Why Teams Go Through The Motions of Agile Without Being Agile, And What To Do About It

Summary

---

Podcast Summary: "Why Teams Go Through The Motions of Agile Without Being Agile, And What To Do About It"

Podcast: Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches
Host: Vasco Duarte
Guest: Junaid Shaikh, Scrum Master & Agile Coach
Date: March 10, 2026
Episode Theme:
This episode explores a familiar but critical issue in Agile: why teams often "follow" Agile practices in form but not in spirit—what Junaid calls "Zombie Scrum." The conversation dives into the root causes, warning signs, and strategies for helping teams move from going through the motions to truly embracing Agile principles.

---

Main Discussion Points & Insights

1. Books and Resources That Shape an Agile Mindset

Timestamps: 01:21–03:15

• Junaid's Influential Reads:
  • The Culture Map by Erin Meyer: Vital for understanding team dynamics and mindsets, not just technical tools.

    “As a Scrum Master, you need to understand really the pulse of the team that you're supporting, their mindset, their behaviors. And I think The Culture Map gave me a lot of good insights into that area.” (C, 01:49)

  • Scrum Alliance and Scrum.org: Junaid regularly checks online resources for real-world experiences and ongoing learning.
  • Scrum Mastery: From Good to Great Servant Leadership by Geoff Watts: Provides actionable insights on servant leadership in Scrum roles.
  • Suggests cultural models are useful even for teams within the same country.

2. How "Zombie Scrum" and Agile Anti-Patterns Arise

Timestamps: 04:00–08:20

• Surface-Level Agile:

  • Managers adopt Agile after reading about industry trends, implement frameworks without understanding or embodying Agile themselves.

    “They just come to the organization and they just say, yeah, let's go agile. But without understanding what is agile and without first being themselves, being agile themselves.” (C, 04:49)

  • Implementing metrics without context, misusing velocity for team comparison.

    “Hey, the velocity of this team is 80. Why is your velocity 50 for example? That's a complete anti-pattern. That's not agile.” (C, 05:20)

• Command and Control ‘Product Owners’:

  • Product Owners and management revert to project management and control, undermining team autonomy.

• Team Resistance and Cultural Inertia:

  • Senior team members with long tenure resist change, hide traditional practices under the "Agile" label.
  • Teams forget the basics of Agile Manifesto and Scrum, reducing ceremonies to empty rituals.

    “It's a lot about just having the face of Agile, but doing everything but Agile.” (C, 08:11)

3. Understanding Why Teams Go Through the Motions

Timestamps: 08:20–11:31

• Zombie Processes Beyond Scrum:

  • This mindless application occurs in Scrum, Waterfall, code reviews, PR, architecture—any area can turn "zombie" if done without intent.

• Root Causes:

  • Resistant Influencers: Influential, experienced people not wanting to change, drive the “mechanical Agile” culture.
  • Loss of Basics: Teams lose sight of Agile’s purpose and principles; events become overhead rather than tools for collaboration and improvement.

    “If you don't get out of your previous shell, you cannot get into a new shell.” (C, 10:26)

  • Dual systems: Running old informal processes (like coffee meetings) alongside Agile events, leading to meeting fatigue and cynicism.

4. The Importance of Critical Thinking and Adaptation

Timestamps: 10:39–12:41

• Lack of Critical Inquiry:

  • Teams often fail to ask, “Why are we doing this? What’s the goal?” They follow blindly.

    “The lack of critical thinking, like for example, not asking, hey, why are we doing this? What's the goal? What's the objective, Leads us to accept things as they are presented, not necessarily as they were intended.” (B, 10:44)

• Misapplication of Practices:

  • E.g., daily stand-up as a prescribed ritual, not as a team-adapted pattern supporting real needs.

