When Great Scrum Masters Fail—The Hidden Cost of Poor Value Communication | Joel Bancroft-Connors

Summary

Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Summary: "When Great Scrum Masters Fail—The Hidden Cost of Poor Value Communication | Joel Bancroft-Connors"

In the June 2, 2025 episode of the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast, host Vasco Duarte engages in a profound conversation with Joel Bancroft-Connors, an esteemed Agile Coach and Certified Scrum Trainer. Titled "When Great Scrum Masters Fail—The Hidden Cost of Poor Value Communication," the episode delves into the critical importance of effectively communicating the value Agile practices bring to an organization. Below is a detailed summary capturing the essence of their discussion.

Introduction to Joel Bancroft-Connors

Vasco Duarte introduces Joel Bancroft-Connors, affectionately known as the "gorilla coach," highlighting his expertise as a certified Scrum trainer and Agile disruptor. Joel's background spans product management, project management, and coaching, making him a versatile figure in the Agile community. Vasco emphasizes Joel's practical tools and sharp insights that empower teams to thrive, mentioning his prowess with tools like Miro and curated classroom playlists.

Joel's Journey to Becoming a Scrum Master

Joel shares a personal narrative about his transition from a traditional project management role to embracing Agile methodologies. At a PMI networking breakfast in 2009, he initially resisted Agile, famously stating, "I will pry Waterfall from my cold, dead hands" (02:06). However, subsequent layoffs led him to enroll in a Certified Scrum Master (CSM) class offered by Chris Sims, which transformed his career path. Joel admits that his initial motivation was to bolster his resume and disprove Agile skeptics, but he found a genuine connection with Agile principles, stating, "I just realized this was the way, and I never looked back from there" (03:34).

The Story of Failure: Lack of Value Communication

One of the pivotal moments in Joel's career was his tenure as an Agile coach at AOL's video advertising division. Despite achieving measurable successes—higher productivity, lower defect counts, and increased team happiness—the Agile initiative ultimately failed. Joel attributes this downfall to two primary factors:

1. Failure to Communicate Value to Leadership: Leadership did not recognize or understand the tangible benefits being delivered, leading to the perception that Agile coaches were dispensable during budget cuts (05:04).

2. Disconnect Between Team Performance and Delivering Meaningful Value: While teams were performing better internally, there was a lack of alignment with delivering value that mattered to stakeholders, resulting in a focus on "just getting stuff done" without ensuring its impact (05:04).

Lessons Learned: Importance of Communicating Value

Reflecting on his failure, Joel underscores the necessity for Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches to actively communicate their contributions and the value they add. He shares insights from his mentor, Bob Galen, emphasizing that Agile practitioners must make their efforts visible:

• Visibility of Contribution: "You have to make yourself more visible... not just bringing problems to them. You have got to talk to them about what is the process, what are we doing to work with the teams" (08:47).

• Behavioral Communication: Articulating daily actions and specific contributions helps stakeholders understand the impact of Agile practices (08:47).

Joel also highlights the challenge of balancing humility with the need to showcase value, noting that it's not about "tooting your own horn" but rather about ensuring that leadership recognizes the support and improvements being made.

Practical Advice: How to Communicate Value Effectively

When asked how to effectively communicate value, Joel provides actionable strategies:

1. Clear Behavioral Terms: Describe specific actions taken to improve team performance and processes.

2. Build Relationships with Stakeholders: Engage proactively with stakeholders beyond just reporting problems. Share successes and improvements transparently.

3. Participate in Reviews: Scrum Masters should be involved in Sprint Reviews not only to present product increments but also to showcase the adoption and benefits of Scrum practices.

Joel emphasizes the importance of visibility, likening the necessity for Scrum Masters to be known and acknowledged within the organization: "if nobody knows we're there, it's as if we were not" (10:05).

Analogies and Insights: Ted Lasso and Scrum Masters

Drawing a creative parallel, Joel compares the role of a Scrum Master to that of a sports team manager or a beloved TV character like Ted Lasso. He explains:

• Essential Presence: Just as Ted Lasso is critical to the team's morale and success, a Scrum Master is vital to the team's Agile journey.

• Leadership and Support: A Scrum Master facilitates, guides, and supports, ensuring the team can achieve what they might not have thought possible.

This analogy serves to reinforce the idea that Scrum Masters are integral to the team's success and deserve recognition for their pivotal role (11:51).

Conclusion

The episode wraps up with Vasco Duarte encouraging listeners to apply the insights shared by Joel Bancroft-Connors. The key takeaway is the paramount importance of communicating the value of Agile practices and the role of Scrum Masters to leadership and stakeholders to ensure sustained support and alignment with organizational goals.

Notable Quotes

• Joel Bancroft-Connors (02:06): "I will pry Waterfall from my cold, dead hands."

