How to get Senior management to take ideas seriously? [closed]

Question

Touched on it here

Not feeling valued

Long story short

One of the problems I have is where I work, the work stream I am Scrum Master of is continuously improving at a rapid rate, and that is from the team collectively working together to shape delivery following retrospectives.

This is however being overlooked after head of agile setting up his own competing teams and management favoring his approach more since he is more senior in the company. Senior management are forcefully planning to scrap my team’s workstream model of agile in favor of his despite the data indicating it’s running more efficiently.

As a Scrum Master this has left me very frustrated since it feels as though all the work I’ve done with the team; agile coaching and helping them to become more efficient has been a waste. I am also concerned since the head of agile will be leaving soon and is introducing ways of working which do not fully reflect or solve the issues we have from limited experience in this part of the business leaving me to clean up the mess, and potentially get blamed if it turns out his model of working does not work.

The business is currently having a high turn over rate with Scrum Masters, I suspect it’s for this reason

Answer 1

In this type of situation you need to use diplomacy. This is not a technical problem, it's a political one. Senior management has already made up their minds. If you have already submitted a well researched rebuttal to their proposed solution with an executive summary and they have denied it, then you did your job.

What you need to do now is reiterate your concerns about implementing technology when the company only has one person proficient enough to handle any problems that will arise. In order to alleviate that concern you should be requesting the company send you to multiple training courses to cover basic to advanced use case scenarios as well as remediation. This request should be in writing, and it should be succinct and professional. The goal is not to split hairs or get the last word in, you are trying to help yourself and the company by learning a skill that is critical to future performance.

If your request for training is rejected, then that is another decision (good or bad) by senior management and you have to decide whether you want to take on the burden of this role without proper tools or find another position in the company or elsewhere.

Even if your senior management seem like they wouldn't go for training, you should ask. I've been in this situation at two separate companies and they both gladly sent me and my team to training. The cost of training is insignificant compared to the cost of losing business continuity.