Never Mind the Back Pain.

Chris,

Agile transformations?

What’s the hardest part—the real, boots-on-the-ground hard part?

Culture change.

It’s a true answer and a useless one, like the consultant's answer, "It depends."

I was once interviewing with a company’s Agile transformation lead and one of their Scrum Masters. Agile has developed a bit of a punker-than-thou problem. It’s become so saturated with people who have the certification but no idea why they’re doing the work that you end up in a sea of Hot Topic Scrum Masters—wearing the shirt, loving the skull, no idea who the band is.

They run the ceremonies because they’re supposed to. They ask the three stand-up questions because the guide says so. They don’t know why those questions exist or how to change the meeting when it stops working. They’ve memorized the moves and missed the point.

In the interview, they tested whether I knew the difference.
“If Agile is people over process,” they asked, “how does that reconcile with Scrum being a framework?”

I answered the question. Then, being the little punk kid I am, I poked back.

“How’s the transformation going?”

I got the stock response. Executive sponsor. Strong advocacy. Developers being trained on best practices. Everything was going great.

So I asked the only question that actually matters:
“How are the middle managers doing with it?”

Their faces changed immediately. Because that’s where these efforts almost always fail.

The interview didn’t last much longer. I didn’t get the job. I saw through the bullshit and called it out a little too readily. I’m okay with that.

Here’s the lesson I’ve learned the hard way: process change only works bottom-up if people feel safe enough to change. Culture change only works top-down if leadership actively protects the space for it. Middle managers get crushed between those forces—told to change everything without changing anything.

“Do Agile. But don’t disrupt how work actually works.”

I once heard someone say: Scrum is how you sell Agile to a company. SAFe is how you sell Scrum to a company.

Most Agile proponents will tell you SAFe is the worst thing to happen to Agile. It turns sprints into Gantt charts. It over-engineers human interaction. It mistakes scale for maturity.

It’s like Machine Gun Kelly.

He started as a rapper. He wasn’t great, but he got big. He picked a fight with Eminem, lost so badly he left the genre, shortened his name to MGK, and reinvented himself as pop-punk. Transformation consultants hit resistance at the top, switch frameworks, and never look back. Same band shirt. Different rack.

Smaller companies struggle in the opposite direction. They bolt on frameworks they don’t need because no one knows how to have the harder conversations. Accounting never takes Agile training. HR doesn’t either. And yet both are expected to radically change how they work. Instead of talking to each other, organizations reach for a bigger process.

That’s how you end up trusting the process instead of trusting people.

I still believe in the message beyond the branding. I love the manifesto for what it is. The line that mattered then and matters more now is people over process.

That’s the anarchist part. That’s the dangerous part.

Truth is, I thought it mattered.
I thought the music mattered.
But does it? Bollocks.
Not compared to how people matter.

-Chumbawumba (Tubthumping)

These days, I’m less interested in frameworks and more interested in what it actually takes to put people first. What makes it safe to work? What creates psychological safety real enough for change to happen without punishment?

Am I still an agilist? Yeah. Just with a little a instead of a big one.

I’m not doing it professionally right now, but I’m always fighting for space. Space where people don’t have to pretend. Space where they’re allowed to change how they work without getting crushed for it.

So the question I keep coming back to is this: what space are you creating for your teams? Which fights are worth picking? Which ones are you walking past so the important ones can land?

I think, for better or worse, I’ll always be an agilist. I’m just done believing the process will save us.

So give me beer and straight edge kids and music that's just noise
Give me hardcore, grind and ska, and emo-core and oi
I'll find the money to waste my time at punk shows every night
So you give up and go home if you want, but I'm signed up for life

-Frank Turner (Never Mind the Back Problems)