Hey Scrum Masters, You’re Not the Jira Lackey!

If your Scrum Masters is busy keeping all the tasks up to date in the online agile tool, they have no clue of their role. Learn what the SM should be doing.

Many Scrum Masters act as if their job is to keep all the tasks up to date in the online agile tool. They act like mother hens, constantly chirping about team members not moving their tasks to done. Or, they are the only one with admin rights to make changes in Jira, TFS or whatever.

These are warning signs that the Scrum Master really doesn’t understand their role. By focusing on the tool being used, they miss out on removing impediments and supporting the team to self organize. Let’s look at how this occurred, but first, a little backstory.

A Baseball Story

A few years back my son was playing as the catcher for his high school baseball team. There had just been a close play at first base, and my son was picking up the bat for the opposing team and returning it to their dugout.

It seemed like a nice thing to do, so I was surprised and won’t soon forget when his coach yelled out “Hey Mersino, you’re not their bat boy”. The point the coach was making was that it was not my son’s job to pick up the…