Scrum Mastery

INTRODUCTION

A good ScrumMaster grasps the responsibilities of the role.

A great ScrumMaster grasps the skills and mindset of the role.

I don’t think I have ever come across a job role that has been so popular yet simultaneously derided; so simple yet so
misunderstood; so common-sense and yet so revolutionary as the ScrumMaster.

The role’s introduction was intended to be somewhat controversial. The ScrumMaster role offers neither authority nor an
attractive title. As a result, those who want a powerful position, as opposed to a leadership role, tend not to apply.

A ScrumMaster is part facilitator, part coach and part coordinator. They are also part parent, part orchestra conductor and
part sheepdog. And much, much more.

The ScrumMaster should do whatever is needed to help the team become high performing and for the
organisation to deliver excellent products quickly. For this reason, it is incredibly hard to nail down a definition of
the role.

What a ScrumMaster needs to do one sprint could be incredibly different from what they need to do in the next sprint.
From the earliest days of Scrum, the ScrumMaster has always been described as a servant-leader for the team.

A ScrumMaster should serve the product owner, the development team and the organisation in various ways, most
notably in facilitation, impediment removal and coaching. This definition of a servant-leader helps add some certainty and
solidity to the ambiguous statement of “do whatever is needed.”

WHAT IS A SERVANT-LEADER?

The term servant-leadership originated from an essay by Robert K. Greenleaf in 1970, “The Servant As Leader,” where he
essentially calls for a reversal of traditional leadership (the accumulation and exercise of power by one person at the top of
the pyramid).

Instead, Greenleaf calls for a leader whose focus is to ensure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served.

The guiding principle of servant leadership states that “the highest priority of a servant-leader is to encourage,
support and enable subordinates to unfold their full potential and abilities.”

Servant-leaders serve first and then come to lead. Their best test, as Greenleaf describes it, is “do those served grow as
persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become
servants?”

While Greenleaf was more focussed on a change in wider society than specifically in project teams, bundling servant-
leadership into the Scrum framework has led to a very interesting shift in many work practices and organisational
structures.

WHAT DO I MEAN BY GREAT?

In his book, Good to great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t, Jim Collins describes Level 5 Leaders:

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 Scrum Mastery

“Level 5 leaders look out the window to apportion credit to factors outside themselves when things go well. At the
same time, they look in the mirror to apportion responsibility, never blaming bad luck when things go poorly.”

These leaders are highly ambitious but not for themselves; instead, they want their organisations to excel. They build
successors rather than try to set people up to fail to make themselves look good. Great ScrumMasters share the
characteristics of Level 5 leaders.

Being a great servant-leader calls for a certain set of characteristics:

RESOURCEFUL


They are creative in removing impediments to productivity

ENABLING


They are passionate about helping others be effective

TACTFUL


They are diplomacy personified

RESPECTED


They have a reputation for integrity both within the team and in the wider organisation

ALTERNATIVE


They are prepared to promote a counter-culture

INSPIRING


They generate enthusiasm and energy in others

NURTURING


They enjoy helping both individuals and teams develop and grow

EMPATHIC


They are sensitive to those around them

DISRUPTIVE


They break the old status quo and help create a new way of working

You can think of these characteristics in the context of the acronym RE-TRAINED and we will look at each of these
characteristics in turn throughout the modules of this course.

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 Scrum Mastery

For too many organisations, Scrum has been a big disappointment; a failed experiment that hasn’t delivered anywhere
near the positive impact that management were hoping for. Yet I have also witnessed the great rewards and
transformative power that come when a company truly embraces Scrum concepts and agile principles.

What’s the difference between success and failure for organisations that adopt a servant-leader approach like Scrum?

How effective their ScrumMasters are in the role.

I fundamentally believe in both the power and also the humanising nature of self-organising, empowered teams and I am
equally sure that the key to achieving these benefits is the ScrumMaster.

Put simply, if organisations can create and support great ScrumMasters then those ScrumMasters will foster great
teams and create environments that enable these teams to create great products.

This course aims to give ScrumMasters the tools to go from good to great, bringing your team and organisation to higher
levels in the process.

I feel great sympathy for many of the people who find themselves in the ScrumMaster role as it is very difficult, often
misunderstood and there is very little specific guidance on how to perform the role well. They are also often swimming
against the tide of traditional management techniques from the 20th Century, which are not fit for today’s age of rapid
change and complexity.

I look back to my early days as a newly minted ScrumMaster, absolutely loving the opportunity to help my team grow and
my organisation become more effective, even though there was precious little specific advice on how to do my job well.

Many years later, after working with many agile teams as ScrumMaster, internal coach, external coach and consultant, I
have been lucky to observe and work with many great ScrumMasters and Scrum teams and have learned a lot from them. I
have identified key practices and patterns that great ScrumMasters exhibit.

I present them throughout this course as phrases that describe the fine line between good ScrumMasters and great ones.

Notice that the difference is between good and great — not bad and good — both sets of characteristics I describe
are positive.

This is similar to the way that the agile manifesto sets out its values, e.g. “Individuals and Interactions over Processes and
Tools.” At no point is the agile manifesto attempting to suggest that processes and tools are bad; all it is trying to suggest is
that individuals and interactions are considered more valuable.

At its core, Scrum aims to harness the power of self-organising, autonomous, engaged teams who take responsibility for
delivery and collaborate directly with their customers. These fantastic delivery teams do not just magically appear but are
created, nurtured and supported by servant-leader ScrumMasters.

This course aims to help you find out how to raise the bar of Scrum in your organisation as well as your own personal bar
of Scrum Mastery as well.

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