What Happens When We Eliminate the Agile Leader?

The hidden cost of removing the role that protects flow, team health, and continuous improvement

7 min read

Every few months, the “Agile is Dead” conversation surfaces in leadership meetings, LinkedIn threads, or hallway debates. Recently, I’ve been reflecting on it from two angles:

First, I’ve seen organizations under new leadership take very different paths; some thrive with dedicated Scrum Masters or Agile Delivery Manager roles, while others remove them and shift responsibilities to engineering managers and teams.
Second, I came across a LinkedIn post describing companies letting go of Scrum Masters and Agile coaches, not for financial reasons, but as a conscious redesign of how they deliver software.

Both perspectives reveal a more profound confusion. Many believe Agile itself is outdated; others assume that if Scrum changes, the role associated with it, the Scrum Master, should disappear too.

But are teams really outgrowing Agile?

Or are we simply misunderstanding the purpose of the Agile leader?

Agile Isn’t Dead, But It’s Often Misapplied

When people say “Agile is dead,” they’re rarely attacking its principles. Delivering in small batches, learning fast, and adapting based on feedback are still how modern teams succeed. What’s fading is the packaged version of Agile, the one sold through mass certifications, rigid frameworks, and transformation playbooks.

Much of the backlash comes from poor implementations. Consulting firms rolled out what they called “textbook Scrum,” blending practices from other frameworks, such as story points and user stories from Extreme Programming (XP), and applying them everywhere. Teams focused on sprints, standups, and rituals instead of learning and improvement.

Scrum was never meant to be rigid; it’s a lightweight framework for managing complexity. When treated as a checklist, it becomes “cargo-cult” Agile, copying rituals without purpose. When that fails, organizations often blame the framework, rather than the implementation.

That misunderstanding extends to the Scrum Master role itself. Many assume that dropping Scrum means dropping the Scrum Master. But the need for someone to coach, facilitate, and sustain continuous improvement doesn’t vanish when frameworks evolve.

Do We Still Need an Agile Leader?

Whether following Scrum or as organizations transition to Kanban or hybrid flow models, many are eliminating Agile leadership roles. Responsibilities once owned by a Scrum Master or Agile Coach are now:

absorbed by Engineering Managers,
distributed across team members, or
elevated to Program Management.

On paper, this looks efficient. In reality, it often creates a gap because no one is explicitly accountable for maintaining flow, team health, and continuous improvement.

The Role’s Evolution and Its Reputation

Over time, the Scrum Master evolved into roles such as Agile Coach, Agile Leader, or Agile Delivery Manager (ADM) leaders who:

coached flow and sustainability,
resolved cross-team dependencies,
championed experimentation and team health, and
used flow metrics to surface bottlenecks and team delivery performance.
connect delivery initiatives or epics with business outcomes.

These were not meeting schedulers. They were system stewards, enabling teams to deliver effectively and sustainably.

Unfortunately, the role’s reputation suffered as the industry scaled too fast. The explosion of two-day certification courses created an influx of “certified experts” with little experience. Many were placed in impossible positions, expected to transform organizations without the authority or mentorship to succeed. Some individuals grew into exceptional Agile leaders, while others struggled.

The uneven quality left leaders skeptical. That’s not a failure of the role itself, but a byproduct of how quickly Agile became commercialized.

When the Role Disappears (or Gets Folded Into Management)

In some organizations, the Agile leadership role has been absorbed by Engineering Managers. On paper, this simplifies accountability and structure. In practice, it creates new trade-offs:

Overload: Engineering Managers juggle hiring, technical design and strategy, people development, and implementation oversight. Adding Agile facilitation stretches them thin.
Loss of neutrality: It’s hard to be both coach and evaluator. Psychological safety and open reflection suffer.
Reduced focus: Good Agile leaders specialize in flow, metrics, and process improvement. Those responsibilities often fade when combined with other priorities.

I’m watching this shift happen in real time. In one organization that removed its Agile leaders, Engineering Managers now coordinate ceremonies and metrics while trying to sustain alignment. The administrative tasks are covered, but continuous improvement and team sentiment have slipped out of focus. There’s only so much one role can absorb before something important gives way.

