Scrum consultants stay way past their usefulness, turning into self-aggrandizing organizational vampires.
I think there's something to be said for Scrum, and I think the shock therapy of a period of wholesale dogmatic adoption is the best way to start, with gradual backoff from Scrum dogma only after you appreciate the Scrum way, but goddammit you need to KICK THE CONSULTANTS OUT a few months after adoption and not let them set up camp inside your organization, playing politics to extend their gig as long as possible. The Scrum consultants in my company have been here almost a year. We know Scrum now. They still don't understand much about our business or our systems. Why are they here? Why do I keep hearing "<vampire redacted> says I can't do that," when <vampire redacted> is just a freaking process consultant who reports to a peer of your boss's boss? Why do we let them have that kind of power, when they only exercise it to pretend they still have something to teach us so we will keep paying them?
Also, the ScrumMaster role attracts the wrong kind of people. It attracts people who want power and want to be important. The desire for power conflicts VERY BADLY with being a good ScrumMaster, much worse than being a developer or manager or any other job I can think of. ScrumMaster is a simple role requiring only a little more process expertise than the chicken or pig roles. A ScrumMaster is a meeting facilitator. A ScrumMaster has no authority and no ninja skills. Being a ScrumMaster is like being the guy who can fix the printer. Having good ScrumMasters is very, very important, but they are not Important People. Does that make sense? They are not managers. People outside a Scrum team should not treat the ScrumMaster as a decision-maker or the proper conduit of information into the team. Bad ScrumMasters exploit those habits to aggrandize themselves and try to boss around their teams. Then they have power without responsibility.
Do you really believe an organization could function with no management? Can you really not see the wholes that would create?
The programmer attitude of "All management is bad. I'm better than everybody else in the company. I'm the only invaluable person in this organization." gets really old.
EDIT: OK, as pointed out below, I'm an idiot (much nicer than my grouchy post...). I do feel strongly about the anti-management stance, but that was necessarily not what this reply was talking about. My apologies.
If you do the substitution, you get "management consultants," not "management." I think it's a valid statement. Business always needs management, but management consultants are only good for helping a business solve a particular problem or get through a particular change. Then they should get out of the way. Instead, they work their way up somebody's butt and sit there pulling checks, wielding unaccountable power that is inappropriate for their place in the reporting structure.
It goes like this:
1. People do what the consultants say because hey, you're supposed to be learning from them. It makes sense.
2. Some recalcitrant people refuse to go along with any changes, and upper management puts out the word: "We're paying good money for these consultants. On my authority, do what they say." This still makes sense.
3. The consultants start meddling in things outside their original brief, just because they think they're smart and want to prove it. People have to live with it, so the consultants are gradually accepted as a generic part of the power landscape. This is the beginning of the pathology.
4. The consultants continue wielding power in a disruptive way as long as they can, because if the organization doesn't need their constant correction, somebody might realize it's time to get rid of them. This is the full-blown pathology: consultants actively disrupting productive work because it's the best way for them to stay employed.
Ahh, you are absolutely correct. I jumped to my pre-existing stereotypes. Bad me.
I actually have a negative opinion of most consultants (generally defined as people who tell you what you should do). I feel much better about contractors (defined as people who do what you tell them to do), but only in cases where it isn't your primary business competency being contracted.
Most management is bad, because most managers treat the function of 'management' as a separate ___domain/skill. Really, management is a combination of good people skills and a strong understanding of your product development & market.
I think there's something to be said for Scrum, and I think the shock therapy of a period of wholesale dogmatic adoption is the best way to start, with gradual backoff from Scrum dogma only after you appreciate the Scrum way, but goddammit you need to KICK THE CONSULTANTS OUT a few months after adoption and not let them set up camp inside your organization, playing politics to extend their gig as long as possible. The Scrum consultants in my company have been here almost a year. We know Scrum now. They still don't understand much about our business or our systems. Why are they here? Why do I keep hearing "<vampire redacted> says I can't do that," when <vampire redacted> is just a freaking process consultant who reports to a peer of your boss's boss? Why do we let them have that kind of power, when they only exercise it to pretend they still have something to teach us so we will keep paying them?
Also, the ScrumMaster role attracts the wrong kind of people. It attracts people who want power and want to be important. The desire for power conflicts VERY BADLY with being a good ScrumMaster, much worse than being a developer or manager or any other job I can think of. ScrumMaster is a simple role requiring only a little more process expertise than the chicken or pig roles. A ScrumMaster is a meeting facilitator. A ScrumMaster has no authority and no ninja skills. Being a ScrumMaster is like being the guy who can fix the printer. Having good ScrumMasters is very, very important, but they are not Important People. Does that make sense? They are not managers. People outside a Scrum team should not treat the ScrumMaster as a decision-maker or the proper conduit of information into the team. Bad ScrumMasters exploit those habits to aggrandize themselves and try to boss around their teams. Then they have power without responsibility.