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What Happens to the Scrum Master if the Team Is No Longer Doing Scrum?

April 16, 2024

This article was published in the AskScrum.com newsletter in the previous weeks.
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When a team moves away from Scrum, the Scrum Master role often evolves. This allows them to apply their skills in new contexts, like embracing leadership and mentoring teams in alternative approaches.
 

What Happens to the Scrum Master if the Team Is No Longer Doing Scrum?

The evolution of a Scrum Master's role when a team moves away from Scrum is a transformation. It allows for broader organisational influence, fostering agile principles across different organisational layers and business units.

The individual's skill set in facilitation, team dynamics, and continuous improvement becomes instrumental in guiding teams and the organisation through change, ensuring agility and efficiency remain at the forefront.

1.     Team Collaboration Advocate:

A former Scrum Master's expertise in fostering team collaboration remains valuable. They can focus on improving team dynamics, communication, and collaboration, ensuring the team's effectiveness in delivering value remains relevant.

2.     Change Agent:

They can act as change agents, helping the organisation navigate transitions. This includes assisting teams in adapting to new ways of working, ensuring smooth transitions, and maintaining team morale and effectiveness during periods of change.

3.     Focus on Continuous Learning and Development:

The Scrum Master’s role can evolve to emphasise continuous learning and development. This involves staying focused on emerging trends in agile and engineering practices, sharing knowledge with teams, and fostering a culture of learning and adaptation.

4.     Consultation and Advisory:

Their deep understanding of agile principles can be used in a consultative capacity. This involves advising teams and management on the best ways of working to deliver value and efficient workflows and facilitating the integration of agile principles into various aspects of the organisation.

5.     Enhancing Organisational Resilience and Adaptability:

Someone with strong Scrum Master skills can enhance the organisation's resilience and adaptability. This involves creating strategies to help the organisation quickly adapt to market changes, customer needs, and technological advancements. By promoting an agile mindset beyond specific methodologies, they can contribute significantly to building a resilient and flexible organisation that thrives in a dynamic business environment.

6.     Product Development and Customer Focus:

Leveraging their experience in managing product backlogs and facilitating events, the individual can take on extra accountabilities that bring them closer to product development and customer interaction. This could involve working with product management teams to understand customer needs and wishes and market trends, ensuring that the products or services developed align with customer expectations and deliver maximum value.

 

 

These expanded accountabilities demonstrate the versatility and depth of skills that a Scrum Master possesses, which can be effectively used in various facets of an organisation beyond the team.

The Scrum Master's expertise in facilitating cross-functional team collaboration can be applied to enhance integration between different departments within the organisation.

This includes breaking down silos, fostering interdepartmental communication, and promoting a culture of collaboration, driving initiatives that lead to more innovative solutions and a cohesive organisational approach.

 

This article was first published in the AskScrum.com newsletter.
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Comments (2)


Al Shalloway
08:49 pm April 24, 2024

This presumes that the Scrum Master is trained in anything but Scrum.
This is OFTEN not the case which is why Scrum teams often get trapped in Scrum - their "leader" doesn't want them to move to something they are unaware of.

As Upton Sinclair remarked "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends upon his not understanding it."

And Goldratt remarked "A comfort zone has less to do with control than it has to do with understanding."

Scrum Masters who only talk about Scrum won't see other opportunities for the team as reflected in Edgar Schein's observation that "We don't talk and think about what we see, we see what we are able to think and talk about."

This post tries to diminish the impact of Scrum's myopia and immutability.

In order to do what's described here a good Scrum Master must be trained in Kanban, Flow, Lean and / or Theory of Constraints. All of these theories have aspects that are incompatible with Scrum's lack of a theoretical model which underlies it's need to be immutable.


Ciprian Banica
12:22 pm May 4, 2024

Hi Al! Thanks for the comment.
Some thoughts on what you shared here:
Most Scrum Masters know much more than Scrum and they embrace additional practices for their team. They are leading by example and are usualy the first ones to get out of their confort zone when they feel the need for that.