What Do You Look For in a Scrum Master?

There is no good or bad, right or wrong. There is only what you need and want. And what you need and want will change over time.

The same can be said about the type of Scrum Masters we look for. I was recently comparing Scrum Masters at a client. Assessing which Scrum Masters were “good” and which ones were “not so good” and even downright “bad”.

The client was just starting to adopt agile ways of working at scale. There were many willing agile neophytes on the business side. And a variety of hired IT guns, each with their own flavour of agile experience.

What we needed and wanted were Scrum Masters who could both hand-hold the business while unifying the multitude of IT agile experiences. 

• Scrum Masters who could guide and teach the business on Agile and Scrum ways of thinking and doing.
• Scrum Masters who could converge strong and diverging opinions on Agile “best” practices amongst the IT contractors towards a set of “good” practices aligned with the client’s aspirations.

What we occasionally got instead were Project Managers masquerading as Scrum Masters. These “Scrum Masters” tend to be more focused on process and product delivery rather than people and team maturity.

If your leaders are command and control oriented and your organization prioritizes delivery over maturity then, these project manager type Scrum Masters will be lauded.

On the other hand, according to the Scrum Guide,

“The Scrum Master is accountable for the Scrum Team’s effectiveness.”

They do this by serving

• The Scrum Team
• The Product Owner
• The larger Organization 

This service includes:

• “Coaching the team in self-management and cross-functionality”
• “Helping the product owner in effective product backlog management” 
• “Leading, training, and coaching the organization in its Scrum adoption”

The key words that jump out at me are:

• Coaching
• Self-management 
• Effective 
• Leading
• Training 

The one word which deserves a little more clarity is “Leading”. The reason being, I feel the word itself when used in describing a Scrum Master, has become less clear ever since the Scrum Guide stopped referring to the Scrum Master as a “servant leader” and started referring to the Scrum Master as a “true leader” with the 2020 version of the Scrum Guide.

Ever since Robert Greenleaf coined the term in 1970 ,there’s a plethora written about what a servant leader is, and is not.

There’s far less written about what a true leader is and so, it is open to much more interpretation.

Besides, who would want to be a “false leader”?

If the Scrum Master is a true leader, what does that make all of the other leaders in an organization?

What kind of “leadership” are you looking for from your Scrum Master?

• What area(s) of knowledge are you expecting leadership on?
• What outcomes do you expect to result from that leadership?

The Scrum Guide focuses the Scrum Master’s leadership on the adoption of Scrum within the organization at large.

Are you satisfied with that or are you expecting leadership from your Scrum Master in other areas of knowledge?

The Scrum Guide fosters an environment where

• Teams are self-managing, cross-functional and delivering high-value increments 
• Product Owners are guiding and prioritizing the work of the team using a clear and concise Product Backlog
• The organization is engaged in adopting and implementing Scrum

How a Scrum Master delivers on the above outcomes will vary.

• Some may choose to always  lead from the front 
• Some may choose to always lead from the rear
• And some may choose a combination of both

Regardless of how your Scrum Mastwr chooses to lead, focusing on your expected outcomes will serve you well.

In my experience, no matter how your Scrum Master chooses to start, the sooner your Scrum Master can out of the way, the sooner your team and organization will become high-performing.

Some telltale signs of “bad” Scrum Masters include:

• Mechanically going through the motions of every Scrum event with little enthusiasm or soul
• A lack of creativity and innovation with a one-size-fits all approach to facilitation 
• Strong opinions, strongly held “My way or the highway”
• Failure to read the room or adapt to circumstances 
• Focused on contributing ego laden content rather than egoless facilitation 
• Answers all questions posed by stakeholders on behalf of the team
• Scrum Master to Team share of voice approaches 100%

Again, “bad” is relative to what you and your organization wants and/or needs. What I may deem as a “bad” Scrum Master for one organization may be exactly what another organization wants.

Caveat emptor and you decide.