• Joel Bancroft-Connors (03:34): "I just realized this was the way, and I never looked back from there."

• Joel Bancroft-Connors (05:04): "We failed to communicate the value we were creating to leadership."

• Joel Bancroft-Connors (08:47): "It's not about tooting your horn, it's more about just making yourself more visible."

• Joel Bancroft-Connors (11:51): "A Scrum Master needs to be like that team manager or team coach, where it's like, yeah, the team did this all. I helped the team to be able to do that."

---

Timestamp Guide:

• 02:06: Introduction of Joel's early resistance to Agile.
• 03:34: Joel's realization and commitment to Agile.
• 05:04: Explanation of the failure at AOL.
• 08:47: Discussing the importance of visibility.
• 11:51: Analogizing Scrum Masters to Ted Lasso.

Note: The timestamps are indicative based on the provided transcript segments.

Transcript

[Vasko]

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[Joel Bancroft Connors]

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[Joel Bancroft Connors]

Hello everybody. Welcome to one more week of the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast. And this week, joining us from the US is Joel Bancroft Connors. Hey Joel. Welcome to the show.

Thank you, Vasco. It is an honor to be here.

So Joel is the gorilla coach. You'll find him easily on the Internet. He's a certified Scrum trainer and agile disruptor focused on sust sustainable value and effectiveness. With a background in product, project and coaching, Joel blends sharp insights with practical tools to help teams thrive. He's also a Miro power user and rocks curated classroom playlists. So check those out as well. The links will be in the show notes as usual. But Joel, that was a short intro. Tell us a little bit more about yourself and how did you end up becoming a Scrum Master?

Thank you. So believe it or not, kicking and screaming the whole way, a few weeks back you had Chris Sims on and so this story actually ties to Chris. So. Hi Chris, if you're listening. It was 2009 and I was at a PMI networking breakfast in Belmont, California, and Ainsley Nees, the author of co author of Liftoff Certain Sustain Successful Adult Teams, was the host for the PMI networking breakfast. And I knew Ainsley as this really great project manager. And she kicked off the networking breakfast and then to her left was Chris Sims. And Chris Sims was visiting, was promoting his CST class, his CSM classes. And then everybody went around the room and was talking and introducing themselves as normal and talking about how they love Scrum or Agile or all these ideas and. And then we got to me sitting to the right of Ainsley. And I said, I am Joel Bancroft Connors and you will pry Waterfall from my cold, dead hands.

Great intro.

A few months later, I ended up laid off from my very, very good project management job. Totally lost, didn't know where I was going. Chris Sims reached out to me, offered me a unemployment discount in a CSM class. I took the class, fell in love with it. It connected with all of my roots in customer service. And I just realized this was the way, and I never looked back from there.

And when you realize that this is the way it sounds, now that we're hearing that story that, okay, it's kind of, how do you say, an epiphany. It's something that you embrace wholeheartedly and maybe some do. But having gone through a similar transition from being a project manager to then thinking that okay, was going in the wrong way, this is how you do it. It's not an easy transition, Right. Like, there are some strong feelings maybe I could describe in that transition, right?

Oh, absolutely. If I hadn't been unemployed and looking for things that boost my resume. And I mean, I even told Chris afterwards, look, I came to this class for two reasons and two reasons only. Number one, to get CSM on my resume so I could get job interviews. And two, to prove this was all a load of bunk, I succeeded in getting CSM on my resume.

That sounds very familiar. So, Joel, of course, that's the beginning of a long story. And here we are many years later and we're looking back and thinking, wow, I really did learn a lot from my failures. And of course we all got them. So let's share one of those, Joel, one that you particularly think really informs how you look at your role as a coach, scrum master, and also on your perspective on agile today.

Yeah. So as you said mentioned in my intro, I'm really big on this concept of sustainable value. And one of my biggest failures was on track to be one of the best successes I think I'd ever had. I was working full time as an Agile coach in the video advertising division of AOL back when AOL still existed. And I came in and was working with these teams and then working with other agile coaches, and we were really working and we were getting a lot of success with the teams and we were seeing some really great things. We were seeing higher productivity, we were seeing lower defect counts, we were seeing higher happiness and everything. And yet, despite all of the success with these teams, we absolutely, utterly failed. And we failed for two reasons. Reason number one was we failed to communicate the value we were creating to leadership. They didn't see it, they didn't understand it. And so when times got tough and AOL had to make cuts, they saw these agile coaches like, well, they're not really doing anything. We can get rid of them. And because we failed to demonstrate our success, the teams lost their support and eventually the team started to degrade and fall off and that whole organization didn't do do as well afterwards. The other part of it was we also, we were all so focused on getting the teams to do better and we were doing great, the teams were doing better, but we had no idea whether or not the teams were actually delivering anything that actually meant anything. We didn't connect it to value of were we creating value or we're just getting stuff done.

