A Day in the Life of a Scrum Master

Excellent article this. Agile/Scrum practitioners in high demand but way too often I see organizations either insist on someone to overlook the mechanical scrum is "followed" get cheeky by hoping to find someone who can also do something else; e.g. DevOps, domain expert or "work with multiple teams".

An excellent article and a true reference for the scrum roles and possible extension of it.

Great Article! I really enjoyed this refreshing read! What's your view point on the comapanies over use of the Scrum Master/"Technical Team Lead"? Would you consider this as multi-tasking, Dictating to the team, Team dependency of the Technical Lead, reduction of velocity, not being self-organised, never reaching the teams true potential, stop and starting of other tasks because of unavailability of the Technical Lead and finally it's not Lean?

Great article and I'd say in my opinion it would have busted many a myths about the role of a Scrum Master. I had been a Scrum Master myself and the great insights that are highlighted in this articles resonates with me and my belief system.
In a nutshell I'd put the role of Scrum Master as that of a Servant Leader - you simply serve everybody in this role.

Thank you for this article. As an scrum master, no day is the same as the previous one, and I have some very busy days (the review/retro days) but other days are more normal. I wanted to ask if you have some answers to "How can I improve the live of the Scrum Team by facilitating creativity and empowerment?", like concrete answers. Thanks!

I am preparing over the next year or so to give get certified to give the scrum master training. Thanks you for such a great tool to use in my preparation.

Fully agree Rob, I'm in the "lucky" circumstance that I'm not a skilled developer, tester, analyst etc :)

Your welcome Barbara!

Hi Harold, interesting question. What have you tried so far? What succeeded and what was less successful?

Yes, you could summarise is like that Hiren.

Stay tuned Graeme, it's a topic for my upcoming blog post :)

Thanks Hiresh!

Thanks for sharing your experiences Muhammad!

Hi, thanks for the article. It helps me a lot when I find posts like this one to help me define where I can improve as a Scrum Master.
Let's get real, though. Sometimes it is difficult to have nothing to do and a lot of times if this happens I feel very guilty. I sit right next to my team members and they literally can see my computer screen. When I have nothing at the moment, I would go and read blogs about Agile and Scrum to keep educating myself. But sometimes I would spend the whole day doing just that. Am I a bad Scrum Master if I don't have a new way of "improving the live of the Scrum Team by facilitating creativity and empowerment"?
Or let's say I know what problem I want to solve, but I can't do anything about it right now. For example, my team lacks clarity on our next project, we literally have nothing to work on right now. While I have raised the issue on different levels of management, now everyone's waiting for a VP to run an official kick-off. Am I expected to go to this VP and tell him/her it's blocking us and we'd better have this kick-off tomorrow AM?
Or answering the questions for PO, I realize that our backlog is in a sorry state, I know I need to sit down with my PO and go through it, but he/she is very busy, I rarelly see my PO at his/her desk. What should I do in this case?
It's a lot of questions. I'm transitioning into new organization and have been feeling a bit unsure of my role anymore.

Hi Daria, have you discussed this situation with your Development Team? Simply ask them how you can support them the upcoming Sprint? Also you should really discuss it with your PO. Of course (s)he busy. That's great. However, I'm used to chat with my Product Owner every day. Just catching-up. Not having time for that will cause all kinds of other problems in a too late stadium. Picture the ideal Scrum environment, compare it to your current situation, start fixing the differences. And yes, talk to the VP about the next project. I can imagine you do this together with your PO.

Hi Daria. I know this may be late but I tackled some of the same issues you face by actually acting initially as a secretary, monitoring the meeting my P.O. attends so the focus is my team as a priority and trust me the PO was grateful because she could see she was dragged to other not so important meetings. I also communicated to the team to speak up to the PO at every time they had to clarify business requirements from the PO. Also I made the dev team understand that I am here for them for anything be it blockers, uncertainty, questions, etc. And as for doing nothing, you are doing the right thing by reading blogs to get ideas on how to improve your team. Also monitoring the communication between your team and outside teams is something you should take on and that includes the PO’s time in my view. Hope this helps.

Great Article! Thanks for sharing some good points here.

Very good article, however I have a query on the number teams Scrum Master should address.
Why have you considered Engineering team along with Dev team and Product Owner? According to Scrum Guide there are only 3 roles Scrum Master, Product Owner and Dev Team. Engineering team can be assumed as a part of Dev team in my opinion.

This was great! Very useful. I also read your articles about "Scrum Myths." They're all very clear and to the point. I appreciate that.

I thought of a question while reading this. I know it's an old post but hopefully I can still get an answer.

From what I've understood after reading these articles, the Scrum Master role sounds like a nightmare for people in the upper levels of an organisation's hierarchy, especially if you've JUST been hired... For people like us who are familiar with Scrum, the role makes perfect sense, but from a point of view of a manager who does not know much about Scrum I think it could be easy to think of a Scrum Master as lazy and disruptive.

So here's my question: do you think the tasks a scrum master performs and the skills a great scrum master should have (as described on this article) inevitably change as time passes (since you've been hired)? Example: you mention that as a SM you need to be prepared to be disruptive enough to enforce a change in the org. Question: disruptive enough to enforce a change in the org. since day 1? If yes, how do you counter the typical views that say you should earn your place in the job or pay your dues before they take you seriously (seriously enough to enforce a change, for example)?

Of course that if an org. is looking to adopt Scrum they should be open to change and adaptation impulsed by the SM, so I'm not talking about common cases.

Thanks in advance!! And thank you so much for your articles.

