The Role of Agency in Scrum: Why Self-Management Without Agency is a Lie

Scrum is often misunderstood as a set of ceremonies or a lightweight project management method. It is neither. Scrum is a social technology built around the ethos of Agile, enabling teams to deliver adaptive solutions in complex environments. At its core lies a fundamental, non-negotiable requirement: self-management.

But self-management is not simply a label you apply to teams. It demands something deeper and harder: real agency.

Without agency, Scrum collapses into shallow ritual. Without agency, accountability is performative, not real.
Without agency, you are not doing Scrum. You are enacting a fragile imitation of agility.

Scrum Is Agile — and Agile Demands Self-Management

Agile and Scrum are often conflated or treated as separate. Let us be clear: True Scrum is Agile. Scrum operationalises Agile principles with discipline, transparency , and empiricism. It creates a bounded environment where teams can thrive.

The Agile Manifesto (2001) made it clear:

The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.

Self-organisation was never about anarchy. It was about teams owning how they deliver value. Agile assumes teams will figure out the best way to achieve goals — not be told exactly what to do.

Scrum sharpened this requirement in the 2020 Scrum Guide:

Scrum Teams are cross-functional and self-managing, meaning they internally decide who does what, when, and how.

Self-management is not a bonus feature. It is the foundation. Without it, Scrum is impossible.

Agency: The Prerequisite for Accountability

Agency is the power to make decisions and act toward outcomes you are accountable for. It is inseparable from accountability itself. Without agency, accountability is a façade — a mechanism for assigning blame rather than empowering success.

Scrum defines clear accountabilities:

• Product Owner : Maximising value.
• Developers: Delivering a usable Increment every Sprint.
• Scrum Master : Enabling the Scrum Team ’s effectiveness.

These accountabilities assume that those who hold them have real authority to act .

When organisations strip away decision-making power but leave accountability in place, they are not enabling agility. They are constructing a system of learned helplessness.

The Myth of “Self-Managing” Teams

Many organisations today claim to embrace “self-managing teams” but operate in ways that directly undermine them:

• Sprint Goals are dictated, not created.
• Work is assigned to individuals by managers.
• Technical decisions are second-guessed by external authorities.

This is not self-management. This is hierarchical command-and-control wrapped in daily standups and sticky notes.

If your team cannot decide how to achieve the Sprint Goal, they are not self-managing. They are being managed under a different name.

Weak Scrum Masters Enable Weak Scrum

Scrum Masters are accountable for the effectiveness of the Scrum Team. Yet in practice, many are limited to scheduling events and taking notes , with no real authority to challenge systemic dysfunction.

A Scrum Master without agency is not fulfilling their accountability. They are facilitating ceremony without enabling change.

Scrum Masters must:

• Teach leadership and teams what true self-management entails.
• Coach teams to take ownership of their processes and outcomes.
• Mentor individuals to step into accountability with courage.
• Facilitate organisational evolution, not just event logistics.

If you are a Scrum Master and you cannot do these things because of organisational resistance , you must raise it visibly. Otherwise, you are complicit in the degradation of Scrum.

Why Weak Implementations Collapse

When organisations adopt the appearance of Scrum without enabling the conditions for Scrum, dysfunction inevitably follows:

• Daily Scrums become status reporting.
• Sprint Reviews become formalities with no real inspection.
• Retrospectives become meaningless because the team lacks the power to change anything.

Scrum without agency becomes a theatre production. A ritualistic reenactment of agility, without any of the outcomes.

When organisations complain that “ Scrum doesn’t work ,” the reality is usually simpler: they refused to enable it to work, and they ignore the evidence of their own dysfunction .

The Path Forward: Fight for Agency

If you are serious about creating real, resilient agility:

• Scrum Masters must coach, teach, mentor, and cause real change — not just facilitate ceremonies.
• Product Owners must demand the authority to own the backlog and drive product strategy .
• Developers must guard their right to decide how to build and deliver working product Increments.

And leadership must understand: if you want the results Scrum promises, you must create the environment Scrum requires.

Self-management is not optional. Agency is not optional. Without them, you have nothing.

Conclusion

Scrum depends on self-management, and self-management depends on agency. Remove agency, and you remove the heart of Scrum. All that remains is empty ceremony, a hollow simulation of Agile values.

If you truly want the benefits of Scrum — adaptability, resilience, continuous value delivery — you must be willing to do the hard work of granting real agency to those accountable for outcomes.

Scrum without agency is not Scrum. It is theatre.

Choose what you want to build.