What is part of the role of the Scrum Master? A short Reply
As an experienced psychologist and certified Scrum Master, I am sometimes asked what specific tasks are part of the Scrum Master’s role. Here’s the short answer: The Scrum Master ensures that Scrum is fully understood and implemented. He or she removes obstacles, solves problems and facilitates meetings as required. But what does that mean in concrete terms?
What is part of the role of the Scrum Master
Part of the role of the Scrum Master
The role of the Scrum Master: A team member with special responsibility
The Scrum Master is more than just a moderator. He is a team member with the responsibility of supporting the team in achieving its goals. This means that he not only monitors the process, but also actively contributes to the team’s success. This can mean supporting the team as a whole (e.g. through guided reflection and continuous improvements in retrospectives) as well as addressing and solving problems with individual team members in one-on-one discussions.
The agile manifesto, your bible
In connection with the agile manifesto: The Scrum Master helps to anchor the agile principles in the team. Through training and guidance, he promotes a deep understanding of the basic values of agile development.
Supporting the Scrum process and rules: “Servant Leader” in the team
The Scrum Master acts as a servant leader, helping teams to self-organize, self-manage and implement effective Lean Agile practices. They support and enforce the Scrum process and the rules agreed by the team.
From estimation to sprint planning: versatile support
The role of the Scrum Master covers various facets of agile project management. From supporting story point estimations to facilitating sprint planning.
Communication between team and product owner: a smooth connection
The Scrum Master is also the mediator between the team and the Product Owner. He supports the Product Owner in prioritizing and maintaining the product backlog.
What is part of the role of the Scrum Master
Scrum Master role in the scaled agile framework (SAFe)
In the scaled agile framework (SAFe), the Scrum Master is still responsible for ensuring and implementing the Scrum framework, but takes on additional tasks.
This includes helping the team write preliminary PI objectives (or prepare them from the perspective of their team as a whole), as well as identifying program risks and issues from the perspective of their team.
This expanded role reflects the requirements of a larger, scaling organization and ensures that the Scrum Master is not only effective at team level, but also contributes to the overall efficiency of the agile release train.
"Many team members are afraid to speak up!"
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"We discover too many unexpected issues & bugs at a late stage!"
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"Why does it sometimes take me hours to prepare a simple retrospective?"
Solve this challengeWhat is part of the role of the Scrum Master
A tool for ambitious Scrum Masters
Would you like to get better at fulfilling your role as a Scrum Master? Perhaps even in the scaled agile framework SAFe? Then the Echometer tool can help you, making your work measurable in a structured way and providing practical support in retrospectives.
Echometer is a digital tool that helps agile team leads with agile retrospectives 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.
The role of the Scrum Master broken down: Help your team to help themselves.
– Christian Heidemeyer, Psychologist & Scrum Master
What is part of the role of the Scrum Master
Conclusion - Scrum Master role
In summary, the Scrum Master is more than just a facilitator and process expert. They are an integral part of the team, ensuring that Scrum is applied effectively through engagement, teaching and support. The Scrum Master is the engine that drives the agile team on the road to success.
Lastly, one more note: If you would like to try out how it feels to develop your team further 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.
Keep stop start retro: How the retro works
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Random Icebreaker (2-5 minutes)
Echometer provides you with a generator for random check-in questions.
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Review of open actions (2-5 minutes)
Before starting with new topics, you should talk about what has become of the measures from past retrospectives to check their effectiveness. Echometer automatically lists all open action items from past retros.
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Discuss retro topics
Use the following open questions to collect your most important findings. First, everyone does it themselves, covered. Echometer allows you to reveal each column of the retro board individually in order to then present and group the feedback.
- Continue: What should we keep?
- Stop: What should we stop doing?
- Start: What should we start doing?
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Catch-all question (Recommended)
So that other topics also have a place:
- What else would you like to talk about in the retro?
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Prioritization / Voting (5 minutes)
On the retro board in Echometer, you can easily prioritize the feedback with voting. The voting is of course anonymous.
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Define actions (10-20 minutes)
You can create a linked action via the plus symbol on a feedback. Not sure which measure would be the right one? Then open a whiteboard on the topic via the plus symbol instead to brainstorm root causes and possible measures.
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Checkout / Closing (5 minutes)
Echometer enables you to collect anonymous feedback from the team on how helpful the retro was. This creates the ROTI score ("Return On Time Invested"), which you can track over time.
Keep stop start retro
