Redundant, But Not Irrelevant — The Mission of a Scrum Master

What was initially a mantra that attracted me to Scrum Mastery and Agile Coaching changed into a real situation I had to deal with.

Making One’s Self Redundant

“The goal of a Scrum Master is to make themselves redundant”

Romantic as it may sound, this is the mantra that has attracted me to the Scrum Mastery career path. While I could see other Scrum Masters deeply involved in their team’s ways of working and decision making, I trained myself to be more concerned about automating, formalizing and delegating my activities. Before I got formal training, I understood that my role can become a burden on the team unless I aim to make myself redundant.

So I preached this mantra, and always managed to get a good deal of nods of affirmation by those around me.

Then came along one day when I was made redundant. Literally. I was hit by a wave of lay offs, and this made me reflect thoroughly on what I had been preaching for so long.

In the time I was given to work in that organization, did I succeed in making myself redundant, or did I push myself to the fringes, making myself irrelevant?

From Roles to Accountabilities

In the latest version of the Scrum Guide, the authors changed the term “roles” to “accountabilities”. I deeply value this “minor” change.

It is because a role has to be filled, an accountability needs to be carried.

Often we see organizations looking to “fill in the role” of Scrum Master in order to fix a bureaucratic void, a bucket of disparate and non-value adding tasks that someone needs to carry out but none of the existing personnel are actually willing to. Tasks like “running daily standups” and “updating the team board” top the list. In these situations, organizations are looking to create roles to give such tasks a home, and they call these roles Scrum Masters or Agile Coaches, or any other related fancy name.

Accountability demands more than executing such tasks. I link accountability to the impact on outcome.

So the accountability to Develop good code is carried by Developers. The accountability for managing and negotiating around the product backlog is clearly carried by the Product Owner. What accountability, then, can we map onto a Scrum Master?

I think Scrum Masters are accountable to keep mastery of Scrum alive among the team members. By this I mean the mastery of thinking about the client, the potentially shippable increments, the prevention of waste generation, the championing of courage, focus, respect, commitment and openness.

They do so by coaching, teaching, facilitating and mentoring, and they develop other team and organization members into Scrum Masters. They succeed when most or some of it is done by someone else in the team and not just them.

Their own redundancy, in that sense, is part of the accountability Scrum Masters need to carry.

Redundant, Not Irrelevant — Conclusion

Going from full-time employee to freelance consultancy strengthened my perspective of my role in organizations. Allow me to repeat a reshaped version of my earlier reflection:

In the time we are given working in teams and organizations, how do we succeed in making ourselves redundant, and not irrelevant?

I see the risk of becoming irrelevant as one which is very real in our job as Scrum Masters or Agile Coaches. I have done my share of slipping into irrelevance myself. Here are some of the ways this irrelevance can manifest itself, and some questions to help mitigate it:

• When we allow ourselves to calcify in our stances, turning ourselves into uninspired masters of ceremonies. What was the initial objective of this meeting? Is it still relevant to the team’s or organization’s current situation? If so, in what ways can I help the group remain true and connected to this objective? If not, how can I bring this to the group’s eyes in a way that invites them to play a more central part of the meeting’s running?
• When we hold a sentence or phrase from the Scrum Guide above the team’s will to experiment and adapt. If we look at the Scrum Guide in its full context, how does the team’s idea break any of the values or principles? How can we use the team’s enthusiasm and initiative to turn this situation into a learning opportunity, conserving their appetite for experimentation?
• When we position our opinions and knowledge on Agile above everyone else’s, overriding the voice of the team and of the organization. In what ways can we give more space to the team’s voice to emerge? What pearls of wisdom can we take away from the team’s voice so our teaching stances are more aligned to the their mindset, challenges and innate ideas?
• When we resist to embrace new ideas, new technologies, like ChatGPT, and remain orthodox in our craft of promoting the habit of learning through experimentation. What is the real challenge behind the method of learning? Why does new technology seem to be a threat? How can we embrace technology to reinforce our teaching message, even if this means dealing with our inner uncertainties and possible failure?

Here’s a question for you: In what other ways do we risk becoming irrelevant and not successfully redundant in our teams and organizations?