Abstract: This article focuses on the analysis of the role of the Scrum Master in the transition from traditional to agile Scrum teams.

This article is shared by huawei Cloud community: Who is the Best Scrum Master in the transition from traditional to Agile? , author: A quick wit.

At present, more and more IT enterprises and teams begin to make agile transformation, and the first step towards agile transformation is often to build an agile team. Scrum Master plays a crucial role in the agile team, so in the process of transformation from traditional to agile, Who on the original team would be better suited for that role?

This article focuses on the analysis of the role of the Scrum Master in the transition from traditional to Agile Scrum teams. Scrum and other related topics are beyond the scope of this article.

If you want to know who’s better, you need to know what a Scrum Master really is.

As one of the three roles in the Scrum framework, Scrum Master has not been well translated into Chinese, and the word Scrum Master literally means not only mastery but also control. The Role of the Scrum Master has no actual authority, so the word itself is full of contradictions.

As defined in the Scrum Guide, the Scrum Master is responsible for helping the team understand Scrum theory, practices, rules, and values. To the Scrum team, he or she is a servant leader. A ScrumMaster helps people outside the Scrum team understand how he/she interacts with the Scrum team and maximizes the value created by the Scrum team by changing the way he/she interacts with the Scrum team.

The Scrum Master’s responsibilities serve not only the Product Owner and development team within the team, but also the organization as follows:

ScrumMaster serves product owners including:

  • Ensure that everyone on the Scrum team understands the goals, scope, and product domain as well as possible;

  • Find techniques for managing your product backlog effectively;

  • Help the Scrum team understand why clear and concise product backlog items are needed;

  • Understand product planning in an empirical environment;

  • Ensure the product owner understands how to organize the product backlog to maximize its value;

  • Understand and practice agility;

  • Conduct Scrum events when requested or needed.

Scrummasters serve teams:

  • Act as coach to guide development teams in self-organizing and cross-functional areas;

  • Support development team to create high value products;

  • Remove obstacles to the development team’s progress;

  • Conduct Scrum events as requested or needed;

  • Coach the development team in an organizational environment that Scrum has not yet fully adopted and understood.

Scrummasters serve organizations:

  • Lead and coach the organization’s adoption of Scrum;

  • Planning Scrum implementation across the organization;

  • Help employees and stakeholders understand and implement Scrum and experience-oriented product development;

  • Trigger changes that increase Scrum team productivity;

  • Work with other Scrummasters to enhance the effectiveness of Scrum applications in your organization.

In addition to the Scrum guide, Kenneth Rubin Outlines the responsibilities of a Scrum Master: Coach, servant leader, process authority, “umbrella,” “scavenger,” “agent for change,” as well as being informed, questioning, patient, collaborative, protective, and transparent (see Chapter 10 of The Essence of Scrum: An Agile Transformation Guide for more on this)

Therefore, it can be seen from the above that Scrum Master, as a non-traditional role in a team, is a relatively comprehensive generalist who needs a variety of skills and abilities, and also has certain requirements for the qualified personnel in this role. For example, now more popular T talents (depth also has breadth on knowledge structure), and even more specialized and more capable.

In general, in a traditional team, the main roles are: Project manager, technical manager, QA, tester, developer, etc. In fundamentalist terms, traditional roles may not be allowed to be Scrum masters, but the Scrum guide does not specify which roles are allowed to be Scrum masters, as long as they meet the requirements of a Scrum Master regardless of your previous roles. The question may no longer be who can be the Scrum Master.

I have coached two companies on agile transformation for a period of time, both of which are small startups. At the initial stage of the transformation, one of the enterprises, A, decided to appoint the Scrum Master to be A skilled member of the original team after internal discussion. The Scrum Master was mainly responsible for development, requirement discussion, operation and maintenance, etc. After being the Scrum Master of the team, besides the previous work, He also worked as a Scrum Master and was blocked from pushing Scrum meetings and practices in many ways due to the lack of feedback. Company B, on the other hand, has its Scrum Master appointed by its CEO, so it can be expected that the implementation of Scrum is “smooth”, but the CEO also serves as the product owner. During the process, the team will often be confused as to whether he is a Scrum Master or a product owner, which is inevitable.

None of the above is a good example of a transition from a traditional team to an agile team, and there are many other problems in the transition process, which are basically due to the deviation of the transition team’s understanding of the role of Scrum Master. For this new role, it seems that any traditional role is not suitable, but it seems that any role can be taken. The “Scrum Master” is inherently contradictory. Descriptions of being “servant” or “servant” may seem like they have no management power or even inferior, but the Scrum Master does manage the Scrum process to create maximum value for the team. So who is the best Scrum Master after the transition from traditional to Agile?

The solution

From the traditional team, Scrum masters are project manager, Technical manager (architect), QA(QUALITY ASSURANCE) and testing, which I have seen and learned from my notes. As stated in the analysis, Scrum does not specify what role is appropriate to be a Scrum Master, and if we had to choose a relatively suitable role, we could define it roughly in terms of the Scrum guide’s description of the role’s responsibilities (serving the product owner, serving the team, serving the organization). The advantages and disadvantages of the above four roles are also given. (Note: As each company has different definitions of roles, the following analysis is based on the author’s cognition only.) As follows:

For those of you who may not be familiar with the role of QA, it’s worth mentioning here.

QA, for its purpose, provides managers and project personnel with an objective understanding of how the activities and work products performed by the project conform to established process requirements and product standards.

The characteristics of QA role can be roughly divided into five aspects, namely, the role on the implementation of Quality system, the role on project QCD(Quality, Cost, and Delivery), the role on managers, the influence on enterprise culture, and the influence on customers, as follows:

To sum up, QA is not only connected with the manager (organization) and the project personnel (team), but also with the customer (requirements or product owner) and the process enabler for process improvement. Compared with other roles, THE role of Scrum Master has the highest degree of fit. QA also ensures the effectiveness and continuity of the process as a team transitions from waterfall to Agile. As a result, THE transition from QA to Scrum Master is one of the most successful I’ve seen. In addition, the author also gives a personal preference for the proportion of other roles in transition: Testing > project manager > Technical manager. If there were a BA (Business Analys) role in a traditional team, I think BA would be a higher priority than testing (because a qualified BA’s responsibilities include Business and technical aspects), so the final order would be QA>BA> Testing > Project Manager > Technical Manager. Readers can make reference according to their own situation.

Although, however, presents a sort, but in the transformation of the real team, is not only a simple transform one original role into new roles, and cooperate with the ability and the ideological change, either role, if you want to become a qualified Scrum Master, all need to start from “heart”, in addition to improve self ability, And a fundamental shift in thinking (compassion, empathy, service, etc.).

Finally, we often say that “there is no silver bullet”, and this is true. In practice, even if a Scrum Master completely fits the functional role definition of a Scrum Master, it is OK to disappear. Conforming to the definition may only make the Scrum Master look like a Scrum Master. It does not necessarily mean that a team can become a good and efficient self-organizing team, nor that all processes and problems can be perfectly implemented and solved, because there is no such thing as perfection, only finding in practice and improving in summary. Perfection comes after metamorphosis in ascension. Remember, you’re an agile team, so put your ideas into iteration and explore what works for your team.

Refer to appendix

The Essence of Scrum: The Agile Transformation Guide

The Scrum Guide

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