First of all, Agile is not for the ordinary software developer. An Agile project requires excellent, experiences developers. No galley slaves there, all team members are captains.

Why is that so?

Because Agile is all about being...agile. This might be a big (and unpleasant) surprise for all the management guys. The team needs to be agile, it needs to be able to decide, on very short short notice, how to proceed, adjust plans, adjust strategies, all according to the team's understanding on what is needed. After all, the team is at the core of the problem, spending all day working on it and having the collective experience of (probably) decades in similar projects. Can a typical management guy grok the complete complex workings in a project in a 15 minute meeting and issue a new plan/strategy (within the same meeting)? Nope, most likely not. That's why the team decides, six or seven brilliant guys working at the core of the problem, with a deeper understanding than six or seven management guys.

Scrum adds the Scrum Master and a set of pre-defined rules, to allow an Agile team to get onto the Agile path more smoothly. Sill, in Scrum the team decides - the SM is not a manager or a boss in the traditional way. This is not just a disturbing thought for upper management, it's outright alarming. The team managing themselves, totally out of control? Nope. They control themselves, because they are just THE brilliant software development team for exactly this job.

Iy your upper management is committed to Scrum, they will know that the team decides. The Scrum Master, as the spokesperson of the team, is therefore always right.

In real life, however, so-called "Scrum projects" are getting set up wrongly by management right from the start.

"The team decides? We can't have that in our company culture."

"Yes, we will use the best and most brilliant software developers...let's see who is available...yeah, Mr. Dumbman is available, no one else wanted him..."

"We will use an IMPROVED Scrum method...based on Scrum plus our 40 years of management knowledge and experience on how to successfully manage zero-defect IT projects..."

"But my Scrum book said that Agile is the new silver bullet...it didn't say anything about the need for brilliant people. The seconds paragraph in the foreword? No, I didn't read THAT far!"

First of all, Agile is not for the ordinary software developer. An Agile project requires excellent, experienced developers. No galley slaves there, all team members are captains.

Why is that so?

Because Agile is all about being...agile. This might be a big (and unpleasant) surprise for all the management guys. The team needs to be agile, it needs to be able to decide, on very short short notice, how to proceed, adjust plans, adjust strategies, all according to the team's understanding on what is needed. After all, the team is at the core of the problem, spending all day working on it and having the collective experience of (probably) decades in similar projects. Can a typical management guy grok the complete complex workings in a project in a 15 minute meeting and issue a new plan/strategy (within the same meeting)? Nope, most likely not. That's why the team decides, six or seven brilliant guys working at the core of the problem, with a deeper understanding than six or seven management guys.

Scrum adds the Scrum Master and a set of pre-defined rules, to allow an Agile team to get onto the Agile path more smoothly. Still, in Scrum the team decides - the SM is not a manager or a boss in the traditional way. This is not just a disturbing thought for upper management, it's outright alarming. The team managing themselves, totally out of control? Nope. They control themselves, because they are just THE brilliant software development team for exactly this job.

If your upper management is committed to Scrum, they will know that the team decides. The Scrum Master, as the spokesperson of the team, is therefore always right.

In real life, however, so-called "Scrum projects" are getting set up wrongly by management right from the start.

"The team decides? We can't have that in our company culture."

"Yes, we will use the best and most brilliant software developers...let's see who is available...yeah, Mr. Dumbman is available, no one else wanted him..."

"We will use an IMPROVED Scrum method...based on Scrum plus our 40 years of management knowledge and experience on how to successfully manage zero-defect IT projects..."

"But my Scrum book said that Agile is the new silver bullet...it didn't say anything about the need for brilliant people. The second paragraph in the foreword? No, I didn't read THAT far!"