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My friend and colleague, Tobias Mayer wrote a really interesting piece about eliminating the role of ScrumMaster in September. I finally had a moment to craft a response.
While I can agree with many of the points in the article, there are some areas of disagreement. It is an unfortunate truth that a mostly meaningless term, ScrumMaster, has become even more meaningless by the bad application of Scrum. In many cases, the role of the ScrumMaster has become a stalking horse for the status quo which is odd since Ken Schwaber defines the ScrumMaster as a change agent. That is a sad reality.
However, I disagree that we should just delete the role of ScrumMaster. Oddly enough, it seems that large organizations do not feel threatened by this role and, in some cases, have gone about institutionalizing the role as a career track with an official title. I suppose that is because as the role of ScrumMaster exists, and is commonly explained right now, the role is so devoid of content, it is not threatening to the status quo. What is so fascinating to me is that we now finally have a crack in the organization that is mostly overlooked by the organizational antibodies. A crack that can actually transform the world of work if we can change a role so devoid of content AND put goodness into it.
There are two main challenges surrounding this role:
However, is that the fault of the people trying to do the role the best they can? Or is that the fault of the people educating people on Scrum? Since I cannot speak for the multitudes who have tried to be the best ScrumMaster they can, I will save my comments for myself.
I feel part of the issue of this empty role resides with the educators of Scrum. Many in the Scrum education community don’t recognize that the ScrumMaster is eight roles in wrapped in one and\or fail to communicate this to the learners. Also, apart from the initial CSM class, the main Scrum education community (of which I am a part of) does not offer anything more in the way of continuing education. If we want to continue with the role of a ScrumMaster being a change agent, then we need to do better explaining what this person does and offer more to them.