Fighting Agile Theater, When Organizations Adopt the Ceremonies But Not the Mindset | Iryna Stelmakh

Summary

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Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: “Fighting Agile Theater, When Organizations Adopt the Ceremonies But Not the Mindset”

Host: Vasco Duarte
Guest: Iryna Stelmakh
Date: March 25, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into a recurring challenge in Agile environments: Agile Theater—when organizations adopt Agile ceremonies and terminology but fail to embrace its underlying mindset. Vasco and Irina Stelmakh explore the risks this brings, like lack of transparency and trust, especially in outsourced project contexts where sudden client decisions can destabilize teams. Irina shares a candid story from her recent experience, emphasizing the importance of genuine collaboration, proactive communication, and transparency as an antidote to Agile Theater.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What is Agile Theater?

Timestamp: 01:37–02:54

• Definition: Organizations perform Agile rituals (meetings, boards, using Agile lingo) without shifting mindset or decision-making patterns.
• Consequences:
  • Decisions remain centralized.
  • Transparency is intentionally avoided.
  • Real problems are hidden.
  • Teams go through the motions but don’t reap real Agile benefits.

Quote:
“Organizations implement the visible part of Agile... but the underlying mindset remains the same. This is the biggest problem because the decisions are centralized. Transparency is avoided. And this is my personal pain.”
— Iryna Stelmakh (02:01)

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2. Transparency, or the Lack Thereof

Timestamp: 02:54–06:55

• Lack of Transparency: Leads to teams being blindsided by client decisions, especially in outsourcing.
• Case Example:
  • The client can unexpectedly remove team members, simply emailing names to be dropped with no prior discussion.
  • This breeds mistrust, anxiety, and a lack of team commitment.

Quote:
“When that happens, teams go through the emotions of Agile without actually benefiting from it.”
— Iryna Stelmakh (02:54)

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3. Impact of Sudden Team Changes in Outsourcing

Timestamp: 04:03–06:55

• How It Happens: Clients use contract clauses to cut team members suddenly—often with only a month's warning.
• The Challenge:
  • Unexpected emails lead to operational challenges.
  • Margins and finances are impacted (in Irina’s account, the affected project generated over 45% of company margin).
• Bigger Picture:
  • If communication and trust aren’t proactively nurtured, entire teams or projects risk being cut—especially when competing with other vendors.

Quote:
“This is a huge risk. This is the first red flag before the war situation. And actually in my case it happened because it was the first marker.”
— Iryna Stelmakh (08:05)

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4. Consequences for Team Dynamics

Timestamp: 05:58–06:55

• Internal Effects:
  • Mistrust within teams (“who will go next?”).
  • Declining commitment—why invest emotionally in a project that may abruptly end for you individually?
  • Risk to team cohesion and morale.

Vasco summarizes:
“It’s very hard to have loyalty to a project when you don’t know if there’s any continuity.”
— Vasco Duarte (06:18)

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5. Proactive Response: Building Transparency & Trust

Timestamp: 09:14–13:04

• Irina’s Strategy:
  • After joining a new project and almost immediately receiving a surprise “cut list,” she organized calls with stakeholders to seek transparency.
  • Discovered that client’s budget review cycle was a significant trigger.
  • Rapidly reallocated cut team members to other projects within the account (leveraging overlapping technology stack & upskilling for minimal ramp-up).
  • Proactively set regular 1:1 meetings with stakeholders across divisions to anticipate changes before official communications.

Quote:
“My approach is about the transparency. Vasco, always I’m talking about the same things. Try to stay as it is, because as long as you do not know, you do not know. Nothing more complex or complicated than this.”
— Iryna Stelmakh (11:03)

Quote:
“Reactions cost more.”
— Iryna Stelmakh (12:55)

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6. Core Lesson: Transparency as a Prerequisite for Improvement

Timestamp: 13:22–13:32

• Irina’s Takeaway:
  • While transparency can feel uncomfortable, avoiding it is costlier.
  • Real improvement only happens with open, honest communication.

Quote:
“Transparency can be uncomfortable, but without transparency, there is no real improvement.”
— Iryna Stelmakh (13:27)

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Notable Moments

• Irina’s Candid Reflection on “Agile Theater” (02:01)
• Vasco Acknowledges the Emotional Reality for Teams at Risk (06:18)
• Irina’s Real-life Proactive Strategy After Surprise Team Reduction (11:03)
• Core Lesson About the Cost of Reaction vs. Proactive Transparency (12:55)
• Emphatic Closing Line on Transparency and Improvement (13:27)

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Summary for Listeners

Irina Stelmakh’s story spotlights the dangers of Agile Theater, especially in outsourcing/consulting environments. Despite visible Agile practices, lacking true transparency and partnership with clients can blindside teams and undermine both trust and business outcomes. The episode argues for making transparency a daily practice, not just an Agile catchphrase. Irina brings actionable advice: invest in building open lines of communication with stakeholders and set up mechanisms for regular feedback and knowledge exchange to spot red flags before they upend your teams.

