On a Slack group I attend, there was some discussion among Scrum trainers and coaches about people who, in this day and age, aspire to be Certified Scrum Trainers (CSTs). I’ll comment below, but first my remarks on that day:

When I accepted Ken Schwaber’s invitation to be a CST, I had two motivations. First, it was clear that Scrum was winning market share, and if one wanted to impact the future of “Agile”, Scrum was probably the place to be standing. Second, and far less important, I thought it might bring in some money. Mostly, though, I just wanted to be inside the tent pissing out rather than v/v.

The Scrum Alliance had a motto about transforming the world of work, and I actually saw that as a possibility for “Agile”, and therefore, Scrum. That was what I cared about. Changing work for the better: that was important to me.

Very quickly, Scrum, and especially Scrum training, became a way of making money, for the Scrum Alliance, and for the CSTs. There has never been any consistent assessment of the impact of Scrum training on the success of Scrum adoptions. We mostly do not know whether Scrum really transforms the world of work. We do know, or at least I know and my friends know, that Scrum (as done if not as taught) makes the lives of dev team members worse rather than better. Since dev team members outnumber CSMs by a factor of seven plus-or-minus two (joke but they really do outnumber CSMs a lot), even if CSMs (and CSPOs) were full of joy, Scrum (as done if not as taught) would be a losing proposition in terms of improving the lives of the whole team.

We know that some CSTs are rather clearly in it for the money. We do not know what they teach, we do not know what outcomes they are getting, we do not know the variance in outcome related to the individual CST, nor to the specifics of what is taught, nor to the style of the course. All of these, one would think, might impact outcomes substantially. But we do not know, and on the average, the Scrum Alliance does not care, and as far as I can tell, on the average, the CSTs do not care either.

Perhaps the handwriting was on the wall when the Scrum Alliance hired a literal former manager of clowns as its CEO. But even when it tried the co-executive Chief ScrumMaster Chief ProductOwner idea (interesting if not commonly sought after), there was never any focus on anything much beyond printing more CSTs, printing more CSMs, printing more money.

I see no evidence that the situation is improving. And that’s OK, the universe unfolds as it will. But I have to admit that I had hoped for something far more grand.

Now let me say right here that I strongly believe that Agile as we intended it, and Scrum as we intended it, have improved the work lives of a lot of people, and have improved the products and productivity of many organizations. Used well, with the proper spirit, the ideas and approach of Agile / Scrum (as intended) seem to me to be pretty darn good even today, and of course there has been some really useful learning and improvement along the way.

However, it seems to be the fate of would-be world-changing ideas to become watered down and warped by The System, and that has certainly happened here. What are now called “Scrum” and “Agile” are all too frequently nothing like the ideas, principles, and practices we started with a quarter-century ago, and on the average, the situation isn’t much improved.

However, whenever I say something like the above, I hear from people who have made good use of the original ideas and the good ideas that have grown from them. The uptake of the ideas has continued, the spread continues, good continues to be done. I’ll close by echoing my closing to the trainers, a bit revised:

Things have not improved as much as I had hoped they would, nor as fast. That’s OK: the universe unfolds as it will. I continue to hope for more, and to hope that you’ll be part of making good things happen.