How long before the Agile Coaching Industry’s bubble bursts?

and things you can do to stay “safe” when it finally bursts

One of the senior executives I know personally confided to me that she is wary of Agile Coaches who come at a very high price without any significant outcomes. This admission was intriguing for me, and I decided to catch up with her over a coffee to get deeper into this.

This leader was an agile coach herself at a point in her career. She is a firm believer in agile ways of thinking and working and the need for agile coaches to drive transformation. Yet, in private, she shared that there are plenty of coaches around but she struggles to find coaches that can make an impact.

Her experience is not unique. IMHO, a bubble is indeed forming in the Agile coaching industry, and the question is not whether this bubble will pop but when.

Do you remember the dot-com bubble?

The dot-com bubble, also sometimes called the Internet bubble, points to the period between 1995 and 2000 when investors pumped money into Internet-based start-ups hoping that these fledgling companies would soon turn a profit. The speculative investments in dot-coms drove up equity markets around the globe. On Friday, March 10, 2000, the NASDAQ Composite stock market index peaked at 5,048.62 (Source: Wikipedia). This surge was from less than 1000 in 1995. By the end of the stock market downturn of 2002, stocks had lost $5 trillion in market capitalization since the peak. At its trough on October 9, 2002, the NASDAQ-100 had dropped to 1,114, down 78% from its peak. (Source: Wikipedia)

The dot-com bubble was because of a mad rush to make money off the internet’s growing popularity, often without the proper fundamentals in place for the business to succeed.

The Agile Transformation Story

The Agile story is not very different. There is no doubt that business agility is the need of the hour in today’s competitive landscape. However, there is a mad rush to declare yourself “agile” and join the bandwagon. Agile had humble beginnings with the release of a manifesto in 2001 by a group of techies. Today, Agile has made inroads into the boardrooms of large multi billion dollar enterprises. Big and crazy budgets flow into agile transformations. This influx of capital and the massive gap between demand and supply of scrum masters and agile coaches has given rise to an industrial complex that churns out players who promise to take you to the moon but may struggle to drive you until the next block.

That is the story of many an agile transformation. Millions of dollars are put in so you can have a faster sports car but all you get is a new shiny bullock cart.

What is feeding the bubble?

FOMO creates a panic rush

The fear of missing out is a crucial trigger for several large corporations to jump on the agile bandwagon. What’s driving them is not necessarily a pursuit of agility but the feverishness to get the latest shiny gadget that’s out on the market. Ongoing and sustained marketing campaigns from players who benefit from this mad rush aggravate the FOMO and feed the vicious cycle.

Consultants and Framework Creators sell the transformation dream.

Transformation dreams have been sold for time immemorial. Frameworks, models and “proven approaches” to transform you from where you are to where you want to be is the trademark of the consulting industrial complex. Agile is the new silver bullet that will give you nirvana from all your problems, and there are a plethora of frameworks, some more popular than others, to attain this nirvana.

Boardroom rolls in the Big Money

Board rooms do not want to be left behind and ensure they get their “strategic investments” right. “Strategic” often means we do not see ROI but let us take the risky bet for a future potential gain — that same pattern drove the investors who burnt their hands in the dot-com bubble. Common sense takes a backseat, and everyone is happy to bring in overpriced consultants or make crazy investments in tooling that might never really get used.

Surviving the Hype and Protecting yourself from the Bubble Burst

Even if you understand it’s a bubble and a mad rush, it is hard to stay out of it. The ecosystem push will ensure that you, as leaders, will embark on a transformation journey at some point in time.

There are a couple of traps to avoid that can minimize the damage to yourself and your organization in this crazy mad rush.

Don’t Fall for the Framework Trap.

There is never going to be one framework that will fit your context. Be it SAFe, DAD, LeSS or any other, take the best from them to what works in your context and be aggressive and assertive in discarding or resisting the parts that don’t make sense.

I recently talked to someone obsessed with implementing Lean Portfolio Management from SAFe. We spent the next 30 mins discussing why he needed that. It was a struggle for him. It is not to say that his portfolio level processes have no problems. They have. However, he had decided that SAFe Lean Portfolio Management would solve them. We agreed together that it won’t.

Now, SAFe LPM has a good set of practices; however, common sense should prevail. You cannot decide on a solution before you clearly understand the problem you are trying to solve. Some people can teach your grandmother how to cook a new foreign recipe with Scrum, but does she really need to practice Scrum for that. Maybe yes, maybe not.

Frameworks are tools, not religious doctrines. Don’t believe everything the frameworks industry tells you. Use the frameworks. But also your common sense before deciding to go down the path of a particular framework and hiring “certified consultants” to help you implement that.

Don’t Fall for the Certification Trap.

The second trap in the agile coaching industrial complex is the training and certifications. Certifications are where big money is. Train everyone, says one of the leading frameworks. The training is helpful; however, they are often given by fly-by-the-night coaches and trainers who took the shortest route to learn — they got trained themselves. They attended some “training programs” to become a coach. Again that in itself is not a problem. Everyone is a “rookie” when they start. That’s okay; however, the demand-supply gap and crazy money coming into agile lands many of these “rookie coaches” into transformational roles. They have no clue what to do other than parrot what they have learned in their training or read books.

You do need coaches but don’t let certification be a yardstick for you when you bring in someone. You also might need rookies, but ensure there are enough experienced coaches around who have been “battle-tested” to mentor them.

The two traps above don’t just apply to transformation leaders but also the agile coaches. Yes, you are raking in a lot of money now, but you have to safeguard yourself for a future when this bubble bursts.

Work hard to achieve outcomes and build an authentic brand as someone who brings results, not implements frameworks.

Make an effort to acquire those certifications but try to work with clients who hire you for your overall skills and value that you will add rather than those who hired you because you have an “XYZ” certification.

The coaching and consulting industry is and always will be about solving problems. If you have skills and a brand around that — you are future proof to the crisis that will happen when the agile coaching bubble finally bursts. There will always be a place for coaches who can provide value and a good return on investment.

The Bubble will burst.

We already have a generation of developers that have never seen waterfall and need no training on agile, and agile is the only way they know how to work.

This generational shift is not just evident in the practices but also the mindset. More and more new leaders naturally display servant leadership than command and control behaviors.

Many of the players that fueled this mad rush have already accomplished their “transformations” — at least on the PowerPoints and might not be able to keep on funding.

Even if we discount all of the bad apples in the agile coaching industry, the above shifts will bring down the need for “agile coaches” as we know this role today. The agile coaches might metamorphose and take on roles and responsibilities we do not foresee today, but the role as we know it today and done by majority of the “factory” coaches will cease to exist. No one is going to ask to teach people how to run a sprint planning or a daily standup in a few years.

The Wrap

The Agile Coaching Bubble burst may not be an accelerated or singular event that triggers the chain in a way that happened in the dot-com bubble. It may be more gradual, but it will happen. This balloon will ultimately lose air. Will it be two years or five or ten? That’s the million-dollar question !!

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