you how many times a week people contact me and go, I have an entry level position for you. They're only looking for two years experience. Did you check my profile for us? So I'm sure that. Prevalent out there. They just want to get somebody in bums in seats, right? Yeah. So, yes, he's got that point. Oh, healed. That what I won't agree with is that people will grab any job that they're not qualified for. I don't think you'll do that because you are doing your career. No good doing we don't need to theorize on this one. There is a study out there. I don't remember what school did the study. There's a study out there that says that a higher percentage of men will apply for positions they're not qualified for then women. There is a percentage of like women need to qualify for 90%. I think it's 90% of the items in the job description. Whereas men will only need to qualify for like 60% or 40% or something really low like that and that's kinda why, when you put job descriptions up, you should really only think about like the bare bones of what you need because you could be shooting yourself in the foot as far as diversity goes by posting a shopping list of like, oh, we'd like to have this and we'd like to have this that kind of stuff. Yeah. I never thought about it from that perspective. Yeah know, it's a real, like I should, I know I have the study saved somewhere. I should find it and link it in the show notes because I want to say it was, it's a recent study as well. It's not an, a very old study but obviously he's not like if you want, if you want, if he was talking about, relevant topics and actual, real topics like this, rather than just trying to flame some fan some flames on LinkedIn to get attention that would be one thing, but, I dunno, I, I sorta wanna defend his position on this one. I sorta don't know if I care that much anymore like to, to defend his position here the people that, again, I go back to what I said early in the podcast. The people that are willing to coach up to the C-level even, even at the actual C-level in the organization versus the people that are effective coaching at the level. I mean, sure. I guess we can have a conversation about that. I dunno how you would, I mean, the job interview would be how you would identify people capable of coaching sealable versus not, but it's, again, it's like any job interview, like how are you sure someone can do that? No, there's no asset test, right? Yeah. You're not really. I think the only thing you could do is a combination of obviously a job interview to kind of vet that. Looking at the candidate's background, what have they done that similar and how effective were they there? Yeah, so I think that's probably the way to go. Yeah. I don't know about his his take on the situation because like, it's kind of up to your organization to understand, who should be in the realm of being coached by the person that you're bringing on. Where do you see them organizationally? Do you see them coaching all the way up to the C-level? Because if so, they probably should be aligned, close to the sea level if they're supposed to be coaching to that level, you know? So the job description should be written in a way that kind of, that kind of encourages. Attracting candidates that, that have that skill or have done that before in some capacity. Yeah. As opposed to lift and shift, copy patient search that place. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you're a smaller organization or if you have a new team,, if you already have experienced people in place and you're creating a new team and you're looking for a scrum master for your new team, maybe that's the time for you to take a chance on someone will less career experience. Cause you know, you have a framework in place at your company to mentor and bring on new people. Somebody posted this today about, retrospective like, oh, well, how do we know we're getting our money's worth though. We're getting a return on our investment for the time that we invest in the the hour and a half that it takes to do. Let's say a company does an, a retrospective, every sprint and it takes an hour. And let's say you have 10 people on your team that are involved in that retrospective. Well, that's 10 hours every two weeks, you know? So so basically every month I'm spending 20 hours on retrospectives. That's a lot of time. How do I know I'm getting my business money worth for 20 hours a month basically 20 hours a month or so was that 240 hours in a year and a retrospective tech? Yeah, yeah. Two or four years. So what am I getting productivity wise and whatever wise metric wise, basically. Right. And my reply on that, my incendiary or plan on that one. Well, how do you know when you send an employee to training what you're getting back out of it, like you should use it, you should apply the same metric. And if your metric is, I don't send my employees to training, like you got a problem, you've got a real problem. You got to look at and deal with, yeah, yeah. It's hard to quantify sometimes, but you know, you can, you can point out the, the improvements that have already happened from past retros and, and point those out and say, had we not improved? What costs would we have incurred? Right. Right. That's about the only thing you can do for people that are. Understand you go retrospectives. Yeah. I'm not a huge fan of a incendiary posts on LinkedIn. I, and generally speaking I try to avoid incendiary posts in order to attract attention on social media. That seems like a, not really a great method yeah. Of using social media but, I see a lot of this and I w I was a bit concerned cause I'm like every, every gatekeeping posts like this that either tries to sell something or to position yourself or whatever. Kinda it hurts the whole community, you know what I mean? And there, and I also, I also know that there are people out there that see every post like this and it's just fuel for their fire to be like, she agile doesn't work. Absolutely. That's right. That's that's the fallacy, right? That they can quickly gravitate to reading stuff like this, especially when it comes from people that are self-titled enterprise agile coaches. Yeah. So what are you really doing? You're cutting off the branch. You're sitting on. That's what you're really doing. Maybe a, their problem is they haven't gotten a loaf yet. I've titled. You are thought provokers some thought thought leaders thought, okay. The leaders. Yeah. I'm just happy being a thought follower. That's that's work. That's work enough, but yeah. Yeah. Don't be a thought follower. That's I have to cut all this out. That's no,