    “If the team feels that, okay, we do not need a daily every day, maybe four days a week, it's fine. Allow that flexibility to the team. Because the purpose of the daily is ... to inspect their progress towards a Sprint goal.” (C, 11:42)

5. Role of the Scrum Master in Breaking the Pattern

Timestamps: 11:31–12:41

• Active Facilitation Over Passive Implementation:
  • Scrum Masters must understand: what are the actual needs of the team? Don’t impose Scrum events by the book if they’re not fit-for-purpose.
  • Emphasis on inspecting and adapting together, and keeping Agile's principles alive, not just its processes.

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On cultural models in Agile:

  “You can customize the culture map even to a team of the same nation ... it's just about how you use that tool. I think it's very, very interesting.” (C, 03:39)

• On surface-level Agile transformations:

  “We do the Agile basics when we start the transformation, but after one year ... no one remembers the basics... They say we have been doing Scrum since the last two years. So it's a lot about just having the face of Agile, but doing everything but Agile.” (C, 07:33 / 08:11)

• On dual process fatigue:

  “Of course you will feel too many meetings because ... at the background you are still having those older conversations, older traditional ... coffee meetings.” (C, 09:44)

• On critical thinking and intent:

  “If you don't clarify this purpose, and if you don't achieve that purpose, things feel ... that they're not working and Agile is not working.” (C, 12:09)

---

Key Takeaways for Agile Practitioners

• Beware “Zombie Agile”: Practicing ceremonies or metrics without intent can happen anywhere—and is especially common when leadership or influencers don’t embody Agile.
• Continually Revisit the Basics: Don’t let the Manifesto and Scrum’s underlying purpose get lost as ceremonies become habit.
• Challenge the Status Quo: Ask “Why?” for every practice. Adapt ceremonies to team context and needs.
• The Scrum Master’s Real Role: Facilitate awareness, foster critical inquiry, and ensure practices evolve based on team feedback—not just “by the book.”
• Adapt Cultural Models: Use frameworks like The Culture Map not just for multinational teams, but for understanding any group’s personalities and working style.

---

For more links and further reading, check out the episode’s show notes.

This summary skips promotional segments and focuses on key learnings for Scrum Masters and Agile teams navigating the difference between appearing Agile and truly being Agile.

Transcript

[A]

Hey there, agile adventurer, just a quick question. What if, for the price of a fancy coffee or half a pizza, you could unlock over 700 hours of the best agile content on the planet? That's audio, video, E courses, books, presentations, all that you can think of. But you can also join live calls with world class practitioners and hang out in a flame warfree and AI slop clean slack with the sharpest minds in the game. Oh, and yes, you get direct access to me, Vasko, your Scrum Master Toolbox podcast. No, this is not a drill. It's the Scrum Master Toolbox membership. And it's your unfair advantage in the agile world. So if you want to know more, go check out scrummastertoolbox.org membership. That's scrummastertoolbox.org Membership. And check out all the goodies we have for you. Do it now. But if you're not doing it now, let's listen to the podcast.

[B]

Hello everybody. Welcome to our team Tuesday this week with Junaid Shaikh. Hey Junaid, welcome back.

[C]

Thank you, Vasco. Thank you for having me here.

[B]

Absolutely. So I really like the thoughts and ideas you shared with us yesterday, especially about wanting to propose solutions to the teams. So it's going to be an interesting question about the team that self destructed. But before we go there, do share with us, Jeanette, what was the book that most inspired you in your career as a Scrum Master?

[C]

Okay, that's a very good question. I'm not a very avid book reader, let's say, but I do still read some books and one of them that inspired me the most was the Culture Map by Erin Meyer. I think you can get a lot of technical information and tools from a lot of different sources. But as a Scrum Master, you need to understand really the pulse of the team that you're supporting, their mindset, their behaviors. And I think the Culture Map gave me a lot of good insights into that area. So Culture Map is one of those. And then I also frequently visit the online resources on scrum alliance and crumb.org because that gives me real insights on the current situation or the experience of someone else in the community. So that's a very good learning tool for me. And one another book that really helped me in my earlier days was the Scrum Mastery From Good to Great Servant Leadership by Jeff Watts. I think that gives, that book, gives you really good practical, practical advice on the servant leadership role. So yeah, I mean, like I said, not many books, but a few that I read were the one these Are the. These were the couple of them that really inspired me along with the.

