Project Management

A Scrum Master’s Duty

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Categories: Agile, Teams


by Christian Bisson, PMP

A scrum master is an essential part of an agile team. However, it seems their role is often underestimated or misunderstood. In this article I’m hoping I can shed some light on the value they bring.

How People See Them

Here’s what I’ve heard over time:

Elves of happiness

Since scrum masters want teams to perform well, they want to make sure team members are happy. That sometimes makes others think that all scrum masters are trying to do is to make everyone happy without an actual purpose behind it.

Coordinators

Since scrum masters often talk to the team and gather information about the status of a project, they are often mistaken for coordinators—people tasked with giving a status report to the product owner or taking notes during meetings.

Useless

Some people simply have no clue what scrum masters do, thinking they are an overhead that could be removed without any impact because they don’t actually “produce” anything.

What They Actually Do

Help teams grow

One of the scrum master’s main tasks is to educate the team with agile principles, but also to help the team become self-sufficient. In a way, their main duty is to actually become useless as the team becomes more mature.

Scrum masters can do so by sharing agile knowledge and by coaching teams as they go through retrospectives where the team is motivated to talk about how they can improve.

Facilitate anything

There are so many different roadblocks that can reduce a team’s efficiency—whether it’s poorly defined requirements, inefficient meetings, lack of documentation or communication, or conflicts. A scrum master can help tackle anything that might slow down the team.

Keep the focus on the right place

Not being hands-on in projects allows scrum masters to have a different point of view that allows them to re-focus teams when needed. Whether it’s toward the developers and their commitment to the sprint, or product owners and their focus on a product’s vision, scrum masters make sure to remind everyone where their effort should go.

 

It can be hard to quantify a scrum master’s usefulness since they do not actually produce deliverables. But having experienced an agile project both with and without a scrum master, I can vouch for their role. They bring so much on a day-to-day basis to the teams they work with, which in turn brings quality products to clients.

Have you experienced working with scrum masters? What do you think is most important about their roles? 


Posted by Christian Bisson on: August 11, 2017 04:13 PM | Permalink

Comments (17)

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Eduin Fernando Valdes Alvarado Project Manager| F y F Fabricamos Futuro Villavicencio, Meta, Colombia
Thanks for sharing

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RAJESH K L Project Manager, PMP| Bharat Electronics, Bengaluru, India Bengaluru, Karnataka, India
Scrum Master roles are lucidly spelt out. Good article. thanks for sharing.

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Drew Craig Sr. Agile & Product Coach| Vanguard Philadelphia, Pa, United States
Leader, empower, influence, guide.

I worked with a great SM in a previous organization. I learned a lot from watching and listening to him.

Thank you, Christian.

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Roddney Hackstall Sr. Project Manager | Canopy Partners El Paso, Tx, United States
Great article. Thanks for posting.

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Bala Sripada Hyderabad, Ap, India
Ncie article.

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Mohamed Houzaifa Cader Project Manager| SD Worx Mauritius Limited Port-Louis, Indian Ocean, Mauritius
Great points.. thanks for sharing

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Mohamed Abdelaziz Mohamed Consultant Senior Engineer| Expertisehouse for Consultanting Alex, Alexandria, Egypt
Thxx

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Kevin Coleman Subject Matter Expert, Author, Speaker and Strategic Advisor| - Insights Pa, United States
Thanks for sharing your perspective

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Carina Colaço International Project Manager| Fidelidade Lisbon, Portugal
Thanks for sharing.

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Roberto Alvarez IT, Web Services Manager| New York Law School New Jersey, United States
Thanks for sharing.

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Karthik T Senior Engineering Manager| Nike Bangalore, Karnataka, India
Thanks for sharing

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Deepak Sharma Prod Dev/Mgt-Sr Mgr| Verizon Piscataway, Nj, United States
Very nicely explained! Thank you for sharing this!

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Fazal Hussain Aasar Community Manager| TaskQue Pakistan
Scrum master role is indeed very important and it is very hard to get good scrum masters who can inspire their team and get work done by them.

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Samer Alhmdan Senior Project Manager, PMP, PMI-RMP, LEED AP, EDGE Expert| dar Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Thank you!

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Stéphane Parent Self Employed / Semi-retired| Leader Maker Prince Edward Island, Canada
Scrum masters are coaches, mentors and cheerleaders.

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Steven Kiam Hua Loo Senior Manager| Infineon Technologies Asia Pacific Pte Ltd Singapore, Singapore
Thanks for Sharing. Scrum Masters are Coaches, Servant Leaders.



avatar
Alaa Hussein Program Manager| MEMECS Baghdad, Iraq
Interesting topic, thanks for sharing!

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