Yeah. And when you think about that story, right, like this is something that many of us have heard, I'm sure, because it is kind of a recurring aspect of not just agile like most process adoption processes, whatever the process adoption is that you are going through, right? Like that disconnection of what we're doing versus what is impactful for customers or other stakeholders, then becoming a problem. If you had to go back and kind of relive that story again, what would you do differently? Joel?

Oh, I think about this one all the time. I think it says some advice I got from one of my mentors, Bob Galen, the Agile Moose. And he talks about as scrum masters, as agile coaches, we have to communicate our value. I was one of those very, very passionate scrum masters. Like, no, no, no, I don't need to communicate my value. My job should be in the, in the background. That team success says it all. And the problem is that it's not clear sometimes what's happening in the background. And if you're not making it clear that you're involved and that you're making these differences and they, I did this and this helped the team. Yes, it is all about the team. However, you need to make it clear that you're there to help the team and help leadership to understand that. We should have been communicating to leadership much earlier about what specifically we were doing. And it wasn't just about the leaders saw that the teams were getting better. They didn't know what was causing this. And so that was the big failure is not speaking up for my own value or speaking up for our own value.

So let's, let's make that very concrete. So you're in that situation again or some other similar. Pick one. How would you phrase it like, who would you talk to? What topics would you bring up? How would you phrase the value that you are adding?

Yeah, it's one of the hard things and I know I'm doing a lot of look work on it. I think Chris Stone has recently just launched a startup all around this concept and spoke at your.

Global Agile Summit.

[Vasko]

Indeed.

[Joel Bancroft Connors]

Yeah, the Global Agile Summit around this. And so it's not an easy question, but I think part of it is you have to talk about what you do and you have to talk about it in clear behavioral terms. Your work, product, your actions, what did you do to help the team to be more successful? And it's a rough balance. And for a lot of us who really live into servant leadership, it's like, well, it sounds like I'm tooting my own horn. And it's like, well, yes, you have to make it clear how you are contributing. And so you have to make that clear to stakeholders. You have to have a better relationship with stakeholders and interact more with stakeholders instead of just bringing problems to them. You have got to talk to them about what is the process, what are we doing to work with the teams. And really it's not about tooting your horn, it's more about just making yourself more visible. It's almost like the Scrum master needs to be doing Sprint reviews as well on the adoption of Scrum, not just the product owner on the adoption of the product.

So I've been in that situation quite a few times and helped others survive through that transition of wanting to be the background leader to understanding that actually if nobody knows we're there, it's as if we were not right. Like it's that old story of the tree that falls in the forest. If nobody's listening, did the tree really, really fall? And we, we need to accept that.

[Vasko]

Part of our work is to show.

[Joel Bancroft Connors]

What we can bring to the team. So what one phrase that I very often use is as the coach or the background person, right. I help others do what not even they thought was possible. And, and then I have a few stories to tell because that, that has happened a lot of times in my professional life. So I can go and I pick some of those stories. Some of those are more recent, others happened along time ago. But I think that bringing that kind of contribution to the conversation is very important because. And this is even in the comics, right? Like who you're going to call the Ghostbusters, right? But you need to know they exist and you need to know what they do. And I think it's also an important aspect for us to realize that Scrum Masters and Agile coaches exist in our world right now because they were needed. They would not have existed, they would not have come into existence if they were not needed. But the fact that they were needed doesn't mean that everybody knows. And it's also our responsibility to take that leadership to show that this is what we need to do. This is what we are doing, this is where we came from. And really contrasting that transition. What do you think about that, Joel?

Yeah, and I'm just, I'm having an epiphany because one of the things I like to do is create analogies or connections to help people understand. And really, if you think about it, this is a lot like being the manager of a soccer team or the head coach of an American football team. No, I mean, if a lot of people have watched Ted Lasso, he's always talking about the team and how important about the team is. No one, though, has any illusions that Ted Lasso is not incredibly critical. It's like he can't just walk away and the team is going to be fine. A Scrum Master needs to be like that team manager or team coach, where it's like, yeah, the team did this all. I helped the team to be able to do that, though. And that's what I think we need to start thinking about as coaches and Scrum Masters is be like that team manager. Be like Ted Lasso.

Yeah, be like Ted Lasso. I love that series, by the way. I definitely recommend that. And now I'm very curious to hear your answer to the Thursday question. So everybody stay tuned. It's coming up in three days. I will hear it sooner than you will, but you will too. Joel, thank you very much. This has been a great conversation.

It's a great way to start the week. Thank you, Vasco.

[Vasko]

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[Joel Bancroft Connors]

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[Vasko]

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[Joel Bancroft Connors]

Slack.

[Vasko]

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