Why You Suck at Scrum: The Scrum Master

The Scrum Master role is typically another misunderstood role, possibly more so than the Product Owner. The Scrum Master role is a net new role to the organization. What I mean by that is there is no one to one alignment from previous roles, especially not project managers. Product Owners were and still are representatives of the Business units that they are helping to move forward, they just have new ways of working and responsibilities. Developers are still developers, they may just be on different teams, and will be working in a different way to deliver iteratively, different from the way they did previously.

If your organization was not previously practicing Scrum, this role did not exist. No one was doing anything like what the Scrum Master was brought in to do. These are not re-purposed or mini-project managers.

Scrum Master as a Taskmaster

Uneducated organizations think Scrum Masters are located within the team in order to keep the team ‘on task’, enforcing timelines and checking in daily to ensure work is being completed. In reality the Scrum Master is there to observe and coach the team in the practices and mindset of Agile & Scrum. As part of that they are also there to help the team identify opportunities to drive their own continuous self-improvement.

To relegate them to task monitors greatly under utilizes this very important role as part of the organizations adoption of Scrum. If your Scrum Master is constantly heads down reviewing reports and creating status updates for people outside of the team, how can they be expected to have time to observe and coach?

Scrum Master as a Project Manager

Scrum Masters bring knowledge of a framework that was not previously being used. Project managers practice a completely different discipline and approach to planning and tracking work. Organizations set their Agile/Scrum adoptions up for failure immediately if they simply convert all of their project managers into Scrum Masters. They do not possess this knowledge or experience to do it, nor should they be expected to. They have studied and become proficient in their framework for delivery, and this is what they are experts in.

If you were thrown into a new role with no training or experience, and are still being asked to see things get done, wouldn’t you fall back on what & how you know? Of course you would. You didn’t spend years trying to get good at something, building a career doing things in a certain way, just to toss all of that knowledge aside and execute in a manner you are not familiar with. Compounding that, you would not be able to coach anyone else in this new framework. That would fall under the blind leading the blind. Yet leadership does this all the time, and wonders why they don’t get the results they are looking for with the new framework.

You might ask, how different are these two roles really? The teams are still delivering on a plan, why can’t a project manager just step in and be a Scrum Master? A project is a project right? Let me then ask, would you expect a plumber to flip to start doing an electricians job on a worksite?

Scrum Master as Team Admin

Unsuccessful organizations and teams look to Scrum Masters to be the team’s admin. Let’s have them do the ‘paperwork’ tasks so the developers can focus on developing, or the testers test. They don’t have time to update their stories to reflect the current state, let’s have the Scrum Master chase this down and update this information. Since they don’t understand what the Scrum Master is there to do, they try to fill their time with other menial tasks that keep them from being effective coaches. Let’s have them schedule all of the team meetings & ceremonies, oh, and they should run them too, after all, someone has to do it.

Scrum Master with Dual Role

Just as bad or possibly worse than having the wrong person that lacks the skills needed to be an effective Scrum Master, is having someone fill this role while still having another role on the team. This is not a part time job, or a list of a few extra tasks that need to be completed by someone on the team. You may know that the team needs to refine their backlog of upcoming work, but would you know what an effective refinement session looks like? If you have someone on the team ‘rotate’ the responsibilities of the Scrum Master, you are just going through the motions and will not get the results you are looking for.

If you are a Tech Lead, you have responsibilities that the team needs you to focus on. If you are a developer, you are there to focus on delivering solutions. If you have one of these roles on the team, and are asked to also ‘fill in’ and be the team Scrum Master, how can you focus on your main role? If push comes to shove, and the work is falling behind, which role and responsibilities do you think will be pushed to the back burner?

If you are meant to be focused on delivery, how will you have time to observe and coach the team on the use of Scrum? Would you expect one of your developers to pick up the project manager’s role and learn how to put together and track project plans on the side? Of course not. We respect the project managers skill set to do the job, and would never ask our developers to pick up this skill and still develop & deliver solutions. So why do so many organizations expect it can be done with the Scrum Master role? This only shows the complete lack of understanding of the role, and sets the team up for failure.

Other organizations ask the Product Owner to fill the Scrum Master role. This only becomes a distraction that takes them away from their responsibilities to the product and their customers. I see too many job postings that are looking for Product Owner Scrum Masters, and the staffing firms hired to find these people just pass the posting right on, with no regard or understanding of the role they are getting paid to fill. I’d love to see more of these staffing firms take accountability to help their clients understand what they need vs what they are asking for.

The Scrum Master is a full time role on the team, and should be treated as such. Hire an expert the same way you would hire an expert developer, expert tester, and expert Product Owner. When organizations fail to do this, they will fail in their adoption, and therefore will fail to solve the problems that they thought working in this way would do for them.

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