Cliff Berg
1 min readDec 23, 2020

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The central premise here is sound: that the outcome is what matters, and it usually takes teams to do that - although I personally have encountered many situations when individuals created the outcome.

The Agile community dismisses the importance of individuals. That is unfair. The very first value of the Agile Manifesto begins with "Individuals..." - and yet, the community is obsessed with "the team".

As a result, individuals feel they have no career progression in an Agile setting. If everyone succeeds together, who can advance?

The reality is that there needs to be balance about this. Teams matter, AND individuals matter. Superstars are not team players, but that does not make them bad: it makes them different. Superstars should not be on teams.

Linus Torvalds is a superstar. Shawn Fanning was a superstar. Bram Cohen was a superstar. David Heinemeier Hansson was (is) a superstar. Elon Musk is a superstar. Jeff Bezos is a superstar. These people can often lead teams, but not be "on" a team. And we need these kinds of people.

Also, I wish people would stop equating Scrum with Agile. Scrum is not Agile. Scrum violates many important and core Agile ideas. E.g., the PO role is antithetical to the Agile Manifesto's multiple mentions of "the customer". A PO is a customer proxy - that's not Agile.

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Cliff Berg
Cliff Berg

Written by Cliff Berg

Author and leadership consultant, IT entrepreneur, physicist — LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cliffberg/

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