The harmfulness of Scrum Master double roles and what you can do about it

The other day I had an intense conversation with managers about the topic of double roles of a Scrum Master. One of the managers was also a Scrum Master. He and his superior defended the viewpoint that it is a great idea to have one person being the line manager for the teams and at the same time being the Scrum Master for the same team. Based on my observations about the typical dysfunctions created by this kind of set-up, I express my thinking that the Scrum Master must be a dedicated role if the organization is seriously wanting to introduce Scrum. As a result, I was labeled kind of religious and “inflexible to adapt to their thinking”.

Harmful Agile Adoptions by Playing with Words

This is an ad-hoc post written out of pure frustration with many so-called AGILE adoptions.

(Originally published by Lv Yi on Oct 3, 2019)

How could we create a path of least resistance towards one backlog?

(Originally published by Lv Yi on May 7, 2020)

I often get this question – what do you measure while adopting Agile?

The conversation usually goes like this:

[me] What is it about adopting Agile?
[him] … doing Scrum.
[me] What effect do you expect after adopting Agile?
[him] higher efficiency.
[me] How would you define higher efficiency?
[him] … finishing more tasks.
[me] Why would adopting Agile lead to higher efficiency?
[him] Agile means higher efficiency, doesn’t it?!

The thinking is fuzzy, to say the least. I suggest to focus on reasoning before measuring.

(Originally published by Lv Yi on June 8, 2020)