Scrum Master

Scrum Master role, Scrum Master meaning, servant leader, Agile Scrum Master definition, professional Scrum Master certifications

Scrum Master is a single person servant leader role in Scrum that coaches the Agile mindset, ensures that the Product Owner, Developers and the organization understand how Scrum can be used to help them accomplish and align their goals, removes impediments, resolves conflicts and facilitates events. The Scrum Master protects the team and the process, keeps the team working at a sustainable pace, acts as a spokesperson for the team and enables the team to improve its practices within the Scrum framework.

Scrum Master as a servant-leader

The Scrum Master serves the Product owner by ensuring that the Scrum team understands the goals, scope, domain and backlog items, facilitating Scrum events, finding techniques for effective empirical Product Backlog management and by facilitating stakeholder collaboration.

The SM serves the Developers by coaching Scrum, self-organization and cross-functionality and by counter-balancing the Product Owner’s demands against the needs of the team. The Scrum Master helps in the creation of high value product increments, removing impediments, managing conflicts. He or she ensures that the Scrum events take place, are productive and kept within the timebox.

The Scrum Master guides the organization on empirical product development, Scrum practices and Agile transformation. He or she leads by helping and modeling an Agile mindset and a skillful use of the Scrum framework. The SM is increasing the Scrum team productivity and working with other Scrum Masters to increase the application of Scrum in the organization.

Scrum Master responsibilities

  • focus on the team and the process
  • protect the Scrum framework
  • facilitate Scrum ceremonies
  • protect the team from distractions and over-commitment
  • keeps the team working at a sustainable pace

Scrum Master attributes

  • Servant leader
  • Facilitator
  • Teacher
  • Mentor
  • Coach
  • Change agent
  • Impediment remover
  • Manager

Servant leader

help the Product Owner to develop the product in an experimental way, help the developers to reach self-organization and cross-functionality, help the organization by implementing Scrum in a way that is aligned with business objectives, have a strong vision, set objectives and empower the team to achieve them, focus on the needs of team members and customers and drive towards achieving results in line with the values and business objectives of the organization

Facilitator

facilitate productive engagement and conversation in team meetings, ensure successful group communication, reinforce important information as the team reveals it, timeboxing events to respect people time, keep the team energy level high and surface information about ongoing work and obstacles, set the stage and boundaries in which the team can collaborate, help the Scrum team members be aware of their common goals and support the team in achieving the goals

Teacher

educate the team about Scrum, its rules, values and practices, train the team on Agile mindset and development practices, teach the team about self-organization and cross-functionality, organize workshops with the team, guide the team to a continuous learning and experimenting mindset, ensure Scrum and Agile practices are understood and enacted, teach the team to work at a sustainable pace and have fun

Mentor

work with team member who struggle with daily work, guide the individuals by pairing and doing the work together, help developers and the product owner with initial steps in order for them to gain confidence to do things on their own, transfer the Agile knowledge and experience to the team

Coach

coach the individual team members in ways of thinking and behavior based on their individual needs, coach the Scrum team in continuous improvement, coach the organization by collaborating with the other Scrum teams, use coaching techniques to help the team explore solutions to challenging problems, help team members in learning how to surface problems, inspect ideas and explore solutions, coach individuals focusing on mindset and behavior

Change agent

enable a culture in which scrum teams can flourish, help the organization and teams to adopt new working practices, to use the Scrum framework to continuously experiment, improve and learn, to go to different stages in changing the mindset and the culture of the organization, assist the organization in the Agile transformation process

Impediment remover

assist in unblocking the team from anything that slows it down from working at full potential, observe impediments and make the team aware of them transparently, work together with others in solving the impediments and improving the way the team works, focus on impediments at team level, cross-teams and at the organization level

Manager

manage the process, manage the team’s health, manage impediments, eliminate waste, manage the boundaries of self-organization, manage the culture, make sure that the Scrum team is effective in the organization

Scrum Master certifications

  • Certified ScrumMaster – CSM – Scrum Alliance
  • Advanced Certified ScrumMaster – ACSM – Scrum Alliance
  • Professional Scrum Master I – PSM I – Scrum org
  • Professional Scrum Master II – PSM II – Scrum org
  • SAFe Scrum Master – SSM – Scaled Agile
  • SAFe Advanced Scrum Master – SASM – Scaled Agile
  • Disciplined Agile ScrumMaster – DASM – PMI

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