The Role of an Agile Scrum Master
Last Updated January 5, 2021
The Scrum Master has the responsibility of helping all team members understand Agile theories, strategies and best practices. They also work with those outside of the Scrum team, ensuring interactions are positive and maximize the potential use of the team to benefit operations and improve products.
What is Agile Scrum?
Understanding the role of the Scrum Master requires first understanding Agile Scrum.
The Scrum Guide defines Agile Scrum as “a framework within which people can address complex adaptive problems while productively and creatively delivering products of the highest possible value.” This can prove especially useful for complex product or service development projects where there are many people and tasks involved.
Agile Scrum allows project teams to handle all of these “moving parts” in a systematic way. Scrum provides tools and techniques for teams to use once data is collected and analyzed, including mapping out a project plan and ensuring it stays on schedule.
Transparency and flexibility to adapt quickly to change are two of the major benefits of Agile Scrum.
Duties of a Scrum Master
A Scrum Master plays a vital role in pulling different elements together to ensure a project stays on time and moving in the right direction. They also work to clear obstacles impeding the team’s progress, facilitate a good relationship between the team and product owners and protect team members from outside distractions.
Some specific areas of responsibility can include the following:
Coaching the Team
Scrum Masters train team members to understand how Agile Scrum methodology applies to their project. They also must understand the theories and values that underpin Agile Scrum.
Managing the Process
In addition to clearing obstacles and distractions, a Scrum Master oversees project timelines and deadlines for each involved task. They do this by ensuring that team members are given time to focus on tasks and have all the support, materials and information they need. They handle the setting of meetings and guide projects through any changes that are needed.
Manage Communication
Communication is key in almost every phase of business, and it’s critical among Scrum teams. Members of the team must have clear communication about the details of their tasks, and product owners outside of the team need consistent, clear communication about current project statuses. This requires an organized and skilled Scrum Master who can consistently keep lines of communication open over the duration of a project.
Supporting Three Groups
Scrum Masters play an essential role at the center of process improvement efforts. One of the main tasks is creating, managing and supporting the project teams, which requires a wealth of knowledge on what will be needed for a project and who provides the best knowledge and skills to perform specific tasks.
They also work with Agile Product Owners – the “end user” of what is being developed in the project – to leverage Agile processes to meet product goals. They work with product teams to maximize the value of the product itself, providing customers with the most effective product possible. They work together to create the product backlog – a prioritized list of features desired in the end product.
Scrum Masters also service the organization as a whole. Successful implementation of Agile Scrum can lead to a wealth of advantages. Foremost among them are more efficient operations, better products and maximizing talent within an organization.
Skills and Job Outlook
A successful Scrum Master generally needs a variety of expertise and skills. Chief among them are decision-making, time management, organizational skills, communication and “soft skills” in understanding how to work with diverse groups of people.
Agile Scrum Master is a rapidly growing job in process improvement. It’s also one of the 25 top-paying jobs in the U.S., with a median base annual salary of more than $95,000, according to Moneyish, a Dow Jones company. Glassdoor also lists the average annual salary at more than $101,000.
The growing demand and attractive compensation are key contributors to the popularity of education programs designed to train Scrum Masters, such as Villanova University’s Agile program. The program aligns with the requirements for process improvement leadership as defined by Scrum.org and the Project Management Institute (PMI).
The comprehensive program curriculum helps to prepare professionals for industry certifications such as PMI-Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)® from PMI and Professional Scrum MasterTM (PSM) from Scrum.org. Additionally, Villanova offers its own Professional Certification in Agile & Scrum (PCAS) credential to participants who complete the certificate program, project and final exam.
Education and experience are what drives success in process improvement methodologies such as Agile Scrum. With more organizations needing someone at the center of their process improvement efforts to provide a skilled and disciplined hand, earning certification as a Scrum Master is an option worth considering.
PMI-ACP is a registered mark of the Project Management Institute, Inc.
