What is NOT the role of the Scrum Master?
The Scrum Master role has a lot of misunderstandings. It is crucial to understand what is not a Scrum Master
The Scrum Master role has a lot of misunderstandings. It is crucial to understand what is not a Scrum Master
Is it crucial to understand what is NOT a Scrum Master? Although the Scrum Master is vital for the success of a Scrum Team. Yet, it is still not entirely followed by many companies and teams, many times there are huge misunderstandings, sometimes even people considering that the Scrum Master role is useless in groups that perform well.
I’ve come across some common misunderstandings of what the responsibilities of Scrum Masters are. But before we discuss the “don’ts” let’s understand what this role is supposed to be.
The Scrum Master is responsible for promoting and supporting Scrum as defined in the Scrum Guide. Scrum Masters do this by helping everyone understand Scrum theory, practices, rules, and values.
The Scrum Master is a servant-leader for the Scrum Team. The Scrum Master helps those outside the Scrum Team understand which of their interactions with the Scrum Team are helpful and which aren’t. The Scrum Master helps everyone change these interactions to maximize the value created by the Scrum Team.
The misunderstandings of the role of a Scrum Master generally go against:
Servant-leadership;
Promoting and supporting Scrum;
Helping everyone understand Scrum theory;
Helping those outside the team understand how to interact with the team;
Helping to maximize the value.
The common issues I’ve come across are:
Babysitter
I decided to use the word Babysitter because this is what I heard many developers saying, “we don’t need a babysitter, Scrum Master is a useless role.”. This sentence shows a lack of understanding of what Scrum is. Also, the benefits a Scrum Master brings to the team and the company. Why do teams see that? They think that a Scrum Master only:
Schedule meetings;
Ensure that the scrum ceremonies happen;
Prepare the scrum board;
Perform the retrospective ceremony;
Remove impediments.
Although that’s what some developers believe being the entire responsibility of a Scrum Master, teams without Scrum Master always complain about:
Having many interruptions;
Boring and meaningless meetings;
The stakeholders don’t understand how the team works;
Lack of collaboration between business and development team;
Lack of focus;
No clear vision where they are going to.
Whenever I come across this situation, it is clear that the team needs to learn more about the Agile Manifesto as well as understanding more about the Scrum mindset. I like to say that a unit that believes Scrum is a set of ceremonies and artifacts is missing the whole point. It is way beyond that; it is a framework that fosters collaboration and business value maximization, which is achieved by supporting you discover your way of working.
In the end, we want happy customers using our problems, which solved their problems. Bear in mind; Scrum is a means to an end.
A scrum master should recognize that different stages of a scrum team’s development require different approaches: some, teaching; some, coaching; and some, mentoring.
A scrum team’s communication with stakeholders should not be run through a gatekeeper (e.g., solely through the product owner) because this hurts transparency and negatively affects the team’s performance. Sprint reviews, conversely, are a good way to stay in close contact with stakeholders and to present the value delivered by the team during each previous sprint.
— Stefan Wolpers, 70 Scrum Master Theses
Project Manager
This misunderstanding generally comes from teams that are switching from traditional approaches to Agile. The stakeholders were used to rely on a single point of contact, that was the Project Manager; however, what happens in Scrum? There’s no Project Manager, and there’s also no strict deadline, it is different, it’s focused on iterating in smaller cycles, delivering value as often as possible, inspecting and adapting.
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
The communication in Scrum is not handled adequately by the Scrum Master or the Product Owner, actually the more interaction between stakeholders with the team, the better. By removing the bridge, the learning cycle is faster, avoiding waste because it is possible to adapt faster to changes.
The Scrum Master is a servant-leader for the Scrum Team. The Scrum Master exists to serve the team, puts the needs of the team first. This with the firm belief that you get the best out of people when you empower them.
A Project Manager is responsible to meet the project objective. Within Scrum there is no such role for a Scrum Master. The role that comes closest is the Product Owner, who should maximize value from the product.
— Willem-Jan Ageling, No! The Scrum Master is NOT a Project Manager.
Therapist
A Scrum Master is not a therapist; at best, he or she is a coach who helps the team achieves its best as well as encourage them to solve their problems.
Sometimes team members like talking to the Scrum Master about the problems they are facing, which is excellent and shows vulnerability, which is a sign of trust, but what the Scrum Master will do with that is what defines a great professional or not. The right action to do it is to understand where the team member is. Sometimes, the Scrum Master needs to be a mentor, sometimes a coach, and sometimes just an observer.
“When you need me but do not want me, then I must stay. When you want me but no longer need me, then I have to go”. — Emma Thompson
The Scrum Master is not responsible for solving all teams’ problems. He or she needs to promote, support, and ensure the Scrum is understood and lived in the organization. Whenever there’s a problem that the team can solve, the Scrum Master needs to help the team solving that themselves. Remember, the team is supposed to be self-organizing, so they should solve their problems.
