Recently, I had an experience during one of our Scrum Cooking Workshops that gave me some food for thought – and maybe some of you have encountered something similar.
One participant, who had been fairly critical of the concept of agility from the start, volunteered to take on the role of Scrum Master. However, it became clear later that he didn’t do so out of interest in the role but rather from a place of resistance. Almost immediately, he declared Scrum rituals like the Daily Stand-up and the Retrospective to be unnecessary and redundant. He saw no value in any of it and struggled to engage with the methodology.
At first, I was convinced that his rejection was solely a resistance to agility as a framework. But then something happened that opened my eyes to a different perspective. Towards the end of the workshop, the chefs shared with me that this participant wasn’t just critical of the agile principles – he had also refused to follow the cooking instructions. Even though he didn’t know how to prepare the exotic dishes, he rejected any advice, whether it was about techniques or ingredients.
This led me to an interesting realization: his rejection wasn’t really about Scrum or agility at all. It seemed to be more of a deeply ingrained mindset. It wasn’t the methodology that bothered him – he was generally critical of anything that came from outside. The real challenge wasn’t convincing him of agility; it was recognizing that he was predisposed to oppose things, regardless of the topic.
For me, this was a valuable lesson. I could have presented countless arguments for the benefits of agile principles, but it wouldn’t have changed the fact that, for this participant, it wasn’t about agility at all. It was about his internal stance, which was rooted in resistance to any form of external guidance.
This experience taught me the importance of looking deeper when people reject something. Often, we assume they are opposing the method or the process, or even us as individuals – but sometimes (or maybe even often?) the real issue lies somewhere entirely different.