The Silent Crisis in Agile: When Scrum Masters and Product Owners Forget Their Purpose

The Silent Crisis in Agile: When Scrum Masters and Product Owners Forget Their Purpose

Somewhere along the way, the accountability of Scrum Masters and Product Owners became watered down to the point of irrelevance.

Many Scrum Masters are now glorified meeting schedulers, and many view Product Owners as ticket takers. The roles that once stood as the backbone of cross-functional agility have become optional extras in a bloated corporate delivery theater.

Let me be blunt:

• Scrum Masters are not calendar admins. Scheduling events isn’t mastery—that’s Outlook.

• Product Owners are not backlog custodians. A list of tasks isn’t a product strategy.

This dilution isn’t just annoying—it’s dangerous. It’s a warning sign that we’ve completely lost the plot.

What I’m Seeing in the Field

When Did Scrum Masters Stop:

• Connecting business needs to technical solutions?

• Spotting technical risk early and asking the right questions?

• Facilitating collaboration between product, UX, engineering, and data?

• Understanding end-to-end product delivery?

• Coaching self-management instead of abandoning the team?

• Leading in service of the team, PO, and organization, not hiding behind Jira?

When Did Product Owners Stop:

• Owning the product vision and strategy?

• Prioritizing based on real business value, not just backlog hygiene?

• Making complex trade-offs between performance, complexity, and speed?

• Being accountable to customers and users, not just internal stakeholders?

• Driving meaningful collaboration with developers, UX, and leadership?

We are undervaluing the Product Owner role and underestimating the required skills, competencies, and emotional capacity. Worse, some organizations think the SM and PO can be the same person. That’s not just wrong—it’s a conflict of interest by design.

What we’re experiencing is not a skills gap. It’s a systemic failure of understanding.

Why Is This Happening?

1. Agile Industrialization (Commodification of Roles)

After the signing of the Agile Manifesto, the market started treating Agile like a product: sell certifications, create fast-track courses, package and ship practitioners with badges.

• Two-day certification = instant Scrum Master.

• “Agile transformation” = rename job titles and deploy Jira.

Result? Credentialed people do not understand delivery, product strategy, or organizational complexity.

2. Organizational Misunderstanding of Role Accountability.

Companies assign POs from marketing or sales without training.

Project managers rebranded as Scrum Masters without coaching enablement.

• SM becomes a meeting facilitator.

• PO becomes a stakeholder proxy.

The root issue is that organization leaders don’t understand the roles. They view them as process facilitators, not value enablers.

Behavioral Psychology Behind the Decline

Role Ambiguity & Learned Helplessness

• When expectations are unclear (Kahn et al., 1964), people do what they think is expected.

• Over time, repeated failure to lead or influence causes learned helplessness (Seligman, 1972).

People stop trying to lead change. They start avoiding risk. They become passive. The system conditions them to comply, not challenge.

Cognitive Dissonance

New SMs/POs often enter their roles inspired—only to be swallowed by dysfunction. When reality contradicts what they were taught, they adapt.

• They stop coaching.

• They stop challenging.

• They become order-takers.

The dissonance between training and reality creates a culture of mediocre survivalism.

What the Research Says

According to:

• State of Agile Reports (2020-2024): Role clarity, leadership engagement, and lack of product ownership are top failure patterns.

• McKinsey & HBR Studies: Most agile transformations fail because organizations treat agility as a team-level delivery method instead of an operating model.

• Prosci’s ADKAR Model: 70% of failed initiatives are traced back to a lack of role-based coaching and organizational support.

The data backs what we see: this is system failure, not individual incompetence.

What’s Really Going On?

• Agile is being installed like software, not designed as a system.

• POs and SMs are hired based on certification, not capabilities.

• Leadership doesn’t understand the value of these roles, so they dilute them.

• Delivery is still managed top-down, so self-management never takes root.

We’re seeing the consequences of a decade of shallow adoption.

Agile hasn’t failed. We failed to understand what it actually is.

What We Must Do Now

For Organizations:

• Reestablish role clarity at the executive level.

• Stop using SM and PO as entry-level or dual-role positions.

• Provide real-world cognitive coaching, not just certification.

• Align incentives to outcomes, not output.

For Scrum Masters:

• Reclaim your role as a systems coach, not an event scheduler.

• Study product delivery, technical risk, and team dynamics.

• Build the confidence to ask hard questions. You don’t have to know all the answers; instead, guide the team in discovering the answers.

For Product Owners:

• Be ruthless about value.

• Don’t just manage the backlog—own the product.

• Develop business fluency, customer empathy, and decision-making mastery.

Bottom Line

Scrum isn’t broken.

Our implementation is.

The SM and PO roles are cornerstones of agility. When we weaken them, we weaken the entire system.

It’s time we stop accepting mediocrity. We need:

• Role clarity

• Deep competency

• Real Coaching

• Structural support

If we want Agile to thrive, we have to start where it counts:

By rebuilding the integrity of the roles that make it work.

Mike Fisher

Founder of AGILECENTRIC® | Author of Unf*ck Your Agile | Transformation Leader | Speaker | Coach