Why “Scrum Master” is a terrible job title
Along the years I have seen many scrum masters struggling with the teams, and even becoming a problem for the performance of the team. I already wrote in a previous article about the scrum masters (https://javimolano.medium.com/now-that-you-became-a-scrum-master-7b01e408e23), and how they should be transparent for the team, or at least, not annoying. Anyway, scrum masters are always there, sometimes helping, most of the times interrupting and making things more complicated, why this happens?
The scrum theory tell us that scrum master should be a servant master to the team, the one removing impediments and the guardian and evangelist of the scrum process. I think many people does great in this sense, but they are still a problem and the things are not becoming smoother but more complicated. As I said, the theory is clear, but the reality is completely different, every company adopts scrum framework in very different ways, so the scrum guide just turns into an orientation document and here’s where the scrum masters get totally lost. Why I’m here as scrum master if we are not going to follow scrum, or at least, not enterily?
A good scrum master, has tons of good things to do and to contribute to the teams, aside scrum, you can be always there to analyse team problems and propose solutions, mediate in conflicts, contact with people outside of the team to get valuable information, host and lead meetings and ceremonies, ask the right questions in plannings and stand ups, remove impediments…, a good scrum master is someone everyone will love in the team, but the truth is that they usually are ignored, if not seen as a burden, and the job title contributes a lot to this. Think about it, you are the scrum MASTER, that words look like yor first task is to enforce the scrum framework and prevent any deviation of it. Don’t misunderstand me here, scrum masters understand their roles, but there’s something psicologically in the job title that makes many people think that scrum, per se, it’s the only target, it’s the end, not the mean, and sorry, it’s the other way around.
When scrum masters start to conflict with the team, and the teams decide to get rid of a scrum ceremony, artifact, or whatever they think is not valuable for them, the scrum master begins to feel undervaluated and irrelevant, what lead them to frustration. People need to feel they are contributing to the team, if they start to feel others just ignore their work, then, is when the things go downhill… Scrum masters can do many valuable things but many of them dont realise it and start to enforce scrum with “violence”, expressing their disagree firmly to some decisions, some of them even create workshops about many scrum topics, workshops? what a madness…, the team already knows how they want to work, so again, forget about scrum, readapt yourself and find a way to be useful to the team, I already mentioned above, there’s many useful things a scrum master can do outside scrum framework.
The scrum master title, is confusing even for the companies, in my home country scrum and agile culture is not as evolved as in other places, and I can see today job offers saying “Scrum master / Project manager wanted”, and yes, if we are confusing this terms in 2021, is because that company is quite behind with scrum and agile knowledge in general, but I find it also logic, again this word, MASTER, is confusing, if you put someone in a team and you call him master, many people will expect him to be the leader of the pack, the project and the coffee machine, because he’s a master.
So, what we can do here? I propose to change the scrum master title, if your team is not following scrum by the book, why to follow the titles? I’m pretty sure that if you rename it to, for example, “process owner”, many people will adapt and help better to the team, all is psychologic, you will focus in teams problems but without the burden of looking for solutions only within the scrum guide, you will become more flexible automatically. But there’s more alternatives, as “team/process coordinator”, “team coach”, you can be very creative here and no need to mention any specific process or framework, because at the end of the day, every team will find their own process and ways of working.
