Scrum Master (And Agile Coach): Please Step Up Your Game!

And help management to be effective too

People regularly ask me for help to improve their way of working. I then am not surprised to encounter a huge mess. Too often, this mess was created by Scrum Masters or Agile Coaches who did a good job coaching the teams, but dropped the ball when coaching customers, internal stakeholders and especially management.

I talked about this issue before, how coaching management is so crucial. Today I’m going to discuss the dysfunctions of coaching management and what you can do instead. Because we need to step up our game. Most of us have nailed coaching teams. But without helping management, we can forget about effective Scrum teams.

Managers have a big responsibility. They need to ensure their teams are contributing to the companies’ goals. This includes helping the teams to understand the goals and ensuring they work towards these goals.

They also need to ensure that the right people are in the teams and that these people can contribute effectively. This includes helping them to grow. But also the less pleasant aspects of people management, when a person doesn’t fit.

The degree of responsibilities for a manager varies per organisation. It can even differ within an organisation. Managers may be responsible for translating company goals to department goals. This may also be with the teams. Similar variations are also with people management.