Giving Scrum Masters Feedback: 10 tips with Examples

As a trained psychologist and Scrum Master, my goal today is to give you valuable insights on how to give effective feedback to your Scrum Masters. We will focus on five key performance KPIs to ensure that your Scrum Master is not only following the agile vision but also delivering short-term results.

You can find out more about these 5 Scrum Master Performance KPIs here: 5 Scrum Master Performance KPIs.

Below you can see the 5 general areas by which you can measure the performance of a Scrum Master. You can use this as a framework to structure your feedback.

Tip: It can be useful to ask the Scrum Master for a self-assessment before you communicate your own thoughts.

It can also be extremely valuable if you briefly ask colleagues in writing to collect example situations that can help you give feedback comments. Of course, it also helps to briefly go through the relevant ideas in a conversation so that you really understand them. Any information that can be categorized into the 5 categories below could be helpful.

1. Sprint Goals Delivery: Delivering what was promised

An agile team thrives on successful sprints. When giving feedback to your scrum master, emphasize the importance of consistently achieving goals. How has this been going recently and how much influence has the scrum master had?

2. Continuous improvement: Promoting the Continuous Improvement process

Agile project management thrives on continuous improvement. Can you name a few? Example: “Your initiative to implement better agile retrospectives has led to measurable improvements, as the team has reported to me.”

3. Trust: Trust as the basis for success

Trust is the glue of agile teams. Feedback to your Scrum Master should question whether and how trust between Product Owners, Release Train Engineers (in the case of SAFe), stakeholders, and software developers has changed subjectively. Example: “Your open communication style creates an environment of trust. Since we started looking at the Jira Board together weekly, I’ve noticed how the team’s commitment to its upkeep has improved.”

4. Team Satisfaction: A satisfied team is a productive team

Happy team members are productive team members. Give your Scrum Master feedback on how they influence team engagement. The same applies here as above: The best data for good feedback comes from talking to team members and other colleagues who can give you examples.

5. Delivering Value: Focus on value-oriented action

Agile project management aims to deliver value. That is, in the end, team performance must be measured against this. The Scrum Master has only a limited influence on this - but he has an influence! So a question to the Scrum Master could be: How do you think your influence has affected this so far? What are your future goals?

Scrum Master 360 degree feedback: a holistic view

Optionally, the 360-degree perspective can also be useful for comprehensive feedback - i.e. feedback from PO, external stakeholders, other Scrum Masters and the team. 360 degree feedback has advantages and disadvantages - but if you’re serious, it can certainly be an option. Here, too, my tip from above applies: You could develop questions for the 360 degree feedback based on the 5 success metrics. 

In addition, the Echometer tool can also help you - more on that below.

1. Performance feedback example: lack of transparency in communication

   Feedback: “I’ve noticed that not all relevant information is always shared transparently in the sprint meetings. How could we improve communication?”

2. Performance feedback example: Lack of involvement of all team members

   Feedback: “Some team members may not feel fully involved in decision-making processes. How can we ensure that all team members can contribute their perspectives and actively participate in shaping the work process?”

3. Performance feedback example: Overload of individual team members

   Feedback: “It seems like some team members are overloaded while others have less work. Could we work together to develop strategies to better distribute the workload and ensure that all team members are challenged equally?”

4. Performance Review Comment: Difficulties in the self-organization of the team

   Feedback: “It seems that the team is struggling to organize themselves and work autonomously. How can we strengthen self-organization and ensure that each team member takes responsibility and contributes to the overall success?”

5. Performance Review Comment: Unclear objectives and priorities

   Feedback: “Sometimes there seems to be a lack of clarity regarding priorities and goals. Perhaps you could structure the sprint plannings a little differently? How could we ensure that team goals are clearly defined and that all team members understand which tasks are a priority?”

6. Performance Review Commentary: Effective team communication

   Positive Feedback: “I appreciate the clear and open communication within the team, which you have fostered through your regular meeting icebreakers. The regular stand-up meetings and sharing of progress have helped to ensure that all team members regularly have a smile on their faces.”

7. Performance Review Comment: High team motivation and cohesion

   Positive Feedback: “It’s great to see how engaged and motivated the team is since you’ve been asking more often: What actually went well? 

8. Performance Review Comment: High team performance despite challenges

   Positive Feedback: “The team has achieved impressive results despite some challenges. The collaboration and commitment of each individual are noticeable. How could we use these positive experiences to successfully overcome future challenges as well?”

9. Feedback Comment: Collaborative decision-making

   Positive Feedback: “The way the team makes decisions together is impressive. The involvement of all team members leads to well-founded decisions and a common understanding. How could we further promote this participatory approach?”

By the way, if you want to take a more systematic approach to your employee development, I can recommend the following video. Spoiler: Servant leadership is not the best leadership style.

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A template for your Scrum Master 1-to-1 meeting

They say you should lead by asking questions. In this respect, questions should be an important part of your meeting in which you give your Scrum Master feedback.

Questions you can also ask in one-on-one meetings are health check questions. This means you ask for agreement with a specific, relevant statement - on a regular basis. This way you can measure how certain things develop over time.

To give you an example, take a look at the following template from our 1-to-1 meeting tool Echometer. 

I have also added a few open questions for you. You can also try out the template in our 1-to-1 meeting tool Echometer, just click on the button (without login). Of course, you can also customize it to your liking afterwards:

One of the most helpful sources of constructive Scrum Master feedback is, of course, the digital tools used, such as Jira or DevOps. Some metrics can be read out there. 

To have structured data, you can also use a special tool that Scrum Masters usually love: Echometer.

Echometer is a digital tool that helps agile team leads with agile retrospectives, 1-to-1 meetings and team Health Checks. Whether remote, hybrid or on-site: it makes team coaching measurable and professionalizes your work while saving you a lot of work. Just take a look at our website to find out more: www.echometerapp.com.

By the way: Since we have a large library of psychologically based questions, our tool can probably also help you to develop a good Scrum Master 360 degree feedback.

And one more thing: Regular 1-on-1 meetings or coaching sessions with your colleagues can have a decisive effect on your team performance. If you are interested in the topic in more detail, take a look here: Here you will find 129 one-to-one meeting (or appraisal interview) questions and Here are the 3 best one-on-one meeting tools in comparison .

Usually, all Scrum Coaches are very open to making their own work more measurable - e.g. with Echometer.

Christian Heidemeyer, Psychologist & Scrum Master

The art of giving feedback to a Scrum Master lies in taking the five performance KPIs into account. By wrapping concrete examples in modern feedback guidelines, you create a culture of continuous improvement in an agile environment. Our goal should not only be to successfully complete projects, but also to drive the individual development of our Scrum Masters.

Finally, one more note: If you would like to try out how it feels to develop your team with our tool: You can start an agile retrospective without logging in below, in this case the “Keep, Stop, Start” workshop. 

Alternatively, simply forward our website to the responsible colleagues: www.echometerapp.com.

A general note: If you are responsible for regular growth and operational one-to-one conversations with your team members, I recommend the following: Below you will find an example template for the many interactive possibilities in the 1:1 tool Echometer to conduct better and more efficient coaching conversations. Take a look at it: