Attention SCRUM MASTERS: This is Your Wake-up Call
Disclaimer: The article has more questions than answers.
It’s time to stop.
I can’t count a week without someone approaching me and asking how to become a scrum master. The nice person I am, I try to help. I basically try to understand why they want it and what it means to be a scrum master for them.
Most of the time, those who approach me don’t exactly know what a scrum master is.
How can you want to become someone you don’t know?
Sounds kind stupid to me at first. On the other hand, that’s exactly how I started my “career.” It all began with self-education online, passing a certification exam, & working with amazing people who have helped, coached and tolerated me. Did I have a profound knowledge of scrum at the beginning? No. I had no idea what scrum masters eat for breakfast or how to explain to my grandma what I’m doing for a living.
When I started, there were around 5 scrum masters in my city (that I knew of). No one was really speaking about scrum that much, and the agile hype wasn’t at its peak yet. It was a well-considered choice for me, but still, I didn’t know all the details of my new role. Somehow, in a few years from then, doing scrum became the new vibe. And becoming a scrum master turned out to be one of the “easy ways” of entering the well-paid IT sphere for some people. The hype of scrum & agile, in my opinion, has somehow altered the purpose of scrum and made it the scapegoat, as people started misusing it and referring to it like “we’re doing scrum, but in our way.”
Now, how many times a day do you run into ads promising a career in scrum mastery taught in 1 month. A MONTH! Gotta be kidding me! I have questions for you, students, and people who teach courses:
How can you learn or teach anything like that in a month?
You do know it is just a role, right? And I hope you know it takes tons of experience (& wisdom) to excel…
It really is time to stop the bullsh*t. Scrum master is nothing more than a role indeed! In no possible way is it a position or a title. It was meant to be a role for the development team. Every sprint, one of the developers was supposed to take the SM role and do what the role was created for on a rotating principle. That’s it. It didn’t work out. It became the mess it is now, all over the world.
It’s time to reveal to training centers that they should stop producing more scrum masters than they are able to produce developers. It is time to stop giving unneeded accreditation to people that don’t know the real worth of scrum and will never be able to use it.
On the other side, how desperate are the followers of the “holy” scrum guide, the type that “adapt” scrum practices and do it whatever unholy way they like, moreover, have the nerve of excusing themselves saying “we’re not doing PURE scrum…” Pathetic.
In around 300 generic words, the scrum guide describes what a scrum master role is. To me, it’s too vague, but brilliant at the same time. The problem is, while the Product Owner creates a backlog and the developers bring backlog to life, scrum masters don’t often create visible & tangible value. They create an atmosphere of friendliness and an environment of openness, help build relationships, improve processes, bring small change to action. I don’t want to sound like whining, but sometimes doing this feels underestimated, misunderstood, misjudged, and taken for granted in comparison with other scrum roles.
What beginners are not told is that no matter how many years you work as a scrum master, you have to constantly prove your worth. You have to prove your team why they need you every single day. And that the paycheck you get at the end of the month isn’t just a gift out of pity… On top of it, you have to always act like a grown-up when everyone else can get to be childish.
Whoever tells the newbies that it’s easy to get a job in IT through becoming an SM must also warn them about all the downsides of the job, too. “It’s tears and blood, people, you will have a ton of health issues, both mental and physical, it’s nerve-wracking and maddening from time to time,” the sentence should start. “Even if you love it, you hate it. Trust me, I have checked with so many people…”
“In the end, is it worth all the effort, all the nerves? Why do you keep doing what you do, being the ‘underdog’?” you’d ask. And that’s a valid question. Well, for me, it definitely is worth all the energy that I put in every single day into the success of my team, even if I don’t see immediate results.
If you’re passionate about technology, if you like working with people and making teams better, if you absolutely adore building products that people find useful, could there be any other reward than doing it for fun every day? Will you do what you do without getting paid? If your answer is “Yes” to all of this, this job can be the right one for you.
If you are considering becoming a scrum master, take my advice, and don’t follow people who have exaggerated LinkedIn titles. And don’t follow people who post about their success daily. Usually, it’s the same people :D
To the above mentioned people, I have to say, it is time to STOP boosting your career through “smart sounding” LinkedIn posts quoting books that you don’t read, achieving new paid certifications every other month, and counting that as steps in career advancement. Stop and question yourself: will it really land me a better job? And will it make me more competitive for the market? Does it make me a better listener and a problem-solver? Does it make me a doer, someone who will roll up their sleeves and serve people?
What a really good scrum master does, isn’t only what’s described in the scrum guide. Neither are the examinations sufficient to become a well-performing SM. It’s much more than that, it’s a lot of work and self-improvement, too.
It’s time to stop and think.
Did you ever really try to connect with your teams and solve their impediments? Did you ever try to do your job better instead of making posts everywhere about how amazing you are.
Do you really need the validation? If you’re not doing all this and you’re talking as if you are, you are damaging not only yourself but also everyone else around you. You are creating this massive black hole in this industry, a vacuum that no one will be able to fill anymore.
It is time to stop philosophizing and time to start working. Don’t be afraid of trying. After all, taking action, making mistakes, learning, and improving is what Scrum stands for. Help build one product that is used by someone that actually works. And make sure the developers who build it don’t hate it. Build a team where people don’t dislike their teammates. Empower your teams so that they can empower you and understand why they need you, and slowly coach them into not needing you anymore instead of making them ‘oh-so-dependent’ on you. Go on a vacation without pondering whatever the hell can go wrong and try not to open Slack for a week.
