Scrum Master
- Ensures value creation and delivery by helping the Scrum Team to adhere to Scrum.
- Helps the Team become more productive by removing impediments.
- Guides and coaches the Team, the Product Owner and other stakeholders.
- Works as a facilitator and a servant leader and is responsible for resolving conflicts.
Scrum Master Responsbilities
Value Creation and Scrum Adoption
The Scrum Master works with the Team to help the Team in becoming fully functional, productive and self-organizing. She guides and coaches the Team to self-organize to meet its Sprint goal, so that it performs to its potential. She coaches the Product Owner so that the Team members feels they have the support and confidence of the Product Owner behind them.
She makes sure Team has the tools and support they need to succeed.
Removing Impediments
The Scrum Master does everything in her power to remove impediments and obstacles that prevent the Team from achieving its Sprint goal. Anything and everything that distracts or prevents the Team from making progress is an impediment. By removing impediments the she fosters an environment where creativity and empowerment flourish. She shields the Team from outside interferences during the Sprints.
Scrum Adoption
The Scrum Master ensures that Scrum is followed by the Team, the Product Owner and by the concerned people around the Team. She works with the Product Owner to help her maintain and order the Product Backlog. She works with the stakeholders to help them understand and enact Scrum and Agile product management. She helps the Team to become a cross functional and self-organizing unit.
She works as a guide, as a coach for the Team, helping the Team do the best work it possibly can.
Facilitation and Conflict resolution
Agile and Scrum strongly encourage collocated Teams. While collocation provides a healthy boost in Team productivity, shared space within which the Team operates poses some challenges. Tensions tend to arise even from mundane day to day activities. Conflicts arise in time-boxed Sprint Planning, Review and Retrospective meetings where plans and issues are discussed and ideas are brainstormed. The Scrum Master works with the Team to resolve conflicts or seeks external help where necessary.
She facilitates Sprint Planning, Sprint Review and Sprint Retrospective meetings and ensures that the Team conducts an effective Daily Scrum meeting.
Articles
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5 Crucial Servant Leadership Skills For Scrum Masters
October 09, 2013
Servant leadership strives to generate a competitive advantage by enabling great team work and generate even greater form of human capital.... |
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Four Retrospective Techniques - Part II
May 07, 2013
In the first part of this article, I discussed two Retrospective techniques, the basic one and the starfish Retrospective technique.... |
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Four Retrospective Techniques - Part I
November 11, 2012
Retrospectives provide opportunities to teams to inspect their process they are current using, and continuously improve it.... |
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3 Common Scrum Master Mistakes - Part II
May 01, 2012
In the first part, we discussed common mistakes. Now, we will focus on some of the consequences of these mistakes, typical causes and a few ideas that can help you to avoid making these mistakes.... |
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3 Common Scrum Master Mistakes - Part I
April 18, 2012
It is difficult for some Scrum Masters to stick to their servant leader role. Because of lack of support and limited experience, they fall back on what they know best ... |
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7 Reasons Why Your Team Does not Get to Done
April 03, 2012
Many Agile and Scrum Teams struggle with very long release cycles. Sprint after Sprint, they produce work, but the work is not shippable, it is not Done.... |
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Are You Making These Retrospective Meeting Mistakes?
March 10, 2012
Continuous improvement is at the heart of Agile. Retrospectives provide opportunities to the Teams to inspect their process, and continuously improve it. Many Teams fail to take advantage of this and thus fail to improve. ... |
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2 Reasons Why Your Impediments Don't Get Removed
August 01, 2011
Daily Scrum kicks off. The Team starts to gather around the Scrum board. They go through the paces as they are supposed to. Every team member answers three questions. There is a familiar pattern in the way they are reporting the impediments.... |
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Sprint Zero - A Tool To Hide Waterfall Legacy
February 25, 2011
Sprint zero is widely used antipattern to hide bigger and uglier issues. People using Sprint zero state different reasons for using Sprint zero. Some of the very common reasons include... |
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3 Reasons Why Scrum Masters Struggle to Become Servant Leaders
December 12, 2010
This is one of the most common pitfalls. The lure of being a manager is too strong. Knowingly, or unknowingly people keep falling into this trap.... |
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How to Conduct an Effective Daily Scrum?
October 05, 2010
The Daily Scrum is a 15 minutes time-boxed meeting that enables the Team to inspect and adapt on daily basis. It helps the Team to focus on the its plan for the Sprint (Sprint Backlog) and take appropriate actions immediately, where needed.... |
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