waterfall Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Maria Skvortsova: When Agile Labels Hide Waterfall Reality — A Scrum Master’s Wake-Up Call in SAP Migration

“I realized that even if I like Scrum and Agile, and I think they are really good ways of thinking, some areas cannot adapt them because they are completely different from the mindset and ways of working.” — Maria Skvortsova

Maria came to Agile with the fire of a true believer. After a decade as a C++ developer, she’d found something that matched how she thought and felt about building software — something that went beyond controlling budgets and roadmaps. When a boutique SAP consulting company hired her as an Agile coach to transform their entire organization, she was all in. She built what she describes as a “really good” training for senior management, designed to sell them on Agile ways of working.

But when she stepped out of the PMO role and into a real SAP migration project as delivery manager, the ground shifted beneath her. The iron triangle — fixed cost, fixed scope, fixed time — ruled everything. Teams ran “sprints” that were really just boxed iterations with no feedback loops, no value delivery, just a march toward a go-live date.

Maria realized she was putting Agile labels on a fundamentally waterfall process. The hardest part wasn’t the discovery — it was accepting that she needed to redirect her energy to environments where Agile could genuinely take root, rather than forcing it where the mindset simply didn’t exist. Her advice: recognize when labels don’t match reality as quickly as possible, and have the courage to choose environments that align with how you want to work.

Self-reflection Question: Are you putting Agile labels on processes that are fundamentally waterfall? How quickly would you recognize the mismatch — and what would you do about it?

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About Maria Skvortsova

Maria is a Delivery Manager and Agile Coach who thrives in complexity, bringing clarity to chaotic environments. With a decade in C++ development and a background in professional opera, she blends technical precision with human empathy, helping enterprise teams move beyond task execution to collaborate seamlessly and perform like a synchronized, high-impact orchestra.

You can link with Maria Skvortsova on LinkedIn.

BONUS: The Agile Organization as a Learning System

Think Like a Farmer, Not a Factory Manager

“Go slow to go fast. If you want to go somewhere, go together as a team. Take a farmer’s mentality.”

Simon contrasts monoculture industrial thinking with the permaculture approach of Joel Salatin. Industrial approaches optimize for short-term efficiency but create fragile systems. Farmer thinking recognizes that healthy ecosystems require patience, diversity, and nurturing conditions for growth. The nervous system that’s constantly stressed never builds much over time—think of the body, trust the body, let the body be a body.

Value Masters, Not Scrum Masters

“We need value masters, not Scrum Masters. Agile is a useful tool for delivering value, but value itself is primary. Everything else is secondary—Agile included.”

Tom makes his most provocative point: if you asked a top manager whether they’d prefer an agile person or value delivery, the answer is obvious. Agile is one tactic among many for delivering value—not even a necessary one. The shift required is from process mastery to value mastery, from Scrum Masters to people who understand and can deliver on critical stakeholder values.

The DOVE Manifesto

“I wrote a paper called DOVE—Deliver Optimum Values Efficiently. It’s the manifesto focusing on delivering value, delivering value, delivering value.” Continue reading BONUS: The Agile Organization as a Learning System

BONUS: Quality 5.0—Quantifying the “Unmeasurable” With Tom Gilb and Simon Holzapfel

Clarification Before Quantification

“Quantification is not the main idea. The key idea is clarification—so that the executive team understands each other.”

Tom emphasizes that measurement is a means to an end. The real goal is shared understanding. But quantification is a powerful clarification tactic because it forces precision. When someone says they want a “very fast car,” asking “can we define a scale of measure?” immediately surfaces the vagueness. Miles per hour? Acceleration time? Top speed? Each choice defines what you’re actually optimizing for.

The Scale-Meter-Target Framework

“First, define a scale of measure. Second, define the meter—the device for measuring. Third, set numbers: where are we now, what’s the minimum to survive, and what does success look like?” Continue reading BONUS: Quality 5.0—Quantifying the “Unmeasurable” With Tom Gilb and Simon Holzapfel

BONUS: Testing as Measurement—Why Bug-Hunting Misses the Point With Tom Gilb and Simon Holzapfel

The Revelation That Almost Caused a Car Crash

“Tom said like 10 sentences in a row, kind of like a geometric proof, that just so blew my mind I almost drove off the road. I realized I had wasted hundreds of hours in boardrooms arguing about errors of which we were aware of perhaps 10%.”

Simon shares the moment Tom’s framework clicked for him. The insight? Traditional testing—finding bugs and defects—is the wrong focus entirely. It’s a programmer’s view of the world. Managers don’t care about bugs; they care about results, about improvements in their business. Tom calls this shift moving from “testing” to “measurement of enhanced or increased value at every cycle.”

The American Toast Problem

“How do we make toast in America? We burn the toast, and then we pay someone to scrape off the black bits off the bread.”

Vasco invokes Deming’s classic analogy to describe traditional software testing. The entire testing-at-the-end approach is fundamentally wasteful. Instead, Tom advocates for continuous measurement against quantified values. If you expected 3% progress toward your goals this week and didn’t get it, you’ve learned something critical: your strategy needs to change. If you did get it, keep going with confidence.

Four Questions at Every Checkpoint

“Where are we going? Where are we now? Where should we have been at this point? And why is there a gap?” Continue reading BONUS: Testing as Measurement—Why Bug-Hunting Misses the Point With Tom Gilb and Simon Holzapfel

BONUS: Continuous Strategy Engineering—Beyond Waterfall Planning With Tom Gilb and Simon Holzapfel

Strategy Professors Are Decades Behind

“The professors of strategy have no clue as to what Evo is. They are locked in decades ago, waterfall mode.”

Tom’s analysis is stark: the people teaching strategy in business schools haven’t undergone the same agile transformation that software development experienced. They still think in terms of 5-year plans that get tested at the end—a guaranteed recipe for discovering failure too late. The alternative? Decompose any large strategy into weekly value delivery steps. And if you think that’s impossible, ask any AI to do it for you—it will produce 52 reasonable weekly increments in about a minute.

Why OKRs Aren’t Enough for Complex Systems

“If you’re doing small-scale stuff that OKRs were designed for, like planning your personal work 14 days hence, OKRs are wonderful. If you’re designing the air traffic control system for Europe, they’re just too simple.”

Tom distinguishes between tools appropriate for personal productivity and those needed for complex organizational strategy. OKRs force some thinking, which is good, but they weren’t designed for—and have never been adapted to—large-scale systems engineering. His paper “What is Wrong with OKRs?” documents roughly 100 gaps between simple OKRs and what robust value requirements actually require.

Check out Tom Gilb’s paper on what’s wrong with OKR’s and how to fix it.

The Missing Alignment Layer

“We have no mental model for most of leadership about how you actually align people around clear vision.” Continue reading BONUS: Continuous Strategy Engineering—Beyond Waterfall Planning With Tom Gilb and Simon Holzapfel