Scrum is simple to adopt but difficult to master. A Scrum Master has achieved this mastery and helps the teams and organizations do that. The simplicity of the framework makes it one of the most widely used Agile Frameworks. A poll by Atlassian revealed that 92% of respondents were not implementing Scrum to its fullest. A Scrum Master is someone who can help your organization and teams become agile using Scrum.
A Scrum Master plays a critical role in the success of Scrum. As an interface between the organization and the Scrum team, the Scrum Master guides everyone towards agility by helping everyone understand and adopt Scrum. A Scrum Master also acts as a leader, an agile coach, mentor, and facilitator. This article delves deep into understanding what a scrum master is, their role, and how to become one.
Table of Contents
What Are The Responsibilities of a Scrum Master?
Enabling Empirical Approach
The Scrum Guide defines Scrum as the framework that adopts an empirical approach to developing adaptive solutions in a complex environment. Empiricism is an approach that depends on learning through experiments. This learning then influences the further work towards the solution delivery.
To understand and optimally utilize Scrum, everyone must realize empiricism. Ensuring this common understanding is the most fundamental and critical responsibility of a Scrum Master.
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Enabling The Contextual Scrum Environment
Scrum provides a high-level framework necessary to develop complex, adaptive solutions. Therefore, the accountabilities, events, and artifacts (3-5-3) are mandatory. However, there are many other practices and processes beyond Scrum that organizations require from a strategic and operational perspective. In that sense, the Scrum implementation for every organization would be contextual, within the ambit of the Scrum Framework as defined by the Scrum Guide. Scrum Master’s responsibility is to ensure synergy between organizational context and the Scrum adaptation.
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Enabling Self-Management
A Scrum team is in charge of its work. The development team is empowered to plan and execute the work to meet the Sprint and Product goals. The Scrum Master supports and ensures the team can achieve its goals and be as productive as possible.
The Scrum Master facilitates self-management and self-organization by propagating the five values of Scrum: Commitment, Focus, Respect, Openness, and Courage. When the team is committed and focused, they can deliver frequent value to customers sustainably. With respect and openness, they can communicate amongst themselves and with those external to the teams- other parts of the organization or customers, about the progress, impediments, challenges, and improvements. Finally, they can prioritize the work, experiment, and improve by bringing in required changes with courage.
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Facilitate Scrum Execution
A Scrum Master ensures that all Scrum events optimally take place. They play different roles during each of these events;
- They lead and facilitate the Sprint Planning, Review, and Retrospective meetings and ensure that the Daily Scrum does take place and confirms to the time-box of a maximum of 15 minutes.
- They also ensure the Sprint itself goes smoothly and effectively.
The Scrum Master is the guide and coach to ensure that these meetings, including Daily Scrum, are effective and finish with their respective time-boxes. They also ensure that the communication is structured, positive, and meaningful. They influence all attendees’ mindsets, behavior, and actions through coaching and mentoring, including stakeholders.
As the Scrum Master is at the tri-section of the developers, product owners, and organizational stakeholders, they influence each of these constituents differently, all directed towards greater agility and optional value delivery by leveraging the Scrum framework. The Scrum Guide lists these specific responsibilities, so we will not repeat them here. However, let’s enumerate a few critical ones.
- They train and coach the team members and the organization in implementing the Scrum framework, best practices, and principles.
- They remove obstacles that are slowing down the team’s progress. These obstacles may result from issues within the team or some external impediments.
- They have one-on-ones with the individual team members to resolve their problems and mentor them to increase their productivity.
- Ensuring that all the sprint and scrum events are productive, positive, and conducted within the timeframe.
- They consult with the stakeholders like the product manager, product owner, project manager, and clients. These consultations involve improving the collaboration and communication between the stakeholders and the team members.
- They analyze the various agile reports and metrics like burn-down charts, team velocity, and others to help identify room for improvement.
- They promote open communication, discussions, and solving conflicts.
How A Scrum Master Influences Outcome?
The term servant-leader has been used to describe the Scrum Master. While there have been many debates over the connotations of that term, and now Scrum Guide has dropped it, the term’s intent is still relevant. A Scrum Master demonstrates mastery over Agile and Scrum philosophy, values, and principles while serving the teams and organizations to achieve agility.
