Three influential and robust roles within the Scrum framework for Agile software development are – Scrum Master, Product Owner, and Development Team (Development Team is a cross-functional team of Dev, QA, UI Designers, DevOps and other expertise needed to get the job done). Here we will share the great experience explaining the role of the Scrum Masters within Scrum Framework.
7 Major Roles & Responsibilities Of Scrum Masters
1. Scrum Master to Address Team Dynamics
- A good Scrum Master motivates the team to go with Scrum and also make sure that the team has a more efficient and productive environment.
- Guide the team on how they can organize to achieve the sprint goals.
- Scrum works with teams, works through issues, facilitates, and educates on agile ways to add value to the organization.
- Enable enhancement in delivery team productivity and capacity planning for sprints by finding and understanding hidden tasks that lead to customer satisfaction.
- Ensures transparency is maintained with the entire team.
- Share information throughout the company through blogging, internal meetings, etc.
- Manage, improve, enable, and maintain Scrum Teams to achieve Sprint Goals.
- Provides a reliable work environment where all issues can be handled without any fear.
- Mediate between team members when necessary.
- Maintain good relationship with development team and product owner
This responsibility can also be a characteristic of a successful Scrum Master.
2. Scrum Master as facilitator, moderator, and host
Moderator “Principal person in charge of the process”, Moderator “Scrum Team Leadership” and Master of Ceremonies “The person in charge of the event viz. Host a Scrum event.
The Scrum Master enables ceremonies such as sprint planning, daily stand-ups, sprint reviews, and retrospective meetings.
Iteration Planning and Story Completion: Ensure that the Product Backlog is ordered and finished by the Product Owner before Sprint Planning begins.
Participants: Product Owner, Scrum Master, and Development Team.
Timebox: 2 hours for a 2 week sprint.
Sprint Review or Sprint Demonstration: Demonstration of product improvements, planned versus completed work items. Capture useful feedback as a back item.
Participants: Stakeholders, Product Owners, Development Team and Scrum Master.
Time Box: 2 hours for 2 week sprint
3. Sprint Retrospective Meeting
A meeting hosted by the Scrum Master in which the team discusses three points:
What works perfectly in the sprint?
What can be enhanced?
What will we improve in the next sprint?
Every actionable advice is captured, defined, and tracked by the Scrum Master.
Participants: Development Team and Scrum Master. The product owner is optional.
Time Box: 1 hour for a 2-week sprint
Burn-up and burn-down charts: Team progress in terms of performance graphs is one of the most popular agile methods. The Scrum Master should be able to organize sprint/release progress via burn-up and burn-down charts.
The burn-down chart shows how much work is left and the burn-up chart shows how much work has been completed or completed. The main idea behind this is that the progress of work is visible at all levels.
This ensures that the definitions of done (DoD) and ready (DoR) are maintained and adhered to by the product owner and team.
Recommends Metrics (a metrics tool to track lead time, velocity, and the number of bugs logged) as a catalyst for change.
Tracks sprint execution through scrum tools like scrum board, Kanban, action board, Jira, charts, backlog etc.
4. Responsibilities of Product Owners and External Stakeholders
A Product Owner projects someone as a key stakeholder
- Product Owner and Scrum Master are two diversified roles but both complement each other and work together for the success of the project.
- Product Owners and Scrum Masters focus on roles and responsibilities rather than helping teams create value for their customers.
- A Scrum Master helps the Product Owner to maximize the ROI (Return on Investment) in accomplishing their goals through Scrum.
- The Scrum Master acts as the liaison between the Product Owner and the Development Team.
- Because coaches help product owners achieve their goals and continually optimize and prioritize their backlog items, for example, if requirements change or plans change, the Scrum Master knows how to do both. . How will you benefit? Team and P.O.C.
- Ensures collaborative meetings to bridge the gap. When certain internal/external conflicts arise, the SM understands them and facilitates collaborative meetings to resolve them.
- Ensures to execute work with mitigation strategy to reduce the gap.
5. Remove Obstacles
Obstacles can be of any form and can come from anyway.
A scrum master has to be courageous and creative to overcome obstacles.
A Scrum Master has two types of constraints:
1. Scrum Master Ownership Limits
Lack of automated testing in the project
Conflict between team members.
Not enough for continuous integration/deployment project
2. A Scrum Master needs a team to solve the bottlenecks
Conflict between team members.
focus on roles
6. Meta Skills
A Scrum Master should be kind, generous, humble, empathetic, selfless, creative, innovative, excellent for others, working for people rather than processes, fast learner etc.
Well trained in Agile techniques/practices like Agile Games, Feature Driven Deployment (FDD), Acceptance Test Driven Deployment (ATDD), Pair Programming, Test Driven Development (TDD), etc. Understands CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment) .
A vision that enables and fosters a culture of collaboration, openness and continuous improvement.
“The Scrum Master plays a very important support system role for the team/organization in implementing Agile/Scrum”
7. Quality of Servant Leadership
What is servant leadership in Scrum? That means leaving the ego and having no power or authority over the rest of the team, working in a completely flat structure with no hierarchy.
Servant leadership says the leader is not superior, but is part of the body of the team.
S – See the future,
E – Engage and develop others
R – Re-invention
V – Value Results and Relationships
E- Embody Values
This ensures that celebrations or planning sessions take place on time.
The Scrum Master understands that mistakes are inevitable, it is human nature, and mistakes are a good teacher too.
In estimation the dev works with the team so that the team doesn’t overwork.
Summing up:
The scrum master ultimately acts as the doctor when it comes to health check-ups. Coaches and trains new Scrum Masters so that they contribute equally to the success of the organization.
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