The Scrum Alliance and the Business Agility Institute partnered on a client survey focused on—Skills in the New World of Work released in October 2023. You can get a copy of the report here.
As a follow-up to the last article I shared on this topic, I thought I’d share something that Jesse Fewell wrote reacting to it.
His reaction was posted on the Scrum Alliance blog, so seemingly in full support of the report.
In it, Jesse highlights three fundamental pivots that agilists should be considering based on the report’s findings. I’ll share my thoughts on each pivot next.
Pivot #1 – Broadcast your bottom-line impact.
This recommendation aligns with the number one human skill recommendation from the report—Communication skills.
The Scrum Alliance and the Business Agility Institute partnered on a client survey focused toward—Skills in the New World of Work that was released in October 2023. You can get a copy of the report here.
The key question on the cover – Which agile skills are most in demand in today’s workforce?
But on page #20, the key question is reframed to – Which skills are most in demand in today’s workforce?
While the questions are close, I’m imagining the “agile” drove most of the respondent thinking.
I would encourage everyone to read it, as it contains some interesting findings and insights. That being said, there are some things in the survey (assumptions, commentary, shared data, and conclusions) that I want to challenge a bit. While the overall tone of this article will be constructive feedback, I don’t want to diminish the effort behind the report.
In a recent Moose Herd the discussion surrounded the release of the report and the impact and relevancy of the findings. How it was something interesting, thought-provoking, insightful, and new. I honestly didn’t read it entirely that way. Instead, I felt it also a bit contrived, self-serving, and old news. Now let’s serially walk through the report for my more detailed reactions…
My friend and colleague Mike Hall inspired me with a recent article he shared on Choosing a SAFe Training Partner.
To be clear, I was once an SPC but I fell away from being an active practitioner of SAFe. That being said, I’m often quite opinionated about it, but over time, I have less and less direct experience.
Mike is the opposite. He’s incredibly experienced with it. So, when Mike tells me something from a SAFe perspective, I know that’s not based on opinion but on hard-won experience. And I respect that.
I really appreciated his questions about engaging a SAFe training partner. But I felt there might be some additional questions to add. Not only for a training partner but for a consultant who is prescribing SAFe as the scaling solution for my organization.
What makes my Certified Agile Leadership training valuable and different?
I’ve been delivering my version of the CAL-I class for approximately 3-years. I deliver it mostly as a private class, nearly 80% of the time, to client leadership teams. I’ve heard feedback from many attendees that my CAL class is a game-changing experience and quite different from other leadership classes they’ve taken. I’ve even heard this feedback from attendees who’ve attended other CAL classes and been disappointed with those experiences.
I’m not saying I’ve got all the answers or that this will be the best class that you’ll ever attend. But what I am saying is that, within the scope of becoming a better agile leader, I think this class “nails it”. Let me share some of the key differentiators.
Late last year I took the Leadership Circle Profile certification class with Shahmeen Sadiq. It was a 3-day class for the core Leadership Circle Profile and then a 1-day follow-up for the Leadership Culture Survey.
I was looking for an instrument (360-degree tool) to use in my Certified Agile Leadership (CAL I & II) workshops to provide insights for leaders making the shift towards a more agile mindset. I’d been using Bill Joiner’s, Leadership Agility tool and I found it unwieldy for my purposes in the class.
Well, after four days, I’m excited about my new tools. I believe the LCP is a great tool for individually coaching leaders. And I’m even more excited about the LCS and how it will nicely dovetail into my private CAL I classes.
The Leadership Circle
I can’t do the instruments/surveys justice in a short blog post. What I will say is that the focus is on showing us the balance between our reactive tendencies and our creative competencies. Reactive focuses more on controlling and managing our teams. While creative attempts to achieve results by building and leveraging our teams’ capabilities.
My colleague Don MacIntyre invited me to attend and co-teach his Scrum @ Scale Certified Practitioner class in Raleigh, NC last week (September 10-11th, 2018). It was in my hometown so how could I refuse.
It was a 2-day class with ~20 attendees. There was a nice mix of agile and Scrum experience across a spectrum of well-known companies leveraging agile at scale. We even had one gentleman fly in from India for the class.
Don spent most of the time teaching, but I had a few opportunities to teach basic Scrum and contribute to our general coaching conversations. Overall, I think the class went very well.
Introduction
A colleague of mine in Dallas, Jack Schwartz, sent me an email asking the following:
Bob,
I’m working on a presentation focused towards Hiring a ScrumMaster and I wonder if you could provide some insights to the following questions:
- What are the top skills you like to see in a good Scrum Master?
- How can a hiring manager tell if a prospect is truly an agilest and not just using scrum words with ‘legacy’ project management? (other than clairvoyance)
Thanks,
Jack.
Well, Jack here is my initial stab at a response…
What are the top skills you like to see in a good ScrumMaster?
Well, first I’d like to say what I’m not looking for:
- I’m not looking for someone who is strong in a functional area within the team. For example, if I’m staffing for a ScrumMaster in a team with a weak or non-existent Development Team Lead in it, I’m not looking for the SM to fill that role. Or an equivalent, PO, UX, BA, Testing, or any other role. If I have a skills gap or weakness in a team, I need to fill that with someone with those skills.
A few of weeks ago I attended a 3-day workshop given by Trans4mation which was entitled, Agile Transformational Leader. They are a relatively new company that is focusing on the agile adoption, now transformation, space. They are led by Michele Madore and Michael Spayd. Michael is well known in the agile coaching space, having founded ACI with Lyssa Adkins. And Michelle is a very seasoned enterprise-level agile coach. They both co-taught the workshop with Stuart McCalla.
One of the backdrops for the course is the Leadership Circle assessment tool for leadership affinity. It wasn’t clear to me going into the workshop just how pervasive this tool/model was in their material. To say that it is “central” is probably an understatement.
In this post, I want to share some of my observations and learnings associated with the workshop.
One of the new capabilities of my agile coaching practice is the ability to deliver the Scrum Alliance, Certified Agile Leadership (CAL1) class. It’s a relatively new certification for the Scrum Alliance and it targets the management and leadership levels within organizations who are planning to or who have already adopted agile approaches to software development.
I’ve been coaching agile transformations (organizations, groups, teams) for over 15 years. During that time, I’ve noticed that there are literally 3-tiers to any transformation:
- Sr. Leadership Tier
- Organizational Leadership & Management Tier
- Team Tier
Most organizations only focus the transformation or adoption towards the team level. But in my experience, success is in effectively guiding all three tiers towards agile principles, tactics, and leaner agile mindset.
In fact, I think the critical tier is in the middle.
I’ve sometimes heard it called the “frozen middle” because it’s where true agile transformation lies, but it’s the tier that often gets the least attention.
Enter – Certified Agile Leadership
The CAL is solely focused towards the middle-tier. And finally, we’re engaging leadership folks with training and coaching of their agile transformational skills.
