6 min read
Do We Need an Agile Consultant, or Just Better Training?
Training fixes a skills gap on a team. A consultant fixes a leadership or system problem. How to tell which one you have, before you spend money on either.
If your team does not know how to do the work, buy training. If your team knows how and still cannot deliver, training will not fix it, and you need someone to look at the system around the team: priorities, funding, planning and how your leaders work together. The five questions below tell you which one you have.
The five questions, in order:
- Has the team had real training, and are they using it?
- Can people two levels below you name the most important thing for the company this quarter?
- Do your leaders agree with each other on priorities?
- Is the team new to Scrum?
- Have you already trained people and hired Scrum Masters, and seen the same problems come back?
I’m Michael Vizdos, a Certified Scrum Trainer® (CST) since 2006, one of the first 25 in the world. My Certified ScrumMaster license is #72, one of the first 75 ever issued (my Scrum Alliance profile). I offer both, training and advisory, so here is how I decide which one a client needs, including when the answer is not me.
What does training fix, and what doesn’t it?
Training fixes a shared-language and skills gap. People learn the roles, events and artifacts from the Scrum Guide, practice them with each other, and leave with the same words for the same things. That is real value, and it is the right first step for a team that has never done this work.
Training does not fix anything outside the team’s control. A class cannot change what a VP asks for, who funds the work, or whether three leaders each call a different project “Priority 1”. A team can leave a good class and return to the same constraints.
What does an Agile consultant fix?
A consultant, or an advisor, works on how the organization around the teams runs. That means diagnosing where work stalls (often planning, funding and review, not the development team), getting leaders to agree on a small set of priorities, and building a rhythm that lets them inspect results and adjust.
That is the work on my Strategic Advisory page. It starts with discovery, not a proposal, and I will say so if I’m not the right person.
Which one do you have? Five questions
Answer each one for your own team. The answer tells you which way it points.
1. Has the team had real training, and are they using it?
- No training yet: train. Start with the basics before anything else.
- Trained and using it, results still flat: advise. The problem is probably not skills.
2. Can people two levels below you name the most important thing for the company this quarter?
- Yes, and the answers match: training or coaching at the team level can work.
- The answers differ: advise. This is an alignment problem, and a class does not touch it.
3. Do your leaders agree with each other on priorities?
- Yes: look at the teams (training) or at how work flows to them (advisory).
- No: advise, and start here. See You built a First Team. So why is leadership still misaligned?
4. Is the team new to Scrum?
- Yes: train first. Advisory on top of missing basics is expensive.
- No: skip to question 5.
5. Have you already trained people and hired Scrum Masters, and seen the same problems come back?
- Yes: advise. This is the strongest sign that the problem sits above the team.
- No: train, and see what changes.
How to read your answers
- Mostly train: book a private class.
- Mostly advise: talk to me about executive advisory.
- Already running every Scrum event with no change in results: read We Do the Scrum Events, but Delivery Hasn’t Improved. What Should Leadership Do?
- Teams that wait on a Product Owner who cannot decide: read Our Product Owner Can’t Make Decisions. What Is Going On?
- A mix: that is common, and the usual answer is both, in that order (next section).
Can’t I do both?
Often you should. Many of my advisory clients first met me in a class, sometimes years earlier.
The order matters. Train when the team lacks the skills. Advise when the skills are there and something above the team is in the way. Do both when leaders and teams both need to change.
When is the answer neither?
- You are an individual leader who wants to get better at this yourself. That is 1:1 mentoring, not an organization-wide engagement.
- You have one specific event that is not working, such as a retrospective or Sprint Planning that never produces anything. The Scrum Event Tune-Up is a $297 asynchronous review of a recording of that one event, and it costs far less than either option.
- The company does not want to change. I accepted that kind of engagement once without testing the mandate, and I was asked to leave the room. I now do discovery first.
What does that look like in practice?
The president of a large gaming company had some people certified, but needed everyone across the organization using the same words, so teams could act and move forward in real alignment. Training was the right place to start, and the president did not sit it out: they attended the training and became certified too.
Over a few months I ran multiple training sessions. They reached delivery teams and leadership teams, and the work grew into mentoring and consulting where it was needed. Training alone had given them the shared language. The mentoring and consulting dealt with what was in the way once people started using it.
Teams started shipping every two weeks, and meetings held for their own sake stopped. The president described the result this way: “The classes brought clarity and alignment at all flight levels so we could Focus. #deliver.” They have since referred me to others.
If you lead the organization, take that part personally. Training is not something you send your teams to while you stay out of the room. The leaders who take the class alongside their people are the ones who can tell what is in the way afterward.
What does each cost?
Private team training starts at $5,000 and includes a follow-up with leaders and the cohort a week or two after class. A seat in a public CSM or CSPO class is $997. 1:1 mentoring is three sessions for $497. Advisory starts with a call. Learn more on my services page.
What next?
Not sure which you need? That is a normal place to start. Send me two or three sentences about the team and what is stuck, and I’ll tell you honestly whether it is a training problem, an advisory problem, or something I cannot help with.
- Team needs skills: private Scrum training
- Leadership or system is the problem: executive advisory
- It is about you: 1:1 mentoring
If you decide to train, with me or with anyone else, ask the trainer my 10 questions to ask your Scrum trainer first.
Who wrote this?
I’m Michael Vizdos. I started in software delivery at EDS in 1991, so I have 35+ years in this work. I have been a Certified Scrum Trainer® since 2006 and have trained 4,900+ Scrum Masters and Product Owners since 2006, from about 1,500 organizations. More about my background.
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