You don’t need a Scrum Master

Cool. All middle management stopped reading already, sending this headline to their superiors. It’s that easy to get a message across. But why won’t you need a Scrum Master? Haven’t we preached that thing with Scrum Master being a full time job?

Scrum Master enjoying his time off after not being needed anymore. Photo by Robson Hatsukami Morgan on Unsplash

To be fair: all articles emerge from experience. This one, too.

Right now, I can tell you, you don’t need a Scrum Master. A specific type of Scrum Master. This agile certified project management legacy Scrum Master. This type has nothing to do with an agile team or a corresponding mindset. This person has a certificate and that’s it. Arisen from the deep catacombs of middle management or somewhere in between a sofa crack of a senior project manager’s office, this manifestation thinks there is agile project management and it’s done with Scrum, completely leaving out the team members.

As I strive further into team development and the thoughts of software craftsmanship, I see my role in teams moving away from that typical Scrum Master. I hear Martin Fowler talking about the state of agile and I recognize his concerns happening around me, too. Scrum Master seems to become something similar to project manager while agile only seems to become a tool to have projects done faster. The role seemingly copes with everybody’s inability to solve problems on their own. Instead of focussing on a team, the Scrum Master wittingly or unwittingly focusses on project results and deadlines. That’s not what this role was supposed to be. And evolution shouldn’t be the excuse here because teams haven’t developed in a way that a good Scrum Master is needless. Instead, many teams have developed in a way that sees their Scrum Master as a parent. Obligated to render a decision. Obligated to deliver answers where there are questions. The team mother/father, the legal guardian.

While agile is becoming the new normal, I more and more question the meaningfulness of trying to fit all projects and all kinds of teams into agile-something. Throw a bunch of certificates at them and you’ll have your Scrum team. F*** that! I assert that being a good team is more valuable than claiming to be agile. Especially looking at software development, there are some challenges in forcing everybody to become agile.

1. Agile doesn’t fit for all projects. Even though, landing on the moon saw incremental successes over time, building a spaceship should not done too agile. Security and safety should defeat agile.
2. No feedback, no need. If you’re working for 7 sprints in your dark cave, not showing anybody your results, there’s no need to use Scrum. You’re doing waterfall anyways.
3. For the sake of being agile. Just because some valley startups do fancy CI/CD-Kanban-XP-Hybrids doesn’t mean you have to do it. As for all we are writing here, please use common sense and don’t be stupid.

I agree with Fowler that the basic thoughts of agile software development have kind of vanished over time. In the beginning it was all about creating excellent software in close collaboration with your clients. It was about writing code and delivering value in the first place. Getting to know if stuff works in real life before wasting tons of money. Right now it seems to become the wanna-be-fit for all projects not moving fast enough. And I can tell you a secret: it most certainly has nothing to do with doing agile or not.

In the very end, we’ll have to decide which way to go. Will we exploit agile further and have it mutate into a new vocabulary project managers can use to impress stakeholders? Or will we go back to the basics and try to include the people who actually saw the need for those guidelines back in the good ol’ days. I don’t see myself becoming a project management assistant. But it’s far from reality, too, to only see me as a coach right now. My current team is at its very (and I mean it) beginning of working agile, far from being agile. It needs a teacher, a Scrum Master, and later on a coach and consultant, as bad as it needs one or two mentors to teach them the basics in software craftsmanship. Away from the heroes list tutorial in Angular or the initial setup of Java Spring.

It’s going to be a long journey and the team hasn’t even arrived at the airport yet. Imagine a Scrum Master that only micro manages the process and is not able to be a mentor. That’s not what it was intended to be. That’s not what it should be. But it’s becoming this more and more. In Germany we would call it “making a Weini” but guys, really? Management needs to understand what a Scrum Master role was meant to be and how it actually can help teams. Until then, well, you’re not agile enough.