Agile or Scrum Maturity Assessments!
Today I worked with some "coaches" who were creating an elaborate agile/scrum maturity assessment for each role of the Scrum Team and also for the Scrum Team as a whole.
I am really questioning this practice as an absolute waste of time, a mockery of the profession and a deliberate deviation from the purpose of each role.
For example: A scrum master being considered mature if they go through different stages along a list of different skill sets. One such skill I happened to notice is Presentation skills. I could be wrong, but not sure if this is correct. The reason being, the Scrum Master becomes the single point for all the talking. The Scrum Master summarizes the performance of the team, The Scrum Master talks about the "metrics", The Scrum Master talks about what the team did during the Sprint at the "Sprint Review (Demo)"!! Another thing that caught my attention was the Problem Solving skill of the Scrum Master. I was like, shouldn't the Scrum Master stay out of this and only intervene if absolutely necessary or if the Scrum Master is playing a dual role. An ear deafening "No" came from all those involved. The Scrum Master should be a Problem Solver!
On a similar note, the maturity assessment further states that when the Scrum Master reaches the the final stage of maturity, he/she can consider becoming an Agile Coach! You see how great these Agile Coaches are!
What are your thoughts?
Steve - You are right to question and challenge this line of thinking, as it can potentially do harm to an organization, and sounds like they misunderstand the role.
All Scrum Masters are Agile coaches from day one, it is part of the job. The Scrum Master does not graduate to an Agile coach, it is just part of the role and a choice a Scrum Master can decide to make.
Chris
What problem are the so-called maturity assessments intended to solve? Why have they supposedly become necessary in this organization now?
Today I worked with some "coaches" who were creating an elaborate agile/scrum maturity assessment for each role of the Scrum Team and also for the Scrum Team as a whole.
That is indeed bad, there are really good assessments available already
These kind of assessment can really help out to Inspect & Adapt. Also on an organizational level instead of team level. but that should be the purpose of doing it, nothing else.
The painpoints you raise are valid ones I think, and it looks like its is more about a Personal Devlopment Plan or HR instrument than on Inspecting and Adapting.
A good scrummaster can counter the introduction of these kind of things and explain what hurt comes from it, maybe that will earn you a check on the list ;)
creating an elaborate agile/scrum maturity assessment for each role of the Scrum Team and also for the Scrum Team as a whole.
Sound's very familiar to me!
This happened in my previous role, as an agile coach in a big bank here in Australia, too. There were lots of noises around building a universal agile maturity assessment tool. However, a group of "misfit agilists", including me, questioned the "WHY" behind it to the extreme.
It turned out that the intent was good: to optimise the agile adoption and increase agility by understanding the gaps.
But in fact, what they were blind to was the simple fact that optimising each part (role, artefacts, events, adoption rate, lead time, cycle time, eNPS) does not necessarily optimise the system as a whole. It is time-consuming, costly, and very disengaging. It can also break the trust between people and teams. Ultimately it may lead the organisation to catastrophic events.
However, we could convince them to use a simpler way to manage a complex adaptive system (using Dave Snowden Sensemaker tool to focus on defining:
- What can we change now?
- How to see the impact?
- How to amplify the result to achieve better?
And the primary domains we used to define the measure was agile 12 principles.
I personally think you raised a right point and would suggest keeping challenging them because:
The Scrum Master’s job is to work with the Scrum Team and the organization to increase the transparency of the artifacts. This work usually involves learning, convincing, and change.
Transparency doesn’t occur overnight, but is a path.
The problem doesnt seem to be with the assessment per se. The challenge is with what we are measuring. What benchmark and parameters we are evaluating our SMs and coaches upon. Presentation skills is certainly a bad one.
There is definitely value in measuring in what direction are we heading, how far have we travelled and how are we doing on time.
If these parameters are linked to the pole star of coaching(which could be different for different people), it could help individuals in their journey.
These "coaches" sound a lot like the dad's that coach young kids in soccer, baseball, basketball or football. They may know some of the basics but really don't know enough to do it in a way that an organization would find beneficial. (For those outside of the United States that may not get the reference, many youth organizations will have organized sport activities for kids and parents will volunteer to coach. These volunteers do not have to demonstrate any kind of profiency, only a desire. It is often disturbing to witness their coaching techniques.)
This kind of thing usually results in the exact opposite results than what was wanted. The team members will start to focus on their individual assessments because that is what will be used when it comes time for managers to justify raises and promotions. It can completely destroy team dynamics and productivity.
If I were in your place, I would start openly questioning the reasons for this. What empirical evidence do they have to show this approach will improve anything? What support does it have from management and HR? What actually problems have been seen that this is trying to solve? Everything about this sounds bad to me.