How much of an impact can a great scrum master have in a team environment?
Influence of a Great Scrum Master
Consider a well-performing team that suddenly gets a remarkable Scrum Master – the transformation can be incredibly significant. Beyond merely overseeing the implementation of Scrum, an extraordinary Scrum Master is focused on the people – how they interact, what their process is, and why they’ve chosen that particular way of working.
I firmly believe that the impact of a great Scrum Master within a team environment is something that is very often hugely underestimated, far more than anyone could ever anticipate. 🚀
It’s About the People, Not the Process
Great Scrum Masters shine in teams that already have a good work rhythm. They focus not just on whether you’re doing Scrum or not but on the people, their process, their relationships, and their interactions.
They dive into a lot of very intangible things, triggering conversations about how to improve or change for the better.✅
Encouragement and Conversations
Their role then becomes helping the team really understand what works and what doesn’t. They encourage ‘safe-to-fail’ approaches, inviting conversations and enabling the team to stretch, think differently, and open up to ideas they’ve dismissed before.
They invite the team to try out new methods, experiment with different approaches and see what works for them. And when something doesn’t work, they help the team capture the learning and move forward. 🔄
A Voice Within the Team
Great Scrum Masters are often quiet forces within the team. Their voice exists not to impose but to serve. They create or recognise opportunities for others to do great things. Their work isn’t about taking credit for success.
It’s about enabling others to achieve it.
The impact of a great Scrum Master can be hard to measure, as the most effective ones are those who take no credit, allowing others to claim their ideas, implementations, and improvements as their own.💡
Key Measures Tracking
As a Scrum Master, your aim should be to work out what success looks like for your team. This may involve working with the team to understand what measures to track and keep an eye on.
Whether it’s the defect rate, or the pace of delivery, a great Scrum Master helps the team focus on what they see as valuable.
Improvement and Boosting Delivery
For instance, I once worked with a team that aimed to reduce the number of defects they released into production. As the Scrum Master, my role was to keep them focused on this goal while keeping the pace of delivery up.
By holding them accountable to their commitments and having challenging conversations, we drastically reduced the number of bugs released each week.✅
Right Questions at the Right Time
Remember, as a Scrum Master, your role is to live and breathe what the team is doing. You’re part of the team, yet outside of the delivery pressures. This unique position allows you to ask questions and challenge the team in a way that brings about improvement and growth. 💭
So, to sum it up, the impact of a great Scrum Master is significant and transformative. A great Scrum Master facilitates an environment where the team continuously improves and grows.
They can have a tremendous impact on the team while confidently passing all the credit to the team because they did the real work. 💻
I hope you’ve found this post insightful and it’s sparked some new ideas on how you can amplify your role as a Scrum Master.
If you’re interested in going deeper into these topics, I’d invite you to check out my Agile and Scrum courses. 📚
If you are interested in becoming an agile coach and value mentored, coach-driven skills development in your journey to mastery, visit our Growing Agile Coaches page.
If you are inspired by the idea of an online apprenticeship for a scrum master, visit https://www.agilesuccess.academy/courses/growing-scrum-masters-advanced
If you like the idea of becoming a scrum master and want to achieve internationally recognised and certified accreditation as a scrum master, visit our Certified Scrum Master (CSM) course page.
If you are already a scrum master and want to upskill to a more advanced level of knowledge and agile coaching capability, visit our Advanced Certified Scrum Master (A-CSM) course page.
If you have several years’ experience as a scrum master and want to validate and certify your professional skills, visit our Certified Scrum Professional Scrum Master (CSP-SM) course page.
For more information on John McFadyen, visit https://www.johnmcfadyen.com or connect with John on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnmcfadyen/.
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