The Agile Industrial Complex Test
Before you adopt a methodology, ask how the people selling it make their money
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~days to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- 90%
A skepticism protocol for evaluating any methodology, framework or certification being sold to your organization. Perri's core move is to trace the revenue model: Scrum.org, Scrum Inc., SAFe and the big consultancies make money by training and certifying your people, which means their incentive is adoption breadth, not your capability. She pairs this with tests that separate first-principles coaches from by-the-book sellers.
Origin
Melissa Perri, drawing on the industry term 'the agile industrial complex' and on repeatedly following McKinsey-led SAFe rollouts into organizations to clean up afterwards.
Core principles
- 01Follow the money: certification-and-consulting revenue models reward adoption, not outcomes.
- 02A certificate proves attendance, not capability.
- 03'Nobody gets fired for hiring McKinsey' is a purchasing safety argument, not a competence argument.
- 04A good coach is trying to make the people and the product better; a bad one is trying to make you compliant with a manual.
- 05Ask any framework: what's the end goal — yours, or the seller's?
How to run it
- 1
Trace the seller's revenue model
Ask how this organization makes money. If it is per-head certification (roughly $2,500 per person for a two-day class) plus consulting to teach the process, their incentive is to certify as many of your people as possible.
Watch out The pitch 'certify all your people and then you can work like this' is the tell.
- 2
Separate the certificate from the capability
Ask what the certification actually evidences. A two-day class ending in a CSPO certificate does not demonstrate the person can do product management, or do the job at all.
Pro tip Perri refuses to certify PMs from her own courses — she issues a certificate of completion only, because no short class can prove someone is able to do the job.
Watch out Some organizations require certifications for promotion, which quietly converts a training vendor's revenue model into your internal career ladder.
- 3
Demand a real competency model if you must certify
If certification is unavoidable, insist on the model used by serious agencies and by the PMP: multiple levels, coached practice on real work over time, and demonstrated performance to progress — not a two-day workshop.
- 4
Interrogate the consultancy's actual experience
Ask whether the people delivering the transformation have ever been inside an organization doing this work and stayed for the long haul. Brand-name safety ('nobody gets fired for hiring McKinsey') is not evidence.
Pro tip Perri has followed the same consultancies into organizations and had to fix what they set up.
Watch out McKinsey built a large division delivering agile transformations and introduced SAFe into many organizations — brand plus a certification-funded playbook is exactly the combination this test exists for.
- 5
Sort the coaches by their end goal
Distinguish coaches who take a first-principles approach to great product and development work — whose goal is a better environment and better products — from those who insist you do SAFe or Scrum by the book. Be very skeptical of the second group.
Pro tip Ask a candidate coach what they would delete from the framework. A first-principles coach has answers.
- 6
Apply lowercase-agile: inspect and adapt the process itself
Whatever you keep, hold it to the actual agile principle — move quickly and deliver value to customers. Regularly ask of every process: is this serving our company, our culture and our customers? If not, change it.
Pro tip Inspect and adapt is a lowercase agile principle — it applies to the framework itself, not just to your sprints.
Watch out Rigid adherence means you end up talking about work about work — which stand-ups you run, whether you sprinted back-to-back — instead of how you're serving customers and winning the market.
In the wild
Agile coaches arrive during a transformation, declare that all product owners need to be certified scrum product owners, charge roughly $2,500 a head, run a two-day class, hand out certificates and tell newly-minted product owners to go do a completely new role.
→ Perri's verdict: the certificate doesn't mean they can do the job or do product management, and it isn't in the company's best interest — it is the training vendor's business model executing as designed.
Much of SAFe was introduced to large organizations by McKinsey and similar consultancies, whose people, Perri notes, have often never been inside an organization trying to transform it and stay for the long term.
→ She has repeatedly followed them into organizations, found the setup broken, and been hired to fix it — hence the skepticism about who is selling.
Common mistakes
Confusing a defined map with a correct answer
SAFe is bought because it is the only framework that draws executives a plug-and-play map with definitions. Completeness of the artifact is a marketing achievement, not evidence it solves your problem — and it leaves out product management entirely.
Believing there is a fast track
Neither a framework nor a class skips the hard parts. Perri's summary: there's no quick way to do any of this — be skeptical of any plug-and-play solution, whether it's SAFe for your org or a certification for your career.
Is it for you?
Best for
Executives and product leaders evaluating a methodology rollout, certification budget, or transformation consultancy
Not ideal for
Teams already working from first principles with a coach who is demonstrably making the product better
From the transcript
“the way they make their money is through Consulting to teach you these processes”
“doesn't necessarily mean they could do the job doesn't necessarily mean they could do product management”
“there's always a saying that nobody gets fired for hiring McKenzie”
“inspect and adapt is a lowercase agile principle so we should be looking at every process we do and saying is it working and not…”
From the episode
Everything you’ve ever wanted to know about SAFe and the product owner role
Melissa Perri (author, founder of Product Institute)