Is the Agile Great Depression Upon Us?

A few weeks ago I was sitting in the pub with a group of people, all students, from different backgrounds. One of them was a teacher who specialises in Russian linguistics, another was a charity worker. They asked what I did and I said 'Agile Coach' and explained a little about the role.

To which both of them said a variation of

'oh, like a Scrum Master, I have considered switching to that.'

That moment has been replaying in my mind like the Joseph Kennedy stock story. ??

In 1929, at the height of an economic boom in America, Joseph Kennedy Sr. (father of JFK) was working as a stockbroker on Wall Street. As the story goes, Joseph was walking around when he decided to sit down for a shoeshine. While polishing his shoes, the young worker gave Joseph some of his favorite stock picks. When Joseph heard the shoeshine boy giving out stock tips, he figured the party was about to end, and it was time to get out of the market. Joseph proceeded to exit his positions in the market and bought short positions that bet on the market going down.

Shortly after that, the stock market entered a free fall. On Monday, October 28, 1929, the market dropped about 13%. The next day it fell another 12%. These became better known as Black Monday and Black Tuesday, and ushered the United States into The Great Depression.

Did Joseph profit from this type of bet? Absolutely.

It's estimated that he made somewhere north of $150 million during that period, which equates to roughly $3.5 billion in today’s dollars.

I see Cliff Berg and others loudly proclaiming not just the death of Scrum but the death of Agile as an industry and I wonder if there is some merit to the argument.

Whilst the recent lay-offs could be a canary in the coal mine; the real indicator is, like the shoe-shine stock tips, everyone thinks they can do it and the value of the market is swiftly deteriorating.

Without trying to offend anyone I have always thought it was a damning indictment of individuals that they need one (or even several) courses to explain the concepts in the Scrum Guide. It's a 14 page pamphlet.

If extra support is needed, Gunther Verheyen published an excellent small book to explaining it.

You can sit the mock exams for free.

Why would you need a trainer? It's a 14 page pamphlet. If you need someone to explain the 14 pages to you, there is a strong likelihood you won't be a good Scrum Master.

Scott Fisher, the American mountaineer, was renowned for ascending the world's highest mountains without supplemental oxygen. He was also the founder of Mountain Madness, one of the earliest professional mountain shepherding companies.

Scott, allegedly, had some disdain for the clients being carried up Everest, Denali, K2 and others. When fellow mountaineer Rob Hall, founder of Adventure Consultants, asked Scott why do you feel this way? Scott responded

I just feel like if you cannot get up the mountain by yourself, you shouldn't be on it in the first place

That quote has resonated with me for a long time. I have always hated being tour-guided to anything worthwhile.

I have climbed mountains and I did it solo without any help which probably informs my own values. Colleagues at work jokingly describe me as the Agile Coach who hates Agile Coaches.

It also likely explains why I was also a Scrum Master for over a year before I attended the course and only because HR asked me to do so and paid for it. I refused to pay a Scrum trainer out of my own pocket.

I have never paid for a single agile or Scrum certification and I never will.

I don't need an external company to validate my experiences. The true measure of my value is in referrals and references. When, mainly developers, request me by name, that's all I need. I am not paying Scrum or ICA or KBU or any of the other certification shops to pass their arbitrary exams.

There is a marked difference between knowledge and certification.

All Agile knowledge can be gained for free.

I have watched over the years as the Scrum Guide was repackaged into, not one or two but a grand total of 14 certifications by Scrum.org yielding over 1 million Scrum certified workers.

Noe of this includes the trainer certifications and that is before we talk about Scrum Alliance and the plethora of other training providers and all of the books. I once received an email from a Jeff Sutherland training provider offering to teach me how to run remote backlog refinement for the bargain price of $1500.

If I need someone to teach me how to facilitate a refinement session then what on earth am I doing for a living?

It could simply be that the ideas, practices and values have gained such widespread acceptance that they are now extremely well-known (which is a good thing), or as stated above, it could indicate the market is so saturated that the value of the role and the framework is heading to zero.

A natural market response will be to create a competing product or service but perhaps companies and individuals just have massive fatigue from the word agile or anything to do with Agile.

A few weeks ago someone engaged me on LinkedIn and tried to assert their credibility as an senior certified Lego Agile games trainer. The course cost was $2000.

If you have read this far, let that sink in for a moment.

A rational thinking adult, paid another adult, $2000 in order to be certified in using Lego to play Agile games.

Sometimes I honestly don't know what we are doing here. Here is UKIE charging ￡75 to learn Scrum with Lego.

Somewhere a group of developers is trying to produce complex software, battling with a bureaucratic organisation and in the room across from them is a group of people are telling the engineers to toss a coin or build a tower out of marshmallows.

We are approaching a level of absurdity in the Agile space that only a fiction other could invent.

I don't know where our industry is headed but I can see that the consistent dilution of the ideas and the overwhelming flood of entrants must be weakening the marketplace.

I will leave any readers with this quote from Will Durant.

In 2001 a group of people (rebels) attempted to challenge the status quo of the project management industry.

And in doing so, created the New New Product Management Industry, except this time it uses nursery games which makes it appealing to anyone and everyone willing to pay the entrance fee.

When a group of people in the pub, with no business or software experience say 'I am thinking about becoming a Scrum Master' we should all take heed that a Depression is on the horizon.

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