These managers, once deeply technical and people-oriented, now find themselves stretched across too many competing responsibilities. It’s still early, but the question isn’t whether meetings happen; it’s whether performance, flow, and engagement can sustain without a separate role dedicated to nurturing them.

Redistribution to Program Management

Some of the higher-level coaching and metrics work has moved into Program Management. Many program managers at this organization hold Scrum Master certifications and act as advisors to Engineering Managers, while maintaining flow metrics and ensuring value stream visibility.

It’s a reasonable bridge, but scale limits its impact. A single program manager may support six to eight teams, focusing only on the most critical issues. The broader discipline of continuous improvement, including reviewing flow data, addressing bottlenecks, or mapping value streams, risks fading when no one on the team is closely involved.

Distributing or Rotating Responsibilities

Some teams attempt to share Agile responsibilities: rotating facilitators, distributing meeting ownership, or collectively tracking metrics. It’s a well-intentioned model that works for mature, stable teams, but it has limits.

Frequent rotation breaks continuity and learning.
Coaching depth is lost when no one develops mastery.
Under delivery pressure, improvement tasks fall to the bottom of the list.

Distributed ownership can work in bursts, but it rarely sustains long-term improvement. Someone still needs to own the system, even if the title is gone.

Leadership Mindsets Define Success

Whether an organization retains or removes Agile leaders often comes down to mindset.

Execution-First Leadership (Command & Control):

Believes delivery can be managed through structure and accountability.
Sees facilitation and coaching as overhead.
Accepts distributed ownership as “good enough.”

Systems-Enabling Leadership (Servant / Flow):

Believes facilitation and improvement require focus and skill.
Invests in Agile leaders to strengthen flow and collaboration.
Sees distributed responsibility as a step, not a destination.

Neither model is inherently wrong; they reflect different views on how improvement happens. But experience shows a clear trade-off: when continuous improvement is one of many responsibilities, it often becomes no one’s priority. A dedicated Agile leader keeps that focus alive; an overloaded manager rarely can for long. The key is designing a system where improvement has space to breathe, not just another task on an already full plate.

The Myth of the Unicorn

When organizations integrate Agile leadership into engineering management or product management, they often create “unicorns”-individuals expected to possess both deep core skills and be effective leaders, delivery owners, and process coaches simultaneously.

Those who can do this well are rare, and even they struggle with constant task-switching across competing priorities. When these high performers leave, the organization loses more than a person; it loses context, flow awareness, and continuity. Replacing them is difficult; few candidates in the market combine such a broad mix of technical, leadership, and coaching skills.

Scrum, Kanban, and What Doesn’t Change

Practices evolve. Scrum remains widely used, but many teams operate in Kanban or hybrid systems. The shift to continuous delivery doesn’t eliminate the need for Agile leadership; if anything, it heightens it.

As work becomes more distributed and complex, teams still need a steward of flow and feedback. Frameworks differ; however, the function that enables collaboration and systemic improvement remains the same.

The Path Forward: Protect the Capability, Not the Title

Instead of asking, “Should we bring Scrum Masters back?” leaders should be asking a more fundamental question:

Who in our organization is responsible for enabling collaboration, removing impediments, promoting improvement, maintaining team health, and driving systemic learning?

If the answer is “no one,” it doesn’t matter what you call the role; you have a gap.

If the answer is “partially someone (rotated or shared),” acknowledge the compromise, the diffusion of ownership, and a loss of focus, and revisit it as the organization matures.

Agile will continue to exist with or without a dedicated Scrum Master or Agile Leader. Frameworks evolve, but the principles, small batches, fast feedback, and empowered teams remain the same. Having a dedicated role strengthens a team’s ability to apply those principles consistently. Without one, Agile doesn’t vanish, but performance and improvement discipline often do.

The point isn’t about losing Agile practices; it’s about the risk of losing stewardship. Without it, the habits that once drove learning and improvement fade, and teams can inevitably slide back toward the rigid, hierarchical models Agile set out to change.

Poking Holes

I invite your perspective on my posts. What are your thoughts?

Let’s talk: phil.clark@rethinkyourunderstanding.com