Editorial note: Edited for readability from local ASR and diarized into speaker turns.
The friction around safe / scrum
Yuval Yeret: What’s the future of agile as a career choice? A while ago, I joined Jonathan Stark on his podcast, Ditching Hourly, to discuss the current state of Agile as a platform, how it has evolved over the years, and what practitioners should consider as the platform matures.
Jonathan primarily focuses on advice for freelancers and consultants on ditching hourly billing through positioning, productized services, and value pricing. He recently published a series on platform specialization, which I thought was very relevant to the agile space. One very interesting aspect of our conversation was how to apply Jonathan’s advice - like the “Why Conversation” - if you’re an internal agile practitioner trying to survive or thrive by moving away from agile theater towards outcome-oriented positioning.
I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Jonathan!
Jonathan Stark: Hello and welcome to Ditching Hourly. I’m Jonathan Stark and today I’m joined by Yuval Yeret. Yuval, welcome to the show!
Yuval Yeret: Thank you, Jonathan. Good to be here.
Jonathan Stark: Today we are going to talk about the status of Agile as a platform and what to do with platform specializations if you want to pivot. But first, Yuval, could you tell folks a little bit about who you are and what you do?
Yuval Yeret: My background is as a developer and engineer. I was in engineering leadership for a while and discovered the Agile world back in 2006. After using Agile to improve my own engineering and product organizations, I switched over to the “dark side” of consulting and coaching - helping other leaders drive change using agile techniques.
I’ve been in this space for a while: I’ve seen it rise to popularity and cross the chasm. Your recent emails about platform specialization have definitely been interesting to think about from the perspective of what’s happening in the agile world today.
Jonathan Stark: That was almost 20 years ago when you discovered agile. What was agile like back then? To the extent you were aware of it as a platform, you used it as a tool, and then what happened?
Yuval Yeret: Even back then, Agile was an “industrial complex” of sorts. There was a certification industry: I went into a classroom for two days, learned from a Certified Scrum Trainer, learned the “secret handshake,” and left being certified to master Scrum and make my organization agile.
You can notice the cynicism, because what can you really do after two days? But the people leading the industry figured out a commercial model focusing on roles that created mass adoption. There was a clear thing people could do to jump on the bandwagon. But what happened with roles and certifications is coming back to haunt us today.
Jonathan Stark: At that time you were in-house as a VP of Engineering for a tech startup. What prompted you to go out on your own?
Yuval Yeret: Over several leadership positions, my interest turned more and more to optimizing the organization and less to optimizing code. In 2009, I joined a coaching firm and helped build their US presence, and then went truly solo a few years ago.
Initially it was consulting, advisory, and coaching - helping leaders navigate what to actually do, using Kanban and flow to reduce process overhead. Over time I mixed in training: about 30% training and 70% consulting and advisory work.
Jonathan Stark: How has the agile industrial complex evolved over those years?
Yuval Yeret: In the 20 years that passed, Agile became mainstream for most corporate technology organizations. That created a reality where the organizations currently adopting it are late adopters. In Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm terms, laggards need a complete off-the-shelf solution. Some are just sun-setting Waterfall because nobody knows how to do it anymore.
That creates “Agile Theater” - slapping new labels on old behaviors: calling managers Scrum Masters, calling projects Sprints, but changing nothing fundamentally. It’s putting lipstick on a pig. It gives Agile a bad name and causes early adopters to view anything touching “agile” as toxic.
That dynamic is driving the rise of the Product Operating Model - moving past “feature factories” toward empowered product teams. Practitioners who jumped on the bandwagon are now finding themselves on a burning platform.
Jonathan Stark: In the platform space, being an early adopter on a platform that crosses the chasm is great: clients throw money at you and the platform does your marketing. But platform specializations can die in two ways: either the platform fails to cross the chasm, or it’s so successful that too many people jump on the bandwagon, diluting the terms and undercutting prices.
I saw this with mobile development: Eventually it commoditized. When everyone at a conference is half your age and undercutting you, you’re in the bandwagon stage. How many agile practitioners are out there?
