What is a Scrum Master? The Scrum Master guides the daily Scrum in projects or software development to streamline processes as much as possible. This person applies agile methodologies to guide successful project outcomes.

If you want to become a Scrum Master, learn what defines this role. Explore its duties and how the servant leadership style supports carrying out the various responsibilities it involves.

Find out how the Scrum Master's role benefits product or project development. Finally, discover what qualifications you need to become a Scrum Master and what job types you can apply to complete your studies.

What is a Scrum Master’s role?

A Scrum Master's role is dynamic. They must be flexible and adapt to various circumstances, because the Scrum Master serves a vital role in managing projects.

Every product development project needs a different approach. The Scrum Master must adapt their approach to each position and even play the role of an agile coach at times.

Whatever role the Scrum Master takes on, they play a servant leader role (we’ll review what this is later). So, their responsibilities vary when guiding the team's progress.

Some ways that the Scrum Master works with team members and product owners include:

• Sprint planning with team members and product owners to check that everyone understands what needs to be done
• Solving issues such as work estimation, scope creep and over-committing to work volumes
• Holding daily standup meetings to discuss product issues, backlogs, and any other team member concerns
• Acting as a facilitator to limit blockers that hold the team back from completing iterations on time. The Scrum Master also handles any roadblocks by improving workflows
• Having sprint reviews that ensure team collaboration and helpful feedback
• Holding retrospectives to see how team members can improve
• Monitoring the Scrum board to ensure that all cards are current and that Jira and other software works properly
• Hosting individual meetings to get to know and help team members one-on-one
• Handling portfolio planning tools such as analyzing burndown charts. They use burndown charts and other tools as inputs into what the team needs to build and the cadence levels for their work.
• Making sure that the team members use agile guidelines in their projects. These guidelines help team members meet stakeholder needs.

At the end of the day, the Scrum Master champions the Scrum process for successful project outcomes.

Servant leadership

Part of answering the question, “What is a Scrum Master”? involves looking at leadership styles. These styles include bureaucratic, democratic, transactional, and many others. One style that fits well with the role of the Scrum Master is to be a servant leader, an approach that works well with small teams.

Servant leaders:

• Support a team spirit
• Share responsibility
• Share decision-making
• Focus on achievements instead of faults

Servant leaders find solutions which promote workflows and stakeholder satisfaction.

Scrum Master according to Scrum methodology

The Scrum Guide, written by Ken Schwaber, provides an excellent outline of the diverse responsibilities of the Scrum Master. Here are some of this person’s roles:

• Adopting the role of an agile coach to lead organizational transformation using the Scrum methodology
• Planning Scrum applications to help the organization understand how the new iterative workflow process works and adapt to changes
• Guiding leaders, managers, and other stakeholders in understanding the benefits and applications of the Scrum product development methodology
• Helping increase the Scrum team's productivity
• Collaborating with other organizational Scrum Masters within the organization to help team members adopt agile principles
• Promoting positive working relationships between team members, product owners, and other stakeholders
• Guiding sprint planning, daily stand-up meetings, sprint reviews, and product backlog items

Scrum Master challenges

While the Scrum Master supports a streamlined workflow, their job is not always as simple as it sounds. Here are some challenges they may encounter:

1. Change resistance

Scrum Masters’ concepts may be new to employees, so Scrum Masters can encounter resistance. Either way, the Scrum Master must create solutions to dealing with any resistance to change.

2. Lack of understanding

Not everyone will understand or even like agile processes. A good Scrum Master must overcome this and to help teams connect principles with practical implementation to assimilate agile practices.

3. Gaining leadership support

Scrum Masters can only do their work effectively if they have the full support of leadership. Scrum processes can be pretty challenging, which initially disrupts old processes, making transformation difficult.

Managers may be afraid that the Scrum Master will usurp their authority. Departments may not want to adapt their processes, but the Scrum Master must use agile coach techniques to overcome fears and unwillingness to adapt.

Unless the Scrum Master has the full buy-in of leadership, any change initiative will derail before it even starts.

How Scrum Master positions can work

Role rotation. Agile teams rotate the responsibility of this role between members. For example, each team member does admin tasks for each Scrum meeting.

Part-time role. The Scrum Master takes on additional responsibilities.

Full-time role. The Scrum Master takes on a dedicated, full-time role. They must have the experience to do this work and skillfully show the team how to apply agile practices.

Guiding many teams. A Scrum Master guides several development teams. They monitor the work progress for several teams.

