The Impact Of Role Descriptions

Yesterday, I listened to a podcast episode 🎤 in which a CEO explained their organizational transformation towards autonomous (Agile) teams. It was a nice interview, and lots of good stuff seemed to be happening.

However, what struck me was the language he used to describe the roles & responsibilities. Each Agile team had a ‘superior’ above them. The responsibility of the superior was to support the teams in their journey to become fully autonomous.

The word ‘superior’ just sounds so wrong ❌. It means that someone is higher in rank, status, or quality. It can also be understood as “better than others” or “above others”.

It was a Dutch company 🇳🇱, in Dutch ‘superieur’ sounds a bit arrogant (IMHO), maybe it sounds different in English, but I doubt it.

I frequently see organizations with similar questionable roles. One company created the role of “Agile Team Master”. They didn’t want Scrum Masters because it was too specific (sounds reasonable), and their understanding was that this person should focus merely on the team. Hence, Agile Team Masters.

I talked to various team members of that company, and it was perceived as weird and also a contradiction with the Agile transformation (with autonomous teams) they were part of. Some of the people were also acting as ‘Masters of the Team’. 🙄

I realize that the title Scrum Master isn’t perfect either. But at least it doesn’t imply you’re a master of people. Master of Scrum isn’t too bad, right? 🤷‍♀️

Anyhow, I just wonder what the success rate of Agile transformations is if you keep roles in a place like ‘Superiors’, ‘Agile Team Masters’, and other strong hierarchy-focused functions.

What’s your take on this? What experiences do you have? 🤔