SAFe Scrum Master vs ‘Scrum’ Scrum Master — Deceptively Alike, But Totally Different
A SAFe Scrum Master does not need to know about Scrum
The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) exists to “to enable the business agility that is required for enterprises to compete and thrive in the digital age.” — scaledagileframework.com/about. Organisations adopt SAFe to align multiple teams working on the same product. SAFe is one of many ways to scale.
It is important to note that Agile teams in a SAFe environment can use Scrum, but can also choose to work differently:
“SAFe teams use Agile practices of choice based primarily on Scrum, Kanban, and Extreme Programming (XP) to improve their performance.” — scaledagileframework.com/agile-teams.
This is a key facet of Agile teams. They can also choose to adopt parts of Scrum and combine it with other practices. It is important to note, however, that according to the Scrum Guide, these teams do not use Scrum at all:
“Scrum’s roles, events, artifacts, and rules are immutable and although implementing only parts of Scrum is possible, the result is not Scrum.” — Scrum Guide 2017
Still, the servant leader of a SAFe Agile team has the title “Scrum Master”. If a SAFe Agile team uses Extreme Programming…
