Toward Scrum, part 8: the Scrum Master

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Russell Bateman
June 2020

Originally, this series was to promote healthy Scrum to teams struggling with the practice. It was not intended to be articles or a book on Scrum. However, it seems necessary now to add a few words about the role of Scrum master.

The Scrum master ensures that the team lives Agile values by

• clearing obstacles
• protecting the team from outside interruptions and distractions
• establishing an environment of effectiveness
• ensuring a good relationship between team and product owner
• conducting sprint planning
• conducting sprint reviews
• animating end-of-sprint demonstrations
• conducting stand-ups

Scrum masters understand Agile in general and, in specific, the Agile module chosen to implement. They have no authority, but this is in keeping with the purpose of meetings and Scrum: the team should not be under pressure to do or accomplish anything that detracts from its primary purpose. This means no intimidating managers, no thinking about being judged, nothing that detracts from building the product.

The Scrum master oversees or facilitates the essential Scrum events:

• Sprint (meeting)
• Sprint planning
• Sprint review
• Sprint retrospective
• Stand-up (also called the "daily scrum")

He or she also rules over, mostly by ensuring their active existence, the Scrum "artifacts":

• Product backlog
• Sprint backlog
• Definition of "done"

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