Week 1: What Should Scrum Masters Do?

What Should Scrum Masters Do?

The role of Scrum Master is misunderstood world wide. Many people believe that the Scrum Master is just a new name for a project manager, which is not the case. This can lead to misconceptions and uncertainty about what a Scrum Master should be doing.

In our experience, even if you’ve been a Scrum Master for more than a year, explaining what you do all day is tricky. If you are a new Scrum Master, the role can be overwhelming. You might feel you need to do many of things that you really shouldn’t be doing, because they make the team dependent on you, like updating the team’s task board!

Part of the problem is that the Scrum Master role is a completely new role to many of us, so comparisons to other roles are often not useful. The best analogy is to think of the Scrum Master as a team coach, helping the team get better. Much of what a team coach does is proactive, rather than reactive, to prevent problems before they occur.

This unfortunately means no one can tell you what you need to do. You need to look for opportunities within your own team and environment. The image below can help you focus on the right things and avoid doing things the team should learn to do for themselves.

That is only part of the picture. As new Scrum Masters 50% of your time should be spent learning, reading and sharing what you have learned. I know that sounds daunting … 4 hours EVERY DAY! But learning can be fun especially if you have other people doing it with you and you apply everything you learn.