[B]

I can totally see how the culture map would be important working at companies like Ericsson and abb because it. It is a united nations of an organization or both of them are right. Like. And understanding the different cultural tendencies is so important in that kind of environment.

[C]

Yeah. Not just the global part of it. Even if, you know, you can customize the culture map even to a team of the same nation, for example, you can just take away the nations or the cultures, but you can keep the same parameters for different personalities in the team and that can still help. So it's just about how you use that tool. I think it's very, very interesting.

[B]

Absolutely. We'll put the link to that in the show notes so people can go and check it out. Talking about teams, of course, today's Team Tuesday we talk about teams that self destruct. So share that story with us. Junaid. Walk us through what was happening. What were the interactions and what were kind of those signs that told you that something is going on that eventually developed into something big?

[C]

Yeah, yeah. I think one of the teams that I was working with in the middle phase when I started being the Scrum master was so, you know, whenever I join a new team, I pick up the agile, sorry the unit rest, the team retrospectives because that gives me good insights. And I also look at the cumulative flow diagrams of the teams. Now these two tools really help you understand what's happening at the team level. So some of those, the retrospective issues and the cumulative flow diagrams gave me an insight into where the issues are really. So the issues were at every level. So the managers, for example, the ones who say guys from tomorrow we are going to go agile. Those are the guys who are read some article, go around in the industry and say, oh, Agile is being everywhere so we should also not miss out. So we also want to go agile. They just come to the organization and they just say yeah, let's go agile. But without understanding what is, what is agile and without first being themselves, being agile themselves. So that was the first thing they started, you know, creating those teams. They started implementing metrics without understanding and then also started comparing between teams. Hey, the velocity of these, this team is 80. Why is your Velocity 50 for example? That's a complete anti pattern. That's not agile. Then I ventured a bit into the team, the product owner, for example, even though they have taken a product owner training or something theoretical book they have read, they still come back to the team and do team Management, command and control.

[B]

You mean project management style or.

[C]

Absolutely, absolutely siloed project management. They want everything to be approved by them if be it a tool or a process. So the high management, the product owners, the Scrum masters, I mean, I was a Scrum master, but I felt that, you know, the one before me was, you know, doing theoretical Scrum, or as I call it, Zombie Scrum. So, you know, just implementing the framework and just doing it without, you know, understanding the purpose of it. And a lot of team members also, you know, there are some senior members in the organization that has been apart since 20 years, 25 years. They don't want to really accept a new way of working. They have sometimes a very close mindset. You know, they, at the start, you know, if you see the Kubler Ross curve, they really are angry. They don't want to accept. They keep on negotiating. And once they accept, even they still hide their traditional mindset and their traditional processes under the Agile umbrella. And that really does not help the case because in the face you are working agile, but are you really agile? No, because you are just manipulating the processes. These are some of the patterns that I realized that enveloping traditional mindset under agile umbrella. Also, we do the Agile basics when we start the transformation, but after one year or one and a half years, no one remembers the basics. The basics of what is the Agile manifesto? Okay, what are the principles of scrum? What are the values of scrum? Forget about that. They don't even know what are the three pillars of scrum. And they say we have been doing SCRUM since the last two years. So it's a lot about just having the face of Agile, but doing everything but Agile.

[B]

One of the things that is interesting in this conversation, and of course, as our listeners can imagine, this is a conversation that comes up over and over again, not just on the podcast, like, you know, out there talking to teams. One of the things that is interesting is that many teams do things in that, you called it zombie way. But it's not just Scrum, right? Like it's waterfall Zombie, it's code Reviews Zombie, it's PR process or GitHub Flow Zombie is architecture reviews Zombie. So I'm wondering, when I hear this, I'm wondering, what is it in a team that leads it to do anything? Even the daily meetings, even the meetings with stakeholders, whatever that is. What is in a team that leads them to act that way? What's your intuition tell you, Jeannette?

