Agile Practitioners and Future Jobs

Agile Practitioners and Future Jobs There are insights that only come to me after a good conversation. My earlier self would have said “too late, a missed opportunity, again less than perfect”. Right now I rather think “moving forward mentally, another opportunity will come, great”. Recently, in the breaks between the recording, we had chatted about how wrong and unattractive the idea of “Scrum Masters should work themselves out of a job” is. How to connect with AgileDad: - [website] ⁠https://www.agiledad.com/⁠ https://www.agiledad.com/ - [instagram] ⁠https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/⁠ https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/ - [facebook] ⁠https://www.facebook.com/RealAgileDad/⁠ https://www.facebook.com/RealAgileDad/ - [Linkedin] ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/leehenson/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/leehenson/

• 0:16Speaker 00

  There are many insights that only come to me after a good conversation. My earlier self might have said, "Too late, I missed opportunity again, less than perfect." Right now, I'd rather think, moving forward mentally, another opportunity will come. Great. Recently, it was after I did a previous podcast with a guest host. We shared a break after the recording. And we chatted about how bad the idea was that Scrum Masters should work themselves out of a job. I've just seen so many Scrum Masters struggle. And now with the advent of Agile project management,

• 0:56Speaker 00

  the integration of organizational change management and AI into their job responsibilities. I needed to have, I needed to have some additional guidance. And it was only a couple of days later, I had an epiphany. A good Scrum Master never works themselves out of a job. A great Scrum Master works himself into their next job. And I thought that was pretty cool. As so often in hindsight, this looks obvious. For motivation and engagement, it's a lot better to work towards something than away from something. And focusing on what you gain is way better than focusing on what you might lose.

• 1:35Speaker 00

  I also strongly believe that it sets a better example regarding self-care and ultimately credibility. I mean, would you follow people that don't take care of their own safety, whose path requires being ready to become a martyr? Being a Scrum Master, Agile coach, change agent, Agile practitioner, or however you want to call the name, doesn't matter. It's not such a popular job these days. But more importantly, it must not have been, it must not be a career Nirvana. There needs to be something after it. So for the first time, I heard this idea was when one of my colleagues a few years back expressed this and back then I didn't like to hear it, so I just kind of blocked it out.

• 2:19Speaker 00

  It felt like letting the other agile practitioners down if I said anything. Since then, I fundamentally revised my stance and I feel a lot better about where I am today.

• 2:32Speaker 00

  I have still not made up my mind completely on how this might look, but I could easily see that I could establish four general patterns to help me figure things out and I'll share those four with you now. So one, you move from doing the work to organizing it and teaching others and consulting managers. The next move is back to the trenches, refresh your firsthand knowledge, get your hands dirty again for a short time, either build yourself or work with a team and build on a daily basis. Two, use all the valuable lessons that you learned to become a manager. I have experienced this pattern work for others. Once you've seen a good manager, you'll have little tolerance for a bad one.

• 3:17Speaker 00

  So true.

• 3:20Speaker 00

  Number three, switch to a more traditional function and change it from within. Become a project manager. I know it sounds crazy. Become a business analyst. There are so many options to live in a modern and updated version of the old established job profile. Figure out ways to incorporate the best practices and things you could do while still hanging on to the traditional way of doing things. Like I said, Agile is making a comeback. Next is number four, be crazy. Go somewhere completely different. Of course, this sounds like a placeholder, but I really mean it. I read of people who completely dropped out of IT and never regretted it. It does not have to be that radical. But all this time, spreading

• 4:03Speaker 00

  the idea about being agile and open to new ideas should show itself here. You should have some evidence of it. Nobody says that you have to wait until your job is in danger or deemed superfluous. Look actively forward. Discuss where the job journey should go.

• 4:20Speaker 00

  And I guess I'll talk last about a success story that I heard about a couple of years ago.

• 4:27Speaker 00

  For every couple of teams, there were continuous delivery leads. The CDLs were part of a newly hired, partially existing colleague. I don't remember any bad ones. There were several good ones, several really good ones. And without claiming to provide a complete job description, these people had the responsibility to care about everything regarding releases and fixes, documentation, tickets, approvals, whatever formality was necessary, and track that everything was ready. This lifted a lot of work off the shoulders of the teams. They didn't need to put up with all that anymore. Of course, having a whole position for that, what seemed like bureaucracy and overhead, that wasn't nice either. Here comes the trick.

• 5:13Speaker 00

  The CDLs worked hard, not only to do the work, but also to make the amount of work necessary shrink over time. So the course of several years, one after the other, switched into a different position without being replaced by a full-time one, an agile coach. The company had a future for them in mind and had prepared a seamless switch. It was so successful that I'd even forgotten about this. All the more reason to bring it up now and celebrate. Maybe today you would call CDL something different, like an agile delivery manager. Whatever the name or label, be very disciplined people and focus on getting stuff done

• 5:57Speaker 00

  while being friendly and approachable so that people actually like you and want to know your name. That's going to do it for this episode. I hope you enjoyed it. If you have a topic you want to discuss, learn more at agiledad.com. We'd love to hear from you. And as always, we encourage you to stay healthy, stay well, and stay agile, my friends. Until next time, do take care. Bye now.