Agile coach. This Scrum Master role involves coaching teams or other Scrum Masters.

If the Scrum Master role interests you, you should know that Scrum Master jobs are common, partly due to the popularity of the agile method.

Organizations often look for ways to improve product development. They want Scrum Masters to help guide the process to get products to the market quicker.

You can look on LinkedIn for positions for good Scrum Masters. Their research shows that these positions are in high demand, so you can improve your skills with Scrum Master certifications. Your prospects are diverse as you can work in manufacturing, health, government, education, and many others.

Scrum Masters can get a Certified Scrum Master (CSM) qualification. They can also be a Professional Scrum Master.

How to become a certified Scrum Master

Scrum.org offers various resources, including Scrum certifications and training. So, if you want to follow a career in agile methodologies and lead a Scrum team, you can become a CSM or a PSM. You can also opt to train through the Scrum Alliance, which has been operating since 2001.

Hundreds of thousands of Scrum Masters have attained qualifications through these organizations. Both provide recognizable certifications at various Scrum Master levels, so perhaps it's time to boost your career.

You can achieve a Professional Scrum Master (PSM) certificate from scrum.org. This is available at three different levels, including:

• The PSM I certificate. This certificate shows that students understand Scrum and its applications as per the Scrum Guide.
• The PSM II certificate is proof that you can apply the Scrum principles and practices in a complex real-work situation.
• PSM III certificate. This certificate shows that students have an in-depth understanding of Scrum Values and can apply Scrum principles and practices in complex environments and situations.

Anyone who wants to improve their career opportunities can sign up with Scrum Alliance to get their CSM certification. You can become a:

• Certified ScrumMaster (SCM). This certificate focuses on servant leaders and how to help the Scrum team work together to enact the Scrum framework.
• Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO). This certificate is for anyone involved in the business aspect of projects. If you want to know more about product development, productivity, and meeting stakeholder needs, this one is ideal.
• Certified Scrum Developer (CSD). This certificate is good when you want to know how to apply techniques and tools to build great software products. You will learn how to apply iterative Scrum methods in this certification process.
• The Certified Scrum Professional (CSP) learns how to improve Agile methodology implementation in each project they guide.

Take your career up a notch.

Easy Agile provides a range of resources to help Scrum Masters achieve their agile methodology goals. In addition, you can access resources such as our learning hub and webinars to improve your skills.

Scrum Masters can also explore Easy Agile Programs for Jira to enhance the software development team’s experience. Another excellent resource is Easy Agile Scrum Workflow for Jira.

Enhance your Scrum Master role with resources that make your work easier by overcoming resistance to new learning curves.

Ceremonies are regular events held by Scrum teams. ‘Agile’ is a broad word describing a different way of working with shorter, time-boxed cycles for releases.

Under the broad umbrella of agile, Scrum is one of the most popular approaches that teams use to organise their work and releases.

Each short iteration of work in Scrum is referred to as a sprint. A sprint is normally a 2 week period where the team focuses on a small slice of work.

The idea is that everyone focuses on 1 slice of work. And that slice is to be completed and shipped to the customer within that same sprint.

Scrum can be broken down into a few important elements:

1. Roles
2. Artifacts
3. Ceremonies

This post will focus on the Scrum Ceremonies.

All of the 4 Scrum ceremonies help ensure the Scrum team stay focused on the slice of work they agreed to focus on in that sprint.

It helps the team with transparency about progress on the work they committed to finish and to raise any issues early before they become blockers.

Let’s have a look at each of the four agile ceremonies in Scrum:

1. Stand up (or daily Scrum)

Goal of the stand up: a brief check-in where the team can raise issues or communicate with the whole team face to face.

Who joins the daily stand up: Developers, Scrum Master, Product Owner

Outcome of daily stand up: the team raises any blockers, but doesn’t have to solve them. Ensure each team member is clear about what they are working on. Each team member should be able to answer these three questions:

• What did I complete yesterday?
• What will I work on today?
• Am I blocked by anything?

When to hold a stand up: daily

Tip: stand ups can be done by business teams and don’t always have to be face-to-face. Here’s a photo of Australian bank ANZ’s executive stand up in action:

And another pic from InsideIT’s stand up:

2. Sprint Planning

Goal of sprint planning: sprint planning helps the team prepare for what work is coming up next. The team discusses each item of work which has been prioritised by the Product Owner.

Who does sprint planning: Developers, Product Owner, Scrum Master

Outcome of sprint planning: that everyone knows what the sprint goal is and how they are going to achieve it. Make sure everyone understands what’s the overall vision or objective of the work.