The servant leadership style may combine with various other leadership styles to drive the successful outcomes for the team, product, customers, and organizations. However, the foundation for a successful Scrum Master always remains people-first. Scrum Master ensures a cohesive and effective team by enabling and empowering individuals, making all other successful outcomes possible. `
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Qualities of A Scrum Master
So what is it that makes someone a great Scrum Master? The following is a list of a few critical characteristics;
1. Scrum is meant to work even for complex endeavors. Additionally, people management has its complexities. Patience and perseverance are critical virtues that the Scrum Master must possess to navigate these complexities. The Scrum Master needs to possess a keen analytical mind and must be able to grasp the complexities encountered in Scrum practices.
2. The Scrum Master should maintain a balance between organizing and facilitating.
3. The Scrum Master should serve as a coach for the team members. Therefore, they must possess leadership skills and managerial skills. In addition, they must have practical communication skills to attract team members. These skills are essential for the Scrum Master because they must manage the team and keep them motivated throughout the project.
4. A Scrum Master needs to have a deep understanding of how the team operates, the vision and mission of the business, and the current challenges and opportunities.
5. Finally, a Scrum Master must possess a passion for Agile, be energetic and enthusiastic, and serve as a role model for the team.
READ ALSO: A Pathway To Become A Successful Scrum Master
Why Is The Scrum Master Role Critical For Organizational Agility?
By now, it must be pretty evident that the Scrum Master’s role is crucial for a Scrum team. But it’s not just the team. The position is critical for the organization too. Let’s see how.
- They don’t just train the developers and other team members in Scrum. They coach the entire organization too by explaining Scrum to managers and others higher up in the administration.
- They implement Scrum at various departments other than product development. For example, Scrum is implemented in marketing, sales, finance, and legal.
- Many times, stakeholders struggle to coordinate with the developers. Scrum Masters help the stakeholders understand Scrum principles, theory, practices, and rules to improve their collaboration.
- They establish an agile mindset by developing a continuous improvement and learning culture.
- Larger organizations with long-term projects will have multiple teams working on them. Each team will have Scrum Masters, and they coordinate with each other to ensure a smooth workflow.
- Scrum Masters develop agile and Scrum communities to promote learning through exchanging knowledge and experiences.
- They also improve and upskill themselves by attending workshops and conferences, networking and learning from other Scrum Masters, and reading books. Finally, they implement their learning to increase the productivity of their organization.
- They remove impediments at the team and the organization’s level.
- They challenge the teams, managers, and the organization to improve and innovate.
Scrum Master Versus Product Manager & Product Owner
The Product Manager is the expert on the team’s product. They focus on establishing product goals like features, user experience, end product, deadlines, and non-technical aspects like communication with the stakeholders.
The Scrum Master is an expert on Scrum methodology. They train and ensure that the framework is implemented correctly. Apart from that, they focus on the efficiency and productivity of the team members to increase team productivity, thereby increasing product performance.
The Product Owner defines the “why,” “what,” and “when” of the product. First, they create the product backlog. Then, they prioritize the tasks, schedule backlogs, and set deadlines, among other examples.
A Scrum Master defines the “how” – how to go about developing the product. They focus on planning the sprints, conducting daily meetings, empowering the team, increasing productivity, solving problems, and self-organizing.
Even though both are separate roles, some of their responsibilities might overlap depending on the scenario. For example, if there are any obstacles, either Scrum Master or Product Manager will help clear them depending on the criteria.
Scrum Master Versus Project Manager
In reality, in many organizations, the responsibilities of a Scrum Master and a Project Manager overlap. This overlap confuses the critical duties of each role and may dilute the outcome of the agile teams. However, a Scrum Master and a Project Manager perform have different responsibilities. Such differences include :
1. The Project Manager is responsible for creating and managing the project, whereas the Scrum Master ensures that the product is of high quality.
2. The Project Manager handles the coordination and planning of the team, whereas the Scrum Master focuses on accelerating the deliveries.
3. The Project Manager is responsible for writing the requirements and delivering the project, whereas the Scrum Master focuses on providing high-quality outcomes.
Conclusion
The scrum Master is the most crucial part of the scrum team. They train and coach people and the organization in Scrum methodology and help them implement it. They are not just teachers. They are the leaders.
Scrum Masters are the servant leaders who lead the team to increase their efficiency, thereby increasing the project efficiency. They are not managers who assign tasks and deadlines to the members but invest in improving individual performances by empowering them.
