Many people often ask me about my opinion on the constant presence of Scrum Master in a team. In this article, I try to convey my views, emphasizing that this is only my personal opinion, and I do not claim the right to the only truth.
Let’s start with the genesis of the Scrum Master role. In the original idea, this role is described as a person who introduces scrum. This means that he teaches/coaches a team in self-organization, responsibility for achieving the goal, understanding the scrum pillars, values and rules. After introducing everyone to the knowledge starting and stabilizing the team, he will be able to go to the next team. According to the assumptions, it was supposed to last three to six months.
When is a Scrum Master necessary?
What happened to the original assumption?
Why doesn’t it work like that?
Of course, it works, but only if a different requirement is met, i.e. environmental stability is ensured. A changing environment always creates confusion that affects the work of the team. This can be clearly seen in the Velocity chart, which begins to wave over time, resulting in a loss of production predictability.
Introducing scrum
The introduction of scrum itself is a revolution in development. Most often, new teams are created and test automation is introduced. Additionally, teams are smaller, have new, strange meetings, and familiar, simple status meetings disappear. As intended by the authors of Scrum Guide, the role of the Scrum Master is necessary for the correct, permanent and safe introduction of these changes.
- The correctness of the introduced scrum is crucial because scrum as a framework will not be durable, safe and effective if it is not implemented fully. An attempt to bypass certain elements distorts and, as a result, deforms the entire development. It is visible when we start to demand greater efficiency and performance of the team. Sometimes I compare it with the mechanism of clock gears: if we remove something, it will spin, but we will have no predictability of the results, it will not spin smoothly, and if you try to spin it faster, everything will fall apart.
- The durability of the change in the agile approach should be of key importance. It is not enough to do scrum training and a one-sprint test to check if everyone understands the rules. After the Scrum Master’s exit, the work mode and roles should be kept permanently and should not go beyond scrum.
- I understand the safety of introducing scrum as securing the planned production so that this change does not cause the deterioration or collapse of the project or the entire business. The Scrum Master must make changes in such a way that the performance fluctuations remain within an acceptable range and the release dates remain the same, otherwise, the modifications should be agreed and approved.
Changes in the team
Personnel shifts are a big change for the team and have a huge impact on the way they work. It happens that “the new one” fits quickly and efficiently into a functioning system, but more often his joining and adaptation causes destabilization. Even more serious consequences can be caused by the leave of an important member of the team.
Scrum Master’s support reduces the turbulence and shortens their duration which means that the effect of his presence is necessary and profitable. It is especially important to ensure the longest possible time from the first communication about the personnel shift to the actual change of the team members. This allows the Scrum Master and the team to prepare for it and smoothly enter a new situation.
Changes in technology
Technology changes very quickly and these changes require constant replenishment of competencies. This necessitates continuous and planned development. Problems start when a technological revolution is unplanned and the team has to cope with changing requirements without being prepared to develop using the new technology.
The team in its role of product development naturally focuses on the technical aspects of changes in technology. The Product Owner is interested in the new opportunities that the change can bring to the customer/user. The Scrum Master is solely responsible to focus on changes in the way the team works. Most often, he perceives the threats to work stability caused by a change in technology. Competence development, cross-team or external dependencies, methods of solving problems by supporting new solutions will affect the velocity and predictability of work. Careful preparation of changes in certain technology allows the organisation to smoothly change the way it works and reduce the negative effects.
Changes in scale
Adding another team to the project is not costless and not only will the velocity be disturbed, but it also will probably not return to its reached level. Bigger project and more teams mean more dependencies, more complexity and bigger problems.
The problem is very common because managers’ lack of understanding of development problems leads to the conclusion: “It’s going too slow, let’s have more teams doing the work.” There is no disturbance in the team itself, but the bigger number of teams affects the way of planning the work, additional cross-team dependencies during production, the way of testing, integrating the increments in one product or even the way of conducting scrum meetings. Often, business expectations that the work will scale linearly, i.e. 3 teams will deliver the product 3 times faster, are most often unrealistic and, as a result, lead to disappointment.
Changes in business
Changes in the market situation, in the organizational structure and, finally, a change of the Product Owner are the most acute factors influencing the understanding of the work planned by the team. This causes increasing team’s uncertainty and great confusion in the way of working, and as a result, critical changes for the team’s performance. That situation usually requires the presence of a Scrum Master, as the scrum team should not be involved in re-adapting the business environment to scrum work rules.
Constant changes in business positions result in the willingness to introduce a new order. “I am new to this position, but I am great, I will show you how to do it because it is clear that my predecessor did it all wrong”. The team then faces the need to resist changes that may affect its work. Exaggerated planning, reports creating an illusory atmosphere of control, mechanical comparison of teams performance and individual developers performance — those are management actions that a team has to deal with without a Scrum Master or Agile Coach.
The Scrum Master is designed to support the team in introducing changes that this team is unable to cope with on its own. The presence of a Scrum Master reduces the negative effects of them. The most important thing is for the business to understand that it is profitable to ensure the stability of the development environment. The developers are intelligent — they can cope with everything if they are independent.