What does a Scrum Master do?

When describing the Scrum Master (SM) role to others, I often say that if the team is like a machine that creates a product, the Scrum Master is the oil that goes in the machine (and sometimes the mechanic of said machine). Which is a perfectly fine description for others, but in reality, doesn’t explain much of what SMs actually do.

Developers not used to Scrum/Agile mindset often ask me: “What does a SM do when not facilitating the ceremonies?” And back when I was first exposed to Scrum as a developer, indeed my strong suit was knowing the process and all about the Scrum ceremonies. But I was still ignorant on how to *be* agile. My focus in the first few months in my current company was to facilitate Scrum meetings and to get to know the teams I would be working with. Little did I know that a Scrum Master has to wear several hats.

At this point, rather slowly, I started learning that other than the facilitator hat, Scrum Masters should also wear the Servant Leader, the Coach, the Process/Team Growth Manager, the Mentor, the Teacher, the Impediment Remover, and the Change Agent hats. And maybe even others. So the role was actually bigger than I thought it was. But depending on your teams and your organization, you can focus more on certain area than others.

The eight hats the Scrum Master wears

To start, SMs will always be the team’s servant leaders. Their roles is to serve the team by leading the way teams can use the Agile Mindset to achieve their objectives.

As I mentioned, and a great way to serve is to take the lead facilitating the ceremonies for teams. As teams mature, they will slowly start running their own Daily Huddles, Planning, and Review. SMs may also start delegating the Retrospective to the most Scrum-savvy dev team member.

As impediments accumulate, SMs will try their best to remove them. But at some point, it will become more important to empower the team to remove their own impediments. One of the most powerful tools that Scrum Masters have is to not solve all the teams’ problems, but to guide them in finding the answer themselves.

As teams’ agile mindset grow, it’s the SMs job to teach them not just Scrum, but other agile methodologies that may fit the team’s profile better: Kanban, Lean, XP. All of these are different tools that may be used depending on the problem the team is facing. And as teams learn different approaches, SMs start coaching and mentoring team members on their personal growth and career goals, and in how they fit in the agile team.

As SMs manage the process and teams’ health, they also overview their self‐organization and culture. And as the teams grow, SMs also need to work on a higher level within the organization, so that it too creates a culture where agile teams can flourish. As change agents, they will work with managers, CTOs, CEOs, and others to ensure this is happening. This might be the hardest hat to wear, but most of the times, the most important.

The Scrum Master’s day-to-day

But this is easier said than done. As a Scrum Master, sometimes I would feel without direction; after all, which hat should I wear next? This one article from Barry Overeem helped me more than any other in giving me a direction for my daily activities. In it, Barry enumerates questions that you can ask yourself every day to help you decide which of the hats to wear:

• How is my Product Owner doing?
  • Is the Product Backlog in shape?
  • How is he/she managing the stakeholders?
  • What about delivering business value and return-on-investment?
• How is the Development Team doing?
  • Are they working together?
  • Are there conflicts in the team, do they resolve them?
  • Is the team making decisions?
• How are our engineering practices doing?
  • Is the team caring and improving them?
  • How is the test automation?
  • Is the team expanding their Definition of Done?
• How is my organization doing?
  • Is there inter-team coordination?
  • What organizational impediments are in the way?
  • What about the HR practices?

When I started, I didn’t know many of the ideas that I presented on this article. And in no way this article will contain all the answers. Being a Scrum Master is. Really. Hard. But hopefully, it will give you a place where to start.