[C]

Yeah, interesting question. So like I mentioned, the two, the two or three Things that I see that always lead to this is, you know those people who are very experienced, way very influential in the team, but do not want to change. So they keep on manipulating this and that's why you end up. But there is a Scrum Master, there is a PO and the organization above you who want you to be agile. So on the face, like I said, you have those Agile meetings, the Sprint reviews, the Sprint planning, the dailies, but no one is actually doing it with the right purpose. They're just enveloping it with their existing traditional mindset. And I think the other point is the basics. Like I said, if you don't understand the basics with the right mindset, then these events are just overheads for you. I always also hear a lot of complaints that too many meetings, of course you will feel too many meetings because you are having these meetings and at the background you are still having those older conversations, older traditional, you know, one to one things and coffee meetings. So of course if you don't get out of your previous shell, you cannot get into a new shell.

[B]

Okay, so what I'm hearing from you, let's see if I got this right, is that the lack of critical thinking, like for example, not asking, hey, why are we doing this? What's the goal? What's the objective, Leads us to accept things as they are presented, not necessarily as they were intended.

[C]

Absolutely.

[B]

And when we, we accept things as they are presented, like the daily stand up should last 15 minutes, you should stand up and you should answer three questions, right? Like that's, that's one example. It is presented that way, then we never actually learn how the daily meeting pattern, because let's not forget that SCRUM is a collection of patterns from really successful projects. We never understand how the pattern could help us, our team, in that specific moment. Right?

[C]

Yes, that's a very interesting insight, Vasco. But also the Scrum master becomes very critical in this scenario. Like I said, you should not be just implementing SCRUM just for the sake of it. It's a Scrum Master's responsibility to understand, okay, what are the needs of the team. Now this ties back to my first question we had on Monday. Like, you know, understanding what are the needs of the team. If the team feels that, okay, we do not need a daily every day, maybe four days a week, it's fine. Allow that flexibility to the team. Because the purpose of the daily is to, is for the development team members to inspect their progress towards a Sprint goal. It is not a reporting meeting for the product owner. Right? So if you don't clarify this purpose, and if you don't achieve that purpose, things feel, you know, that they're not working and Agile is not working.

[B]

Yeah. Or even if they might be working, it might still feel like too many meetings because you don't know why it's there.

[C]

Exactly. Exactly.

[B]

That's a great reflection. Thank you for sharing all of that with us, Jeanette.

[C]

Most welcome, Vasco.

[A]

All right, I hope you liked this episode, but before you hit next episode, here's the deal. This podcast is powered by people like you, the members who wanted more than just inspiration. They wanted real tools and real connection to people who are practicing Agile. Every day we're talking access to over 700 hours of agile gold, CTO level strategy talks, Summit keynotes, live workshops, E courses, Deep dive interviews, books, and if you're into no Estimates, we got the pioneers of no estimates in those deep dive interviews as well. Agile Business Intelligence, creating product visions, coaching your product owner courses, you name it. You'll get invites to monthly live Q&As with agile pioneers and practitioners, plus a private Slack community which is free of all of that AI slop you see everywhere. And of course, without the flame wars, it's a community of practitioners that will want to learn and thrive together. It's the best place to connect with community and learn together.

[B]

So if this podcast has helped you

[A]

before, imagine what you will get from this podcast membership. So head on over to scrummastertoolbox.org membership and join the community that's shaping the future of Agile. We have so much for you, so check out all the [e-mail] membership because listening is great. It's important. But doing it together, that's next level. I'll see you in the community.

[B]

Slack. We really hope you liked our show. And if you did, why not rate this podcast on Stitcher or itunes. Share this podcast and let other Scrum masters know about this valuable resource for their work. Remember that sharing is caring.