The team will be comfortable with what work is available to be picked up in the next sprint. The team will discuss any impediments or opportunities and how they can optimise the way the work will be completed.

The team will also estimate the work and draw a line when it is estimated that the effort to complete the work exceeds the team’s capacity or historical velocity.

When to hold sprint planning: at the end of a sprint or very beginning of a new sprint.

Bonus: sometimes in sprint planning you will find things you won’t do, and that’s valuable too.

3. Sprint review

Goal of the sprint review: showcase the work completed and receive feedback from the Product Owner and relevant stakeholders.

Who joins the sprint review: Executive Sponsors, Developers, Scrum Master, Product Owner

Outcome of the sprint review: each team member feels empowered by showcasing their work to the team. The team can celebrate their achievements. Executive team can ask questions. Product owner can provide feedback and check the work is of high quality and satisfies the user story. Works best with drinks and cake.

When to hold a sprint review: at the end of each sprint.

4. Retrospective

Goal of the retrospective: honest discussion about what worked well and didn’t work well. Encourage self-improvement and transparency.

Who joins the retrospective: Developers, Scrum Master, Product Owner

Outcome of a retrospective: receive feedback from the team and seek to improve in the following sprint. The beauty of agile and Scrum is the fast feedback loop.

If something isn’t working well, it only hurts the team for a maximum of 2 weeks. It can then be addressed at the retrospective and action can be taken to address the issue before it gets out of hand.

The outcome should be a commitment from the team to focus on addressing areas that need improvement or continuing behaviours that benefit team health and/or velocity.

When to hold a retrospective: at the beginning of a new sprint, reflecting on a sprint that has just ended.

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The common theme across these Scrum ceremonies is that they encourage team collaboration, transparency and communication.

In my experience, this is what truly makes agile a better way of working.

It’s not the story points or even the way the backlog is prioritised that makes a difference. The true game-changer of agile is that it helps teams with open and honest communication.

These agile/Scrum ceremonies won’t always work the same for every team.

However, they are a great way to facilitate conversation and encourage continuous improvement.

Kanban vs. Scrum — are they different, and can software and product development use them together? The answer to both questions is YES!

Both Kanban and Scrum are popular agile methodologies. They are different, but they can be used together. They are each part of agile, a better way of working that focuses on iteration and collaboration to reduce waste and maximize efficiency.

Agile is the antithesis of classical project management. Think of it like jazz vs classical music. Rather than one composer bringing an already composed and organized piece of music to an orchestra and dictating what happens where, jazz is collaborative, each band member feeds off of each other, creating music in an agile, iterative process.

This post will take a deep dive into both Kanban and Scrum methodologies. Continue reading to discover the differences and similarities between Kanban vs. Scrum, and learn how they can be effectively used together.

How is the agile methodology different from project management?

The traditional project management methodology is linear, meaning each project element is completed in sequential order. Only when each element is completed can you move onto the next one. Think of traditional project management as an assembly line. It has a strict succession of steps that are planned out by the project manager before any new work or iterations can begin.

The project manager is the person the entire team depends on for leadership. The flow of work remains the same from project to project, and the steps rarely evolve.

By contrast, agile is a non-linear way of working that focuses on flexibility and collaboration between team members. Agile project management focuses on getting something completed that stakeholders can see and evaluate on a regular basis, so value is continuously provided.

Each iteration yields new, actionable insights from both the team and the customer about what’s working, what isn’t, and what needs to change. It’s a multifaceted approach that eliminates the bottlenecks that can arise in the traditional method.

Kanban vs. Scrum

Kanban vs. Scrum is not a dichotomy. They are both agile methodologies designed to help teams work in an iterative process. They are both systems that are regularly used in the development process to ensure a value-driven approach. The goals and methodology are the same, but the steps are different.

A Kanban workflow is a way to visually organize tasks that ensures work items move forward while allowing changes and adjustments to be made along the way. A scrum works in 2-4 week sprints designed to complete a set amount of work or solve a specific problem. Throughout each sprint, teams check in daily to ensure progress and to identify any possible roadblocks.

Kanban vs. Scrum isn’t a one or the other choice. Both might be used at the same time, depending on what’s required of projects or user stories. Learn more about the differences and similarities of these two methods below.

