ScrumMasters Considered Harmful - Where Did It Go Wrong?
Add to calendarWith the popularity of Scrum, ScrumMaster has become a de facto role on many agile projects.
In this thought-provoking session, we’ll explore the ScrumMaster role and its key challenges. We’ll discuss why teams end up with dysfunctional ScrumMasters, and how that hurts agile projects. We’ll explore common ScrumMaster anti-patterns, and why they occur. We’ll challenge the ScrumMaster role, compare it to other models, and address if agile teams really need a ScrumMaster.
This promises to be a lively and interactive session that may change your views on how to structure a Scrum team.
This session will be conducted as a series of short talking points where I bring up an aspect listed in the learning outcomes, discuss it briefly and invite comments through some directed questioning. I fully expect most of the ideas to generate opposing views, and some healthy debate.
This is listed as a talk because it is not intended as a tutorial on Scrum or the ScrumMaster role, but rather as a thought-provoking talk on the nature of the ScrumMaster role, the division of responsibilities on an agile team, and the assumptions we may make about it.
- What is the real intent of the ScrumMaster role?
- How organizations often view the role - as manager, as project manager, as technical lead
- Where ScrumMasters come from and why that doesn’t help
- Why it can be a bad idea to appoint a ScrumMaster
- Are the responsibilities of the ScrumMaster role well-factored?
- If not a ScrumMaster, how do we handle these responsibilities?
- Alternative views — XP’s Coach and Manager, lean’s Chief Engineer, traditional team leads
