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Barry Overeem
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In a couple of short blog posts I’ll share the most common questions I get asked during the
Scrum.org Professional Scrum Master courses. I’ll focus on the Scrum Master role and will
provide an answer based on my personal experience as a Scrum Master. This for sure isn’t the
ultimate answer, it’s how I’ve fulfilled or experienced the situation myself. I would love to learn
from your experiences as well!
Participants of my training that are completely new to Scrum often wonder what a Scrum Master
is actually doing during the day. The answer is something they discover themselves during the
training. However, it's not only a common question during courses; also lot's of organizations I
coach find the Scrum Master role difficult to grasp.
In this blog post I'll use different sources to answer the question:
In the end, I am going to clarify the title and describe a day in the life of a Scrum Master.
My Personal Description
Being a Scrum Master myself, I've tried to capture my role in a few sentences. It's part of the
"about me" page on my personal website. According to the Scrum Guide, I also emphasize
offering services to the Development Team, Product Owner, and organization (from the
perspective of the Scrum Team).
As a Scrum Master...
My main focus is creating successful teams with strong skills in self-organization and cross-
functionality and a drive for continuous improvement. I support Product Owners in visualising
progress, creating a transparent Product Backlog and maximizing the value of the product. I help
organisations in making Scrum successful by supporting management in changing processes,
procedures, culture and behaviour. Due to a strong focus on the principles of Agile and the
values of Scrum, I try to ensure the spirit of Scrum is truly understood.
But... I probably haven't yet clarified the title of this blog post "A Day in the Life of a Scrum
Master". That's because I haven't mentioned the most important part of the Scrum Master role...
First of all: a Scrum Master should always prevent a fully booked schedule. A smart Scrum
Master has lots of free space in his/her agenda. The more the better.
Of course, these are not the only questions to consider. These are just some examples based
on the LeSS training I've attended. Continuously refreshing the questions to determine my daily
schedule as a Scrum Master, has become a sort of a habit for me.
• Start the day with an open and curious mind (and in my case some good coffee)
• A good first question to consider is "How can I improve the life of the Scrum Team by
facilitating creativity and empowerment?"
• Remember: your agenda is as good as empty! Except for the Daily Scrum and maybe
some other Scrum events
• You attend the Daily Scrum as an observer. You listen to what is and isn't being said.
• You consider some of the questions I've mentioned earlier.
• Based on your observations you determine your next steps. This might be coaching,
consulting, teaching, facilitating, mentoring, managing, problem-solving, conflict
navigating or... just sitting with the team, listening, and watching the team.
• Doing "nothing" is a perfect activity for a Scrum Master! The biggest pitfall for a
Scrum Master is being too busy and not noticing what is really going on.
Closing
In this blog post, I've shared my view on the question "What is a Scrum Master actually doing
during the day?" I've used different sources and perspectives to answer this question and in the
end, finally clarified the title and described a day in the life of a Scrum Master.
If you are a Scrum Master as well, does this blog post make any sense to you? How would you
describe a day in the life of a Scrum Master? Of course, I'm also curious about the opinions of
people not fulfilling this role.