While coaching Agile teams or interacting with Scrum masters, many times people asks as what explicitly does a Scrum Master does apart from someone who facilitates meetings, removes the impediments and enforces the timelines.
So, is the Scrum Master only,
- a servant leader working for removing the impediments for the team
- or a Agile enthusiast working towards laying down/ educating/or may be enforcing sometimes, the Agility across the team
or it more than that????
Ideally in my view a Scrum Master is one who has to wear a lot many hats from time to time. He is the one who has to
- maintain and facilitate the communication : be it within team/ or with other teams/ or with business
- Work towards ensuring the organizational level Agility is flowing with a positive synergy
- Working for the team : removing their impediments/ assisting in their learning paths, by making them cross-functional/ recognition’s for the team members / making sure they are allocated and tagged with project
- Working towards maturing the various engineering practices,
- helping team for the test automation or continuous integration or deployments
- Maturing team for the Definition of Ready or the Definition of Done
- Working with the Product Owner for prioritizing the backlog, release mapping, workshop facilitation(with other stakeholders)
- Tracking the project metrics/burn downs
- Trying out different ways/venues for the scrum ceremonies to break the monotony and to continue with the Sprint cadence
- and not to forget , fun activities and innovation games for team.
So in a nutshell there are a loads of activities that a Scrum Master does perform and make sure his team is aligned to achieve the commitments.
EmbracingAgility 