Why create the Agile Oaths?

I currently work as a Scrum Master, and in that role I’m always thinking about how I can help my teams. How can I help them work more collaboratively? How can I help them get comfortable with the rapidly changing environment in software development? These were some of my original questions when getting to know the teams I support. What I learned from listening and observing was most of the team members didn’t understand my role. Many of them didn’t understand the role of a Product Owner, and many didn’t fully understand their own roles. It was no serious fault of their own. I have found that we all come from different work experiences, exposure to different styles of leadership some great, some terrible, and everything between the two. We come to the team with our experience of operating in different cultures, creative or restrictive, and with different personalities. Not to mention their experience with the previous so called “Scrum Masters” on their team that preceded me like an ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend, and their subsequent fondness or loathing of those memories. Considering all of these variables, I realized as a Scrum Master one of the most beneficial things I could do for my teams was help to teach them the roles in Scrum, and make myself predictable to them.

To give the all to familiar sports example of a championship basketball team, they do frequently have star players, but the truly great teams have coaches who help everyone on the team understand their role. One persons role might be to come off the bench and play intense defense for five minutes, another might be to grab rebounds, one might be to look for the pass. We tend to glorify the one who scores, but it takes a team of team players who know their roles to put the team in a position to win. When roles are defined people know what to expect and they know where they have space to be creative. When there is certainty and communication in roles people tend to thrive, have better engagement, and genuinely have higher job satisfaction.

Now I am one of those people who believes fun should be a part of everything we do, and that we should not take ourselves too seriously. The idea of the oaths is supposed to be fun and helpful, not dogmatic, not another place to find rules. I simply took the concepts and values already present in Scrum and Agile and put them into an epically fun oath format. I’m a self-diagnosed positive extrovert, and that is clearly at the heart of this. If the oath concept doesn’t connect with you, that is ok too, but it might connect with many of your teammates. I will additionally disclose that I come with a strong belief in servant leadership, and to me that is central to what makes a great Scrum Master. I feel it also should be mentioned that we are all on a journey of learning and growth, so if you look at an oath a feel like it doesn’t describe you. That is ok. It is meant to be something to aspire to, HECK you could even read it out loud in the morning to get yourself hyped up for the day. There is tons of research that shows positively speaking things to yourself precedes growth and success. I’m happy to recommend books on that topic.

I also hope this concept will help identify and create a community of people who enjoy the Oaths and have a passion for their teams. It would be fantastic to foster a community of creativity and growth that adds value to each other.