I can’t wait to see these scrum master charlatans eliminated from most companies.
The kindest interpretation one could offer is that it was a starry-eyed conception of how programming teams could constantly kick the blame-ball back to the stakeholders, as if the routine assignment of fault were somehow reasonable and rational in organizations, which it is not. At its worst, it looked like a solid grift, something that would last for several years as long as you kept smiling and promising.
{thing} is something we can pay money for, without making real changes or learning new information, to tell investors and competitors we're part of {new fad}
Big-A Agile (as marketed, certified, and hired for) is that for little-a agile (the manifesto and cultural practice). It also describes most consultant trends.
The root of it is the realization that nobody in positions of power wants to change or admit they don't know something. Highly structured Agile implementations promise to deliver agile without requiring either of those things of anyone in power, which is why they're CTO-down driven: hire for new roles, nod when report are presented, and pat each other on the back at how progressive your company is.
It's management attempting to feign involvement at a lower level, without really putting in the effort to do so productively.
DevOps - and the litany of industry darlings who have as many (conflicting) definitions as there are shades of the rainbow.
Cloud - or, the people whos only role is to understand at a high level what cloud offerings exist.
DE&I - more insidious as it is a noble and worthwhile endeavour, but constantly gets taken over by people who bully others and/or grows huge
Still no idea what that was about, and it was never brought up again.
And it's possible some dedicated scrum masters could simply drop into the somewhat similar role of technical program manager.