What is a Scrum Master, executive summary (2023)

The article "What is a ScrumMaster" gives an overview of the role of the ScrumMaster.I have written an extensive playabout Scrum methodology, and I strongly recommend that you visit it first before proceeding to read this page. It is a concise but comprehensive introduction to itScrum-Framework. Understanding this methodology will help you understand what a Scrum Master is.

If you have some Scrum basics and want to know more about the functions, roles, and responsibilities of a Scrum Master, read on below

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A Scrum Master is like a lighthouse in a Scrum Team, composed of a Product Owner, a Development Team and the Scrum Master himself. He ensures that he guides his teammates based on the principles of the Scrum Framework.

Like a beacon, he makes sure to explain to everyone how to properly “dock” their ship using Scrum before his team crashes into a harbor in stormy weather. Although a Scrum Master is part of a Scrum Team, you should know that as a "Scrum Beacon" of a company, they also make sure that they also educate other employees/teams on what can be a useful interaction with the Scrum Team and what can be detrimental.

Basically, Scrum Masters are responsible for three groups; Product owner, development team and the organization. These are just similes and generalizations, but if you want to know exactly the exact roles, functions, and responsibilities of a Scrum Master, the answer is in theScrum Guideeven.

Before we dive into the specifics, let's review three high-level concepts of a Scrum Master.

So what is a Scrum Master?

Scrum Master als Change Agent

Scrum Masters occupy a very important position in a company. Both have the “battlefield” insight and a 30,000ft view of how different teams are progressing on a day-to-day basis.As?

A way of ways is throughAgile Retrospective. The Facilitating Agile Retrospective gives Scrum Masters the opportunity to identify trends and recurring problems in a team. Although knowing the problem is just one step in accelerating change, Scrum Masters at least know what needs to change in an organization.

And that's where every change begins. I even wrote an extensive oneInstructions on how to shoot an agile retrospectiveinto an actionable problem-solving tool for executives usingObstacle fault. With this initiative, Scrum Masters are able to propose significant changes in an organization.

Scrum Master as a Servant Leader

Of theScrum Guidethemselves are identified as Scrum MastersMinistering Guides. This is an essential characterization of a Scrum Master, since without the concept of servant leadership, a Scrum Master will not be able to fully implement the Scrum Framework. It also goes back to the idea of ​​being a lighthouse.

A lighthouse is designed to serve seafarers and guide people to a safe haven. I wrote a blog post about itten characteristics of a servant leader here. Give it a try if you are unsure how Scrum Masters can be a servant leader in an organization.

Scrum Master as a mirror

It is imperative that a Scrum Master becomes the “mirror” of the team. Through a Scrum Master, the team can easily check that what they are doing does not reflect Agile and Scrum values. When a team stands in front of a mirror, they can easily spot and be reminded of the mistakes that go against the Scrum methodology.

The Scrum Master reminds the team to improve on these deficiencies by becoming the observer and the extra eye that looks unbiased but only at the principles of Scrum and Agile values. With team mirroring, members can receive open-ended questions from the Scrum Master that lead to overall team improvement.

This could be done through the use of modules like sprint backlogs, metrics and other tools.Now that we've broken down three high-level roles of a Scrum Master, let's get back to basics and basics, and find out the key responsibilities of a Scrum Master when it comes to collaborating with Product Owners, the Development Team, and in the organization he works for .

Responsibilities of the Scrum Master to the Product Owner

• It is important for a Scrum Master to be able to identify techniques that are effective and efficient for managing Product Backlogs.
• The Scrum Master should be able to articulate the items in the Product Backlogs.
• The Scrum Master should demonstrate an understanding of product planning in the empirical environment
• Help organize Product Backlog items that maximize value
• Demonstrate mastery of agility
• Enable scrum events as needed

Scrum Master responsibilities to the Development Team

• Coach the development team to be self-organizing and cross-functional
• Support the development team to develop high-quality products
• Remove obstacles to team progress
• Enable scrum events as needed
• Help the development team adapt in an organization that is just adopting Scrum

Responsibilities of the Scrum Master to an organization

• Lead and coach the company/organization in adopting Scrum
• Plan the implementation and introduction of Scrum in the company/organization
• Help employees and other stakeholders fully understand Scrum and empirical product development
• Initiate changes that result in increased Scrum Team productivity
• Collaborate with other Scrum Masters to fully enable Scrum within an organization

All of these roles and responsibilities are already discussed hereinprimerand also in officialsScrum Guide.