Kanban vs. Scrum: Kanban methodology

Kanban was originally utilized by Taiichi Ohno, an engineer at Toyota, as a lean manufacturing system that decreased waste and increased efficiency. The Kanban method is a task management tool designed to maximize efficiency by visualizing all of the required work and limiting works in progress.

Work items are represented visually on Kanban boards so that every team member can see the state of each piece of work at any given time. It enables real-time communication and full transparency between team members since each work item is intentionally assigned. A Trello board is a simple example of a Kanban.

How to use Kanban

With a Kanban, work flows visually through various stages of completion to promote cohesive collaboration and real-time communication across teams. In its simplest form, a Kanban is a To-Do, Doing, and Done board. Work moves from one section to the next on a physical or digital Kanban board, depending on how far along the specific task is.

To solve more complex problems, which is usually the case in software development, a Kanban can become more advanced with added layers for specific clients, products, or deliverables.

A key aspect of the Kanban methodology is that each person is only allowed to work on one task at a time. This ensures no aspect ever moves too far forward without working in unison with the rest of the tasks on deck. The one-at-a-time system identifies critical connections between tasks as well as potential roadblocks that could cause delays.

Encouraging cross-functional teams to intentionally identify work items ensures tasks are appropriately prioritized. It also combats the negative effects of multitasking, allowing developers to zero in on one task at a time.

Kanban vs. Scrum: Scrum methodology

Scrum, sometimes called a “scrumban,” is based on empiricism and lean thinking. Empiricism is the belief that knowledge comes from hands-on experience and objective, observable facts. Lean thinking focuses on the essentials, bringing value to individuals while eliminating waste. A scrum uses real-time collaboration over theorization to provide a lightweight framework for solving complex problems.

The Scrum process uses an interactive and incremental approach that manages risk and enhances predictability through set intervals of iteration called sprints. The sprints yield an imperfect but valuable version of a product the team can quickly bring to stakeholders, whose feedback is then integrated into the next sprint. The sprints continue until the desired outcome or product is achieved.

How to use Scrum

A Scrum takes place over a set amount of time called a sprint. Each sprint generally takes two weeks to a maximum of four weeks to complete. The important part is that the time frame is set before the Scrum begins.

There are three main components of a Scrum:

1. Roles: The people

• Product owner
• Scrum master
• Development team

2. Artifacts: What gets done

• Product backlog
• Sprint backlog
• Increments

3. Ceremonies: Recurring events

• Sprint planning
• Daily Scrum
• Sprint review
• Sprint retrospective

The product owner orders and prioritizes backlog items, which are the aspects of a product that need completion. At the beginning of a Scrum, the product owner designates which artifacts from the product backlog move to the sprint backlog. The sprint backlog represents the goals and the desired outcomes of the upcoming sprint.

💡 Use Easy Agile TeamRhythm to transform flat product backlogs into impactful, visual representations.

The Scrum master helps everyone understand Scrum theory and practice. They are responsible for the effectiveness of the Scrum team. Throughout the 2-4 week sprint, the team focuses on the backlog, checking in for daily scrums or daily stand-ups. During these Scrum meetings, team members share what story points they completed, what story points they will complete next, as well as any roadblocks that stand in the way.

Deliverables are produced on a regular basis, and adjustments are made along the way as needed. A Scrum board or Kanban board might be used to help teams visualize their progress throughout the sprint.

Ceremonies are the recurring events held by Scrum teams cycling through on a 2-4 week basis. A Scrum begins with a short planning phase, then the work begins. The Scrum team meets daily to review progress and make changes as needed.

At the end of each sprint, a sprint review is held with stakeholders or clients to ensure value is being met, and continuous improvements are pushed forward. Lastly, a retrospective meeting takes place with the project owner, scrum master, and development team to review the past two weeks, including successes, key metrics, and challenges to be addressed before the next sprint begins.

Using Kanban and Scrum together

It doesn't need to be Kanban vs. Scrum — they can work together. A development team might choose to use the Kanban system within a Scrum to provide a visual representation of work moving forward throughout each sprint.

They are both valuable systems in your agile toolkit that work together to provide prioritization, collaboration, and constant value delivery. So, you don’t ever have to choose between Kanban vs. Scrum. Save the decision-making for the real problems, like what to put on the pizzas you order for your team. 🍕

A Scrum framework provides designated blocks of time for teams to complete a specific deliverable or set of deliverables while providing daily Scrum meetings to ensure cohesion and advancement. The Kanban system will ensure tasks are taken on one at a time in an evolving, visual process.

Learn the ways of the Scrum with Easy Agile

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