Impediments are those problems that hinder a Development Team’s progress towards the Sprint Goal and lie outside of their capability to resolve on their own. This ties impediments strongly to another concept that is central to Scrum: self-organization.
— Christiaan Verwijs, Myth: The Scrum Master Must Resolve Every Problem
Team’s Secretary
Unfortunately, sometimes the Scrum Master is seen as a Team’s secretary, that either happens because the team doesn’t understand the role of the Scrum Master or because the Scrum Master is so helpful that falls into the trap of acting as a secretary. In this scenario, it is common to find one of the following requests from the team to the Scrum Master:
Could you book a room for us? We need to discuss some topics.
Could you book an appointment for us with the Team Y? We will need to evaluate some dependencies.
Could you approach DevOps Team? We are not able to deploy our application.
Remember that the Development Team is self-organizing, so that means such issues must be addressed solely by them. Leave the Scrum Master out of this, so he or she can ensure the Scrum is understood and lived among everyone. Once the Scrum Master has to spend time-solving the teams’ issue, there will be no time left to perform what the role requires, thus the benefits of Scrum may not be reached.
Development Teams are structured and empowered by the organization to organize and manage their own work. The resulting synergy optimizes the Development Team’s overall efficiency and effectiveness.
— Scrum Guide
Scrum Masters must stand up to such requests. It is essential to understand not only what to do, as well as what not to do. A successful Scrum Master will strive to help the team solving their problems.
Successful Scrum Masters help Development Teams increase their ability to resolve problems on their own. This is something that teams have to learn, and the Scrum Master helps them do so. What may be considered an impediment during Sprint 1, may have become a problem that the team can easily resolve by itself during Sprint 5. If you want to know if you are doing a good job as a Scrum Master, monitor the ability of a Development Team to resolve problems on their own over time. If this is increasing, you are probably doing a good job.
— Christiaan Verwijs, Myth: The Scrum Master Must Resolve Every Problem
Team’s Master
The Scrum Master is a servant-leader to the team. However, this is not about being a manager or a direct team’s leader. Sometimes the Scrum Master shows some behaviors which are against the self-organized team principle.
A common mistake happens during the daily, for example, the Scrum Master:
Ask questions about progress;
Distribute tasks over team members;
Pushes the team.
Be careful with this behavior; it is really demotivating for the team and totally against the Scrum principles.
They are self-organizing. No one (not even the Scrum Master) tells the Development Team how to turn Product Backlog into Increments of potentially releasable functionality;
Christiaan Verwijs wrote about a myth, which is about the Scrum Master must be present during the Daily Scrum. It’s a fantastic article, because it clarifies some dangerous behaviors that go against the Scrum. I needed to borrow part of the article, since it is complementary to the point I want to make.
The Scrum Master acts as a manager of the team, and uses the Daily Scrum to distribute work and make decisions on behalf of the Development Team;
The Development Team does not support or commit to working with Scrum, and needs the Scrum Master to ‘make sure it happens’. In this case, the deeper motivation to work with Scrum needs to be addressed;
— Christiaan Verwijs, Myth: The Scrum Master must be present during the Daily Scrum
Decision’s Influencer
Being a servant-leader means serving the organization and empowering them. That is what is supposed to be, but not always what happens. Let’s take a look more in-depth look into what being servant-leader means.
“A servant-leader focuses primarily on the growth and well-being of people and the communities to which they belong. While traditional leadership generally involves the accumulation and exercise of power by one at the “top of the pyramid,” servant leadership is different. The servant-leader shares power, puts the needs of others first and helps people develop and perform as highly as possible.”
Robert Greenleaf, The Servant as Leader
Considering this explanation, we can understand that the team is empowered to make the decisions. However, some Scrum Master influences the team quite a lot when they to make decisions; some examples are:
During a backlog refinement, the team has the possibility A or B. The Scrum Master says, “A sounds better than B.” The Scrum Master cannot make such a decision; actually, he or she should ask questions like, what advantages and risks do you see with each option? What will lead us to our goal?
During the daily the teams say that they are blocked because they need to take a technical decision, the Scrum Master steps in and say “go for option A, it works well since the Team Y is using it,” instead of this the Scrum Master should say “have you talked with Team Y, they have faced something similar.”
The whole story is about playing the role of a facilitator and coach, ask questions, do not make decisions, that is the teams’ responsibility.
They are self-organizing. No one (not even the Scrum Master) tells the Development Team how to turn Product Backlog into Increments of potentially releasable functionality;
Wrap Up
A Scrum Master is a crucial role; without a great one in place, it will be very hard or even impossible to benefit from the expected benefits of Scrum. However, it is a complex role as well, as a Scrum Master, you should ensure that:
The team and the company understand and live the values and principles of agile;
Encourage communication among stakeholders and groups;
Coach the team, so that they become self-organized;
Understand what is not part of your role, say no and focus on maximizing the benefits of Scrum for your organization;
Be a servant-leader;
Help teams make decisions by asking questions, but never influence or make the decision itself.
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