Yuval Yeret: Hundreds of thousands of certified people. The meme that “Agile is dead” is everywhere, and demand for certifications has dropped dramatically.
The biggest issue is the over-reliance on dedicated agile roles. In 2006, I was VP of Engineering: my engineering managers and team leads learned Scrum and flow, and we applied it directly. We didn’t hire external, dedicated Scrum Masters for every single team. The model of staffing agencies placing full-time Scrum Masters across every team is coming to an end.
What is really happening in the system
Jonathan Stark: What are early adopters and consultants doing to pivot?
Yuval Yeret: Some retired after the boom years. Others are rethinking their delivery: mastermind groups, advisory retainers, asynchronous community courses rather than traditional classroom training.
Internal practitioners - Scrum Masters and coaches inside enterprises - are scrambling. Many are trying to figure out whether to transition to product management, program management, or return to engineering leadership.
Jonathan Stark: If you’re an in-house Scrum Master at a regional bank, isn’t your job security based on whether your boss sees you making things run smoothly, regardless of your title? Or has the title itself become poison?
Yuval Yeret: If the organization adopted agile out of FOMO and hired dozens of role-based practitioners without asking “why are we here?”, management now sees hours billed without clear business outcomes.
My advice to internal practitioners is to borrow from consulting: focus on evidence and outcomes. Have the “Why Conversation.” Netflix has the famous “Keeper Test” question: If I wanted to leave, how hard would you fight to keep me? Internal agile practitioners need to connect their daily work to expensive business problems, not just facilitating daily standups.
Jonathan Stark: When platforms flip, the title becomes toxic and companies clean house with a broad brush. What should practitioners ask themselves?
Yuval Yeret: We have to ask: How have we been complicit in creating this condition? When we act as process overhead rather than value-add, we set ourselves up for elimination.
The practical shift
Jonathan Stark: In the early 2000s, I specialized in FileMaker. When I realized the web was taking over, I thought FileMaker was dead, so I pivoted to the LAMP stack and then mobile. But FileMaker is still around - some people still make great livings on it because supply contracted.
For people looking to escape a burning platform, there are two primary paths:
First: Strip off the platform wrapper and sell the underlying outcomes. If you helped teams ship features faster, reduce production bugs, or improve team retention, sell those organizational outcomes directly.
Second: Niche down by industry or company size. Specialize in 100 - 250 person biotech or fintech firms experiencing scaling pains. You know their exact problems, and whether you use agile terminology or not depends on whether that buyer cares about it.
Yuval Yeret: Exactly. Specialization is essential. You have to build your solar system: what specific expensive problem do you solve? “I facilitate the Daily Scrum” is not a value proposition.
There are also entire sectors that never adopted agile during the first wave - swimming school franchises, regional manufacturing, biotech lab operations. They don’t need Bank of America-style enterprise frameworks; they need pragmatic ways to collaborate and shorten feedback loops.
What leaders should pay attention to
Jonathan Stark: If companies fire all their Scrum Masters, will they eventually feel a deficiency and hire people back?
Yuval Yeret: Some banks did that: they laid off agile coaches and then hired back a subset as delivery leads or technical project managers focused on shipping.
Smart organizations realize you don’t need a dedicated agile coach per team - that’s not scalable. Instead, they treat enablement like Product Operations: a small, centralized capability supporting many teams, supplemented by external advisory retainers for high-leverage guidance.
Jonathan Stark: If an internal practitioner wants to survive, they need to talk to their manager like a consultant: Where is the business losing money, and how can I help fix it?
Yuval Yeret: At a minimum, connect to your organization’s most expensive problem. Show traction there, and your value becomes self-evident.
Jonathan Stark: Where can folks find out more about your work?
Yuval Yeret: Two places: read my article on the future of agile roles at yuvalyeret.com, and check out my audio series on navigating the landscape between Agile Theater, Feature Factories, and the Product Operating Model.
Jonathan Stark: Thanks for joining me, Yuval!
Yuval Yeret: Thanks, Jonathan!