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For Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches:
This episode is a powerful reminder that “doing Agile” is not enough—embrace the uncomfortable work of real transparency or risk the costlier consequences down the road.

Transcript

[A]

Hello everyone. Quick heads up before we start today's episode. The Global Agile Summit is happening on May 4th. Yes, May 4th. And even with a big blowout Star wars party, you have to join. It will be online and it's like always free to attend. We have four tracks this year that I'm really excited about and I think you will too. Stick around to the end of the episode to know what they are. If you want to check it out already now you can check it out at bit ly globalagile 26. That's the numerals 2 and 6 at the end. So one more time, that's bit ly globalagile 2, 6, all one word, all lowercase. And 2 and 6 are the numerals 2 and 6. So stick around till the end of the episode and I'll tell you what's in store. But for now, on to today's episode. Hello, everybody. Welcome to our Wednesday the coaching episode, the big question of the week. And this week we have with us Irina Stellmak. Hey, Irina, welcome back.

[B]

Hi Marco. Happy to see you again.

[A]

Absolutely. So Wednesday is when we explore a topic that you care about, a challenge that you're facing right now. And we do it through a coaching conversation so that we model that conversation for our audience. So Irina, share with us right now, in your current role or assignment, what is the single biggest challenge?

[B]

Oh, Vasco, that's a good question, you know, because here, let me do a step back now. I do the project delivery and the business organization. So more than 10 already like 15 years, as I mentioned, I work as a project and delivery manager and I help people and businesses to reach their goals. And my favorite methodology here is Agile. So one of the biggest challenges I see today in Agile environments is something I call Agile Theater. Organizations implement the visible part of Agile. The ceremonies, like meetings, yeah, the board, the terminology. But the underlying mindset remains the same. This is the biggest problem because the decisions are centralized. Transparency is avoided. And this is my personal pain. And the problems are hidden. And when you do not know what is going on, it's pretty hard to move from point A to point B just because. Just because you do not know how you could know if you do not know as simple as this.

[A]

Exactly, how could you know if you don't know?

[B]

Right. So when that happens, teams go through the emotions of Agile without actually benefiting from it. And another major challenge is building trust between teams and clients. This is what I wouldn't say struggling with now, but this is something that where my Focus is on. And I experience this on a project where the client could suddenly decide to remove part of the team without warning. And this is the case that I brought for today to share with our audience. Just because in my practice this is not the first time that happens as long as you do not have the friendly but professional collaboration with your client.

[A]

So what you're describing is that the client had the option to at any point remove part of the team to do other work or completely remove them from the project.

[B]

Here I have to add that very often I work with outsourcing teams and as we, of course we have the contracts, but even with that we have the the period as like the period where we have to finalize the collaboration with the client. And usually this is about one month. And that's why very often in my practice I meet a situation where the client may send the email with a list of the team members, like from team composition, from contract with the note, like, hey guys, we would like to stop the collaboration with those teammates in one month according to the contract. And it might be even without the explanation why this is the problem. Because actually when you receive such email, being a business representative, you understand that you have like five, four, whatever else people being on a bench then, and you have the cost increasing then and you have to adjust very fast. And that's why it's the crucial case. Moreover, if this is the project, like in my case the project that brought more than 45% of margin to the company.

[A]

So what you're describing is that the team is set up, everything could be working well. We don't know. You haven't shared that. But even if everything is working well, at some point the client may say, hey, now we go from 10 to four people.

[B]

Yeah, that's right.

[A]

So what this presents, at least to my mind, as I understand it, is of course there's the potential for mistrust within the team, right? Because we don't know who's going to go to the bench, as you said, right? Like we don't know, it could be anyone, whatever that is. So mistrust is one, one risk, the other is lack of commitment, both from the team as a whole. Because at any point part of the team can be moved to out of that project, but also from the individuals within the team, right? Like it's very hard to have loyalty to a project when you don't know if there's any continuity. And of course all projects end. This is not about the project ending, it's about someone in the middle of the project being removed from it, right? And what else do you see might be consequences of this setup?

[B]

The consequences of that setup might be the cut of the whole team because you know when you receive the email with a list of the teammates who should be extracted. So this is the red flag because this is the marker that you do not have the transparency. You do not have the trust bridge built before it happened. You do not have the clear and effective and professional collaboration with the client. And that means that that client might do a shift or might exclude your team from like from the whole business. Now again, we are talking about outsource or out staff, right? And in this case, for example, very often when you work with like huge famous company and this company is your client, so usually they have many vendors, not just one IT company who serves right. And in this case you have to be the best one, you have to serve the best service, you have to be the partner for your client, you have to share the expertise and to provide the whole world that you could to be the first partner having this list of IT companies. That's why I would like to say that this is a huge risk. This is the first red flag before the war situation. And actually in my case it happened because it was the first marker.

