While AI can automate administrative tasks like reporting and ticket updates, it cannot replicate the core human elements of a facilitator's job. It fails at building relationships, negotiating with other teams, and making nuanced judgment calls to resolve impediments.
Organizations rationalize not funding facilitator roles by claiming technology will automate the work or arguing team members should "step up" and take initiative. Both are ways to avoid paying for necessary, people-centric labor.
The crucial coordination and support tasks that act as "glue" for a team are often deemed non-promotable. Companies systematically reward individuals for visible, feature-focused work while overlooking those whose collaborative efforts enable overall team success.
Rotating roles like Scrum Master often backfires. Team members who lack the skill or desire for facilitation will perform the duties with minimal effort and show no improvement, creating a recurring drag on the entire team's productivity and morale.
Implementing a heavyweight framework like SAFe without funding its roles is not accidental. It's a strategy to gain the visible, auditable benefits of "being agile" for leadership without committing to the costly, people-centric work of true adoption.
Instead of identifying who is "best" at a task, managers should focus on who "keeps getting asked" to do it. This question reveals critical but informal roles, hidden dependencies, and employees burdened by the "competence tax."
When companies eliminate formal coordination roles like Scrum Masters, the essential work is offloaded onto team members who are not paid, trained, or formally recognized for performing these critical functions, often to their detriment.
Being visibly good at a critical but unfunded job doesn't earn a promotion or raise. Instead, it imposes a "competence tax," where you are informally drafted into performing that role permanently and for free on top of your official duties.