@disqus_KdhFKdSBn5:disqus I have seen project manager succeed in being a good scrum master. My 2 cents is that as long as the person assigned with the role keep a close eye on the value of Scrum and Agile, there is no need for that person to be a software developer at all. Having the technical skill helps understand the topic and details of what is being built and the problems encountered. But many times comes down to collaboration, facilitation, providing the right leadership to the skilled individuals. Scrum master provide such a function. Probably the SM you have is giving you the wrong impression. Such role is not perceived as management proxy and certainly not more superior than other member in the scrum team.

Good article to read up
https://scrumorg-website-pr...

Thanks for sharing some good points!

@jitudhangar:disqus, Barry is talking about engineering *practices* not team. If i understand correctly, these are the "ways of working" of the dev team only. Looking for improvement there is one of the key aspects of Scrum Master's role. Thanks!

Hi Claudia! I am coming from a teaching background, and so far (for almost 4 years) nobody complains that I am a pseudo scrum master. And I am for sure not a proxy =) When I don't understand something - I go and ask for help (no, I am not good at Jira, but I know those who are!)

Hi,
Thanks for the article. I'm new to the Scrum.
Beside A Day in the Life of a Scrum Master, would you please also let us know:
What are KPIs of a Scrum Master?
What is the career path?
How the team will do on your absent? Vacations for in stance.

Thanks in advance.

Good article..
Read your paper: http://www.barryovereem.com...

Great scrum roles have very big list of attributes, yes as scrum guide says its difficult to master.
I think as scrum masters, one should focus on making their Dev team, Product owner, Organization great.

What I am wondering is, perfection is journey..
Do the scrum master can really sit doing nothing?
May be its more like do things, Be Idle while improvements take shape, observe do next actions.

Excellent article, totally agree!..., some people think that the Scrum Master has a lot of free time and for that reason he/she should be busy in other things., but as you said "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."

Doing "nothing"... is very meaningful for those, who knows how important and difficult is this activity. Thanks a lot.

The article is good! But some links chained with the main page of your website. It's not so useful.

This is really what i am looking for, to clarify all my questions around Scrum master role... Great one to refer :)

thanks so much for writing this Barry. Great contribution ! Realy loved it :)

Great article Barry! You could bring your article into 4.0 by adding some techniques and tools - preferably open source - to aide in the daily tasks of a scrum master, e.g. online mindmapping boards, delta discoveries, organizational gamification towards agile, etc.... :)

Wonderful article .. simplified my thought process !!

Hi Barry,

After reading your great article, it seems that the SM as a lot of free time isn't it ? Even more if there is only 1 scrum team for a small company.

Given that scrum is founded on empiricism and lean thinking, scrum team get more experience each sprint. Thus, we might think that SM role gets a bit useless each sprint ?

How can you fullfill an entire working day as a scrum master ?
How can you justify free time to the organization ?

Thanks,

Gael

Good Article! Certainly very helpful to maintain scrum values.

How about real world examples? As a begginer in the scrum world I feel very confused. How will the SM know about all these things about the team without interrupting them? Daily meetings? Seems counter-productive.

Looks like the LeSS training link is down. https://theliberators.com/l... Can you share again?

Hi Gael,

In traditional project management theory, one of the managers' goals is to maximize resource utilization. Then, it's easy to understand the organizations having goosebumps when they hear "people having free time."

However, the "slack" principle in Lean Theory describes the importance of leaving people with free time to think about improvements, innovation, and other activities unrelated to their routine.

Barry nailed when he highlighted the importance to the Scrum Master has free time. Free time to think about improvements, coaching, mentoring, teaching, conflict mediation, impediments facilitation, etc. I think the point here is to be available as much as possible for the team.

I heard some time ago someone defining the Scrum Master's ultimate goal: become useless for the team! You pointed correctly also saying that. It's expected the team acquires maturity enough to absorb the Scrum Master role. Personally, I never saw that happen, but I think it could be possible.

Hi guys, it's impossible to view link: https://theliberators.com/w...
Can you help me please?
Thk
Enrico

I found it on https://www.infoq.com/artic.... Different source, same content, also written by Barry Overeem :)

Also found the PDF here: https://scrumorg-website-pr...

Excellent article.

I have found the related and some other helpful posts on his website. Here are the respective links :)
1. Characteristics of a Great Scrum Team:- https://medium.com/the-libe...

2. LeSS training:- https://medium.com/the-libe...

3. The Smell of a place:- https://medium.com/the-libe...

Dream world. In mine I am SM for three projects and the lead BA with guidance and admin roles. Also half our team in in China. That's the real world.

Barry Overeem - There are a number of links on those pages that reference http://www.barryovereem.com/ that redirect to https://theliberators.com/... and they seem to be broken. What could be done about that?

Mr. Barry, Thanks so much for this great peace article about a scrum Master. As a certified scrum master job hunting and constantly searching for enriching my knowledge, I found this so useful and helpful in boosting my understanding of the the accountabilities of a scrum master role and definitely will help land my first Scrum Master job role.
Thanks for this once again.

about me link is currently 404

There are a number of links on those pages that reference http://www.barryovereem.com/ that redirect to https://theliberators.com/... and they seem to be broken. What could be done about that?

If you;re going to put this in as Scrum-master official documentation in the line of certification.. This content needs to be hosted on SCRUM.ORG, and nowhere else. 

Moderator/Scrum product owner, should really lock this down, and either rearchitect this article, or recover those content links.. so students can understand. 

Too many distractions by the variable content locations which make a student guess.  Not trying to fail a $200 test.  :)

The link has been updated