[A]

So, so what, what I hear is that when that happened the first time that you got an email that, hey, this four people or whatever should be out of the team by the end of when you got that, you understood that, okay, there's something happening on the other side, the client in this case, that is not transparent to me. I don't know what it is, I don't know what it means, but there's something happened there that we don't understand, right?

[B]

That's right.

[A]

And in that case, I'm thinking in that kind of situation, I would think, okay, so I can decide to investigate what's happening, right? Like, and then I would ask, do I have good relationship with the people in the client? Can I set up a call with them? Or is a call perceived as too much because it costs money, whatever that is. Like understanding that relationship would be one way. So I could decide, hey, I want to understand what's going on. But then I could also decide, hey, this means it's probably going to be a winding down of the project, right? Like the project's going to end soon anyway. So let's make sure we get work for all of the team, not just the people that are being now told that they will be out of the team in a month. Right. So I'm thinking that there's these two perspectives when you discuss that with your team. Like how did you look at that when it happened, when you got the email saying, hey, these four people need to be out of the team by the end of the month.

[B]

Oh, it was a tough situation because it happened right on the fifth, I guess, day after my joining to the team, you know, and it was kind of the surprise I haven't expected because it was a project that the IT company were working on for more than 10 years. So I expected more deep and more reliable collaboration, probably. And then when I received that email with, with the team composition, with the team card. Yes, I was like, let's say surprised. But you may understand that what I'm talking about now. And that's why what I did, I organized a call with the stakeholders. I was quite new and I decided just to move with my approach. And my approach is about the transparency. Vasco, always I'm talking about the same things. Try to stay as it is, because as long as you do not know, you do not know. Nothing more complex or complicated than this. So I organized a call and I tried to got the information what was happening on their side. And I realized that they have the budget plannings once per three months, per quarter. Right. And that was like the things that may usually happen to us once per three months. So that was new for me. The next thing I realized that we have the. At the time I was the delivery on the whole account and I realized that we need QA on another project of that account. So I shifted our QA from one project where she was cut to another one, the same idea, with one more developer and two more people. I made for them an upsell for the team extension on another project as well. The base was the same. That's why it was so hard to make this transfer. Because again, the learning curve, knowledge sharing, it's also the money and they knew the base. That's why I was able to do this upsell. So actually nobody was excluded. And after that, I set up the one on one meetings with my stakeholders, with each of them from different divisions, from different departments on their side, to understand what's going on on their side and to be aware in advance, you know, to be able to react and to mitigate it. Moreover, before it happened, before the reaction. Because reactions cost more.

[A]

Absolutely. And that's a great roadmap, if you will, about how to tackle situations like this and how important the relationship and transparency when working with clients really is. So thank you very much for sharing that story with us, Irina, welcome.

[B]

It was one of the most painful things. So let me just repeat. Transparency can be uncomfortable, but without transparency, there is no real improvement.

[A]

Yeah, that's very well said. Hi there, friends. Thanks for sticking around till the end of the episode. So let me tell you what's coming on May 4th. We're running the Global Agile Summit. It will be online and I want you there. This year. We have four tracks, and each one is built around real conversations with practitioners. No slides, no keynote theater, just honest interviews with people doing the work, just like you. The first track is AI in organizations where practitioners show what actually works. No hype, just AI that makes your Monday better. Happy Monday, everybody. And then we have the people track honest conversations about putting humans at the center of how we work and keeping them there. And third is Agile in construction. And yes, I really mean brick and mortar construction. Lean and agile. Actual job sites. Field leaders removing waste. Teams transforming how buildings get built. Stay tuned for what I think will be a super track on Agile in construction. And the fourth track is. Is Agile in Gaming. How game studios ship without burning out Agile Inside the Creative Pressure Cooker. Over the years, we've had more than 12,000 participants since 2017, the time of the first summit organized with the podcast. And this year we're making it easier than ever to join. You can register for free and get access to the summit sessions live during the event week. That's May 4th to May 6th. Or you can grab the Practitioner Pass and get immediate access to last year's keynotes from Jurgen Apelo, Goy Kozic and Mirete Kangas right now, even before the Summit starts. So grab your Practitioner Pass and start learning today. Head on over to Bitly GlobalAgile 26. That's 2, 6. The numerals 2 and 6 sign up and I'll see you on May 4th. And one more time, here we go. Bit Ly. GlobalAgile 26. All lowercase, all one word and 26. That's the numeral 2 and the numeral 6. I'll see you on the conference floor.