One of the most common myths about Agile and Scrum is that it’s something that only affects the developers. People, in particular executives and directors, believe that undertaking an Agile transformation means project teams change the way they work together and the rest of the organization just reaps the benefits. While this may be true in the short term, it’s often leadership and management that have to make the biggest changes for Scrum to be successful.

I was inspired to write this post after a chat with a friend who works in an organization that has been using Scrum for a few years. He told me that it didn’t take long for the weaker leaders to struggle as the organization adopted Scrum. He also said that the changes to how teams worked and were led created natural leaders who stepped forward and took the reins, sometimes even people no one expected.

I’m going to explain this with a rather facile example. Continue reading →