The Scrum Master Role (4) within the Organization

By Chantal Jenoure

The Scrum Master plays an important role in guiding the organization towards a more transparent, inspective, adaptable way of operating. 

The Scrum Master facilitates this by wearing a number of hats, with respect to their work with the organization, including: Coach, Advisor, Teacher and an Agent of Togetherness. 

Unsplash Photo by Christina @wocintechchat.com

The Scrum Master as Coach

The Scrum Master leads, trains and coaches the organization in its Scrum adoption. They ensure that the organization creates an organization wherein a Scrum team can thrive. They help in creating the psychological safety that a team needs to experiment and fail without adverse recourse.

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They challenge the organization to make changes such as:

➤ Consulting with customers before starting any work
➤ Consulting with customers during work
➤ Consulting with customers after the work is ‘done’
➤ Working in iterations: if we focus on delivering some value in each sprint, what can we do that is potentially shippable to the customer.
➤ Understanding that we are doing “just enough” work to deliver potential value to the customer

➤ Ensuring that we have all persons on the team, who are critical to the successful delivery of our project, i.e., a fully dedicated team.

The Scrum Master as Advisor

The Scrum Master should be a trusted advisor to the business line, unit or department, as well as the IT (or implementation team). Because of the key role they play on a Scrum team, they are able to use the forecasting information, at their disposal, and negotiate and communicate (changing) delivery timelines with the relevant stakeholders.

Their knowledge of how Scrum works can help to also determine if a prospective project can be completed using the Scrum framework. [Scrum is only one of many Agile frameworks and is suitable for “generat[ing] value through adaptive solutions for complex problems” - The Scrum Guide].

Unsplash Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com

The Scrum Master as Teacher

The Scrum Master helps the organization to understand and adapt an “empirical approach for complex work.”

Unsplash Photo by Christina @wocintechchhat.com

Let’s take a step back.

The Scrum Guide describes the theory of Scrum as one “founded on empiricism and lean thinking.”

Empiricism asserts that knowledge comes from experience and making decisions based on what is observed. Lean thinking reduces waste and focuses on the essentials.  - The Scrum Guide

In an organization, the Scrum Master may find that they are always championing this cause. They will help to break the harmful cycle of making random and haphazard decisions. They will challenge conversations and mandates to better understand:

➤ The vision of their stakeholder (why is this change needed)

➤ The change within the marketplace

➤ The intended outcome, benefit or perceived value to be had from their request 

They will also find, in conversations with their stakeholders, that they have to challenge requests that are “gold-plating” the solution or one that falls within the upper left quadrant of the Risk-Cost-Value-Effort Prioritization matrix below.

The Scrum Master will also help in finding solutions to complex problems. They should have a variety of tools in their toolkit to facilitate problem-solving sessions and conversations. This may include facilitating sessions for brainstorming, ideation and story-mapping, to help the team to find solutions to these complex problems. 

It is important that the Scrum Master knows how to keep the conversations:

➤ Flowing towards a solution. They will find that conversations can easily go down a rabbit hole or go completely off-course, i.e., where the discussions become centered around (important) things that have nothing to do with the problem at hand.

➤ Timeboxed so that the time is well-spent and that the sessions concludes with: 

i. Great ideas that will need to be further investigated and fleshed out 

ii. Action items to answer unknowns or assumptions made, to ensure that the team is on the right path to building the right thing, the right way from day one. 

The Scrum Master as an Agent of Togetherness

The Scrum Master is tasked with helping the team to work well with their stakeholders. Too many times, the Scrum team is operating independently of the business stakeholders.

Unsplash Image by John Schnnobrich

The Scrum Master has to play an instrumental role in ensuring that:

➤ The business stakeholders are kept abreast of the progress of the work being done
➤ The Scrum team are open and transparent about the challenges they are having
➤ There is collaboration with solving these challenges
➤ The business stakeholders avail themselves and their knowledge to support the team
➤ The business stakeholders trust that the team will deliver a high-quality, high-value solution, within the shortest time possible
➤ The Scrum team articulates clearly and comprehensively any changes they need to business policies or operating procedures that may:
i. Ease the delivery of their solution
ii. Relieve any pain-points that their customers may experience

iii. Simplify the solution being delivered

iv. Simplify the operational procedures that will support the completed solution

Unsplash Photo by Priscilla du Preez

The Scrum Master may have to be creative in how they facilitate these conversations but they should do all they can to ensure that their team feels supported and the business feels clear and certain of what the solution is and how it will work. 

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This is the final installment in the series that looks at the Role of the Scrum Master. If you missed the previous posts, you can check them out here:

1. The Scrum Master Role (3) - Collaborating with the Product Owner

2. The Scrum Master Role (2) - A Practical Look

3. A First Look at the Role of a Scrum Master (Part 1)