ScrumMaster

The ScrumMaster is the 3rd role, this used to be the project manager, now it's the person who's responsible for ensuring that the process is used as intended. There are different ways of thinking of the ScrumMaster role. One might be as a parent, because when you get a Scrum team together, at first they don't know how to self manage, they don't know how to work cross-functionally, they don't know how to work with a Product Owner, or how to work within timeboxes. So just like a parent, the ScrumMaster is responsible for teaching them how to do this until they know how, moving them from a relatively immature childlike state, to a mature self-functioning team. Similarly a ScrumMaster is like a coach, responsible for cheering them on, for being their leader, being their guide. The ScrumMaster is also like a referee ensuring that they follow the rules.

The ScrumMaster above and beyond anything has to enforce the rules. Many of the processes that are used in organisations create impediments to the Scrum team's progress. It is often easier to simply give in and accept that the organisational processes can't be changed and compromise the efficiency of Scrum and the team's output. So it is vital in order to keep the high productivity of Scrum that the rules are followed precisely and kept running regardless. By doing that, everything in the organisation that is dysfunctional and gets in the way of building software regularly becomes obvious. It is the job of the ScrumMaster to remove any impediment, within or external to the team that prevents them reaching their goal of building the software they commit to at the beginning of each Sprint.

A ScrumMaster is a Leader and Facilitator and is responsible for:

  • Improving the lives and productivity of the development team by facilitating creativity and empowerment and any other way possible.
  • Enabling close cooperation across all roles and functions and removing barriers
  • Shielding the team from external interferences and removing "Impediments"
  • Ensuring that the process is followed
  • Inviting appropriate people to the daily scrum, iteration review and planning meetings
  • Removing the barriers between development and the customer so that the customer directly drives the functionality developed
  • Teaching the customer how to maximise ROI and meet their objectives through Scrum
  • Improving the engineering practices and tools so each increment of functionality is potentially shippable.