Aside from these roles and responsibilities to a Scrum Team, in this article I have written a definitive list of specific roles that a Scrum Master must play.Role of the Scrum Master Everything all Scrum Masters need to know“.

Remember that the main goal of a Scrum Master in an organization is to help stakeholders adapt to the Scrum framework and agile methods. Alongside this, the Scrum Master should help the company to have a stable and self-organizing team with a clear roadmap and help the company to identify organizational roadblocks.

To recap, here are other Scrum Master roles and responsibilities that embody this goal:

Responsible for the Scrum artifacts

• facilitate planning
• facilitate care
• facilitate reviews
• enable retrospectives
• Helps the team stay focused (e.g. becoming the external barrier to distractions)
• Helps maintain the team's Scrums tools (e.g. action board, storyboard, diagrams, backlogs, etc.)
• Helps the team and product owner determine the definition of done and the definition of ready

Responsible for developing and maintaining team dynamics

• Systemcoaching
• mediation of conflicts
• Advisor for team decisions
• Encouraging the development team's self-organization initiatives
• Mediation and arbitration of conflicting goals between the product owner and the development team

Continuous learning and knowledge sharing with the team and organization

• A Scrum Master needs to have an always-be-learning attitude when it comes to anything agile. He should enjoy regularly attending user groups, attending conferences, reading books, writing blogs, and engaging in other activities that improve his knowledge of Agile and Scrum.
• Mentor teams and strengthen the foundation of organizations in Agile
• Helps teams create information radiators
• Provides feedback to the team
• Encourage the use of agile engineering practices, particularly within the development team
• Promote challenging agile management innovations for teams (e.g. FedEx Days)
• Enable and encourage knowledge sharing with other Scrum Masters (e.g. through communities of practice)

Helps maintain the "big picture" in the team

• Enable, encourage and initiate conversations between team members
• Updates the stakeholders regularly
• Assists the team in reporting to management
• Promotes Agile and Scrum framework within the organization through blogging and other internal related conferences.
• Become a contact person in the company when it comes to questions about Agile and Scrum

Bernd Schifferwrote a comprehensive blog post about these Scrum Master responsibilities, which you can view hereshortcut. Feel free to take a look. Most of the above ideas came from his blog post.

How to become a good Scrum Master

Now that you have some idea of ​​the roles and responsibilities of a Scrum Master, the next logical question would be, "How can you be really good at being a Scrum Master?"

For those who are just beginning their Scrum Master career, I highly recommend that you read this article I wrote: “How to Become a Good Scrum Master - Start your Scrum Master journey.” I've outlined here how to systematize your first action points in your first 20 weeks at a company you work for. By doing this in the first 20 weeks of your new job, I can guarantee you a good start.

