Myths and Misunderstandings about Self-Management

Few things in Scrum are as misunderstood and misinterpreted as much as a Scrum Team’s need for self-management. At the highest level, it’s not a very difficult concept, but the nuances tend to throw things into question. 

Simply said: the team needs the autonomy to get its work done. However, the phrase “self-management” has led some to believe that Scrum is anti-management or anti-manager. This is simply not true. In fact, there are several myths that we’d like to debunk:

Myth: Self-management means that no managers are needed and all of the traditional work of “managers” is done by people on the team. This could include compensation, hiring, firing, promotions and career development. This also suggests that Scrum requires flat organizational structures, no titles or individual bonuses.

Reality: Self-management on the Scrum Team doesn’t mean “no managers” in the organization. It’s true that no managers are required to constitute a Scrum Team, but that doesn’t mean that no managers are required in the organization. 

In organizations that are using Scrum well, the manager’s role switches away from directing the team, toward supporting the team. They are often the right people in the organization to make sure that the Scrum Teams have everything they need to be successful, such as the necessary equipment, budget and cooperation from personnel outside the Scrum Team.

Myth: Self-management means that the team isn’t required to follow rules from outside the team. If they are empowered to make their own decisions, this means that they can choose to ignore managers and stakeholders and are unaccountable to them.

Reality: Scrum takes accountability very seriously. The team as a whole is accountable for creating valuable work and each of the members of the team have clear accountabilities. There is nothing in self-management that encourages chaos and suggests the suspension of rules from outside the team. Scrum Teams are actually very disciplined in their work and commitments.

Myth: Teams are completely self-contained, have all the skills necessary to do all the work and should not need to go outside of their teams for help.

Reality: It’s true that in order to effectively manage their work, the team needs to have the necessary skills to get the work done. However, complex work often requires the temporary assistance of individuals with specialist skills. Often, there are too few of these specialists for them to be full-time members on individual Scrum Teams and they must be shared across many teams. Self-managing teams may not have all the skills necessary, but they are effective collaborators with colleagues outside their team and together they determine how the work will be done.

Myth: When self-managing teams encounter challenges it’s always best to let them work it out themselves.

Reality: Self-managing teams work hard to remove their own impediments, but this is not a license to ignore challenges that they cannot overcome. We’ve heard horror stories of “busy” stakeholders who do not provide adequate guidance on high-level goals or adequate feedback on the work being done, claiming that they are allowing the team to “self-manage.” Similarly, we’ve heard of Scrum Masters who, upon identifying unhealthy conflict among team members, ignore the growing team dysfunction and claim that they are allowing the team to “self-manage” their way to a solution.

Neither of these examples are supporting the team’s self-management, they are examples of abandoning their responsibilities to the team.