The responsibilities of a Scrum Master

A new year is a good opportunity to have a personal retrospective and have a look at what we’re doing. For me, one important part of this was to have a good think about what it means to me to be a good Scrum Master.

Read on for my conclusions – and if you agree or disagree, please let me know in the comments below.

1. The Scrum Master ensures that Scrum & agile principles are followed

A Scrum Master’s primary responsibility is to help the team to be as productive as possible. The Scrum Master does this not by coordinating the work or making decisions but through ensuring that the the team and its product owner follow the principles of the Scrum framework and the underlying agile principles. Some things the Scrum Master does to achieve this are:

• Coaching the team, product owner and stakeholders in Scrum and agile principles.
• Fostering self-organisation. In many cases, this means taking a step back to give the team space to work out how they organise themselves to do something. However, especially on a new or inexperienced team, it may sometimes be necessary to give a nudge in the right direction.
• Protecting the team from too much pressure, from the product owner or others, which could lead to unrealistic commitments or the team finding it necessary to take inappropriate shortcuts. At the same time, the Scrum Master avoids shielding the team so much from the reality outside that they become complacent or lose track of why they need to deliver what they are delivering.

2. The Scrum Master ensures continuous improvement

The Scrum Master performs is responsible for “causing change that increases the productivity of the Scrum Team”. He or she does this through:

• Always being on the look out for ways to improve productivity and minimising waste.
• Creating an environment where the team is able to to identify potential improvements, through sprint retrospectives but also through more ad hoc approaches. Improvements driven by the team are almost always worth more than the improvements driven by the scrum master.
• Conducting experiments, trying out ideas and observe the outcomes (inspect and adapt)

3. The Scrum Master ensures that planning happens

A Scrum Master is not responsible for creating plans. Instead, they work together with the product owner and the team to make sure the appropriate planning happens and that plans are kept up to date. This may include:

• Making sure the product owner has the necessary tools and knowledge to manage the backlog in a way that ensures the backlog items are clear and ordered in a way that minimises waste and maximises value.
• Ensuring that planning happens on all the necessary levels (product/roadmap, release, sprint and. daily) and that the plans are kept realistic through using empirical methods.
• Making sure that progress is tracked and kept visible and that plans are frequently updated to reflect not only the progress made so far but also what has been learned during the development.

4. The Scrum Master removes impediments

A Scrum Master is responsible for the removal of impediments, which prevent the team from being as efficient as possible. This includes:

• Tackling any impediments, whether brought up by a team member (typically but not necessarily during the daily Scrum meeting) or observed by the Scrum Master themselves.
• Removing barriers within the team, for example conflicts between team members or a lack of tools.
• Removing barriers between the team and others, for example finding a contact in another team or chasing a dependency.
• Removing barriers in the wider organisation (which depending on the organisation may be hard), for example challenging a reward system based on individuals rather than team effort.

When tackling impediments, the scrum master doesn’t avoid unexciting or uninteresting tasks but at the same time, he or she is able to focus their efforts where they make the biggest difference. For example, they wouldn’t fill in a timesheet on the behalf of each team member but they would question the need for the timesheet in the first place or find more efficient tools for it.

5. The Scrum Master is a facilitator

A scrum master is available to facilitate the various scrum events as requested. This includes:

• Hosting meetings or just making sure there is a room and appropriate equipment available – or anything in between.
• Avoiding the daily Scrum meeting turning into a reporting meeting, where the team reports their progress to the product owner or the scrum master rather than themselves.
• Not accepting becoming a “proxy product owner” during these meetings to free up the product owner to spend his or her time on other things.
• Particularly when working with an immature team or a team which is new to Scrum, it may be necessary to ensure everyone turn up for the meetings, that time boxes are adhered and that meetings keep their focus.

What do you think? Please do share your opinions on what it means to be a good Scrum Master in the comments.