• Schedule a one-on-one meeting with members of the team. In these meetings you need to know your biggest concerns in the team and in the company as a whole. It is a must that you take notes. With these insights from the team, you can easily dial in the issues where you can easily implement the agile framework.
• Organize a workshop that clarifies the roles, responsibilities, and expectations of each team member.
• Coaching Alliance – Set this up early. Professional coaches have established this with their clients; You are no exception.
• Stakeholder mapping - this is an effective way to get to know the people who work in the organization.
• Install the team policy in a conspicuous part of the office/room. This serves as a visual cue for the team to follow basic work etiquette that is expected of them.
• Organize a one-off team building workshop to establish teamwork, principles, values ​​and product vision within the team.
• Start a Kaizen board in the team room. This is a great tool for people who are serious about learning and experimenting.
• Create an input field for agile retrospectives. This will make your work a little easier. Thinking about themes in retrospectives can be tedious, so stocking up on some themes to spark new ideas would be a great way.
• performance wall. Many people forget to celebrate success, especially in a company. An achievement wall is a great reminder to celebrate achievements and motivate the team to do more.
• Kudos Wall. It's a seemingly simple yet effective tool to show how people care, respect, and value one another.
• Establish the Organizational Impediment Board. Visualize all organizational obstacles in the company. This will help prepare everyone to tackle these obstacles.
• Start a learning wall. Every organization should be geared towards learning. A learning wall is an effective tool to promote learning thinking in the company.
• communities of practice. Speaking of learning: Communities of Practice are an important framework to strengthen the learning atmosphere in your company.
• Schedule workshops for the process and principles of product development.
• Initiate release planning to help the team look beyond sprints and see the long-term perspective of the business.
• Teach and train product owners to create a release forecast to help them communicate expectations to other stakeholders.
• Schedule workshops for story mapping, impact mapping, system thinking, and causal loop diagrams.
• Initiate the practice of pair programming and create a matrix board for pair programming

Now, that can be a lot of work, but it's the best way for a Scrum Master to start their work on the right track.

Scrum Master Required skills and experience

AQualified Scrum MasterI think it has the following:

• At least 1 year. Experience as a Scrum Master in a software development team with a strong implementation of Scrum principles, frameworks, theory and practices.
• Soft skills such as situational awareness, servant leadership, empowerment, facilitation, conflict resolution, continuous improvement and increasing transparency.
• Knowledge of well-documented patterns and techniques for closing gaps in the Scrum approach such as burndown technologies, dealing with bugs and various retrospective formats, etc.

Preferred Skills and Experience (Each of which is a plus)

• Two years of experience as a Scrum Master for a software development team that has consciously implemented the principles, practices and theory of Scrum.
• Sound knowledge of other agile approaches such as XP, Crystal, Kanban, FDD, etc.
• Some awareness and experience in widely successful Agile techniques such as User Stories, TDD, Continuous Integration, ATDD, Continuous Testing, Automated Testing, Pairing and Agile Games.
• Knowledge and experience of the technologies used by the team.
• Experience in using well-documented patterns and techniques for the gaps in the Scrum approach (example: different retrospective formats, burndown technologies, dealing with bugs, etc.).
• Strong communication skills and mentoring skills.

Other requirements of some companies are the following:

• General experience in software product development. (It is not recommended to select a specific role).
• Other things that a Scrum Master might find useful and relevant to the project, the team, the organization, and the team culture.

How to Interview a Scrum Master

In a blog post entitledScrum Master Interview Questions, I shared my personal experience interviewing for a Scrum Master position. It was a fantastic 2 hour experience for me as I was able to learn a lot not only in terms of the general practice of Scrum but also the type of people I would be working with.

They took the time to review my blog and books, which is rare for many businesses. It was a pleasant surprise. Another thing I really enjoyed during the interview was the role play they initiated.

I have to say it was a great way to gauge a candidate's perspective and how a candidate might react to certain scenarios.

If you are hiring a Scrum Master, I highly recommend you also use a role-play interview to gauge the experience, soft skills, and other requirements you need from an applicant. Don't forget to read themBlog post to read some questionsthat you can use in job interviews.

How and where to find a great Scrum Master

The short and simple answer to that is: It's like looking for a needle in a haystack. The truth is that in the Agile community, the idea of ​​having a Scrum Master is mostly scoffed at. They think there is redundancy in an organization. They simplify the role so much that it reveals the full principles behind the Scrum framework.

One of the reasons I see is the fact that there are only a few Scrum Masters who are able to use the full potential of the Scrum Framework. Another reason is the lack of role models in the industry who would truly demonstrate the strength and value of a Scrum Master.

Finally, an organization often fails to credit the success they achieve through the Scrum Master's efforts. I have set forth a carefully written case of these feelings inthis article.

I suggest you watch it to fully understand how difficult it is to find a reliable Scrum Master in a world where few have seen and understood his full contribution to an organization.

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