I’m writing about a talk given by Paul Hodgetts at Agile 2009 called “ScrumMasters Considered Harmful – Where Did We Go Wrong?” (Link to full presentation).
So, why doesn’t the title of this blog post match? The title is really catchy, but the the talk was more of an investigation and discussion of what the ScrumMaster role really entails. Check out the Mind Map below.
Some of the interesting things to note are that there are a lot of roles that a ScrumMaster is supposed to take on if you are following Scrum – see the green checkmarks. (If you are not following Scrum – why do you have a ScrumMaster? 😉 Anyway, it’s a tough job!
One hot area is around the role of Project Manager or Task Master – there is often a management expectation that they will play this role. I have seen this many times. Hint: a better answer is that work needs to come through the Product Manager and that the team is un-interrupted for the duration of the Sprint. But every situation is different, so there is no always in this.
On the left in purple, can be seen a number of candidates for taking on the role of ScrumMaster. It can be a tough role to fill.
