I was a newly hired Director of Engineering a company that drank the Kool-Aid of Agile and had an independent team of Scrummasters who just facilitated morning stand-ups. They had no project management responsibilities, so I kept asking what do they do all day after the morning stand-up and no one could answer me. I got severe pushback that they should take on any set of greater responsibilities.
I founded several new teams at that company and was approached by the head of the Scrummasters to integrate with their process. I flatly said no, I don't need your services, I've been running teams for 20 years and I'm good. It became this huge blowup that went all the way up the chain of execs until a compromise was reached - I had to accept Scrummasters for my teams but I could direct them to do nothing except basic JIRA ticket shuffling.
Fast forward a few years, I've left that place, but my teams became the centerpieces of the company and all new teams are now modeled after them. The Scrummaster team was cut in half.
The best part is my team structure is closer to the spirit of Agile with self-organizing teams empowered to operate how best suits them and the Scrummaster team was forcing rigid ceremonies that were at best time consuming and at worst completely useless.
I founded several new teams at that company and was approached by the head of the Scrummasters to integrate with their process. I flatly said no, I don't need your services, I've been running teams for 20 years and I'm good. It became this huge blowup that went all the way up the chain of execs until a compromise was reached - I had to accept Scrummasters for my teams but I could direct them to do nothing except basic JIRA ticket shuffling.
Fast forward a few years, I've left that place, but my teams became the centerpieces of the company and all new teams are now modeled after them. The Scrummaster team was cut in half.
The best part is my team structure is closer to the spirit of Agile with self-organizing teams empowered to operate how best suits them and the Scrummaster team was forcing rigid ceremonies that were at best time consuming and at worst completely useless.