Tuesday, November 24, 2009

It's All about Common Sense - SCRUM

I recently finished my Scrum Master Training and wanted to put down some of the interesting things that came up during the discussion. Well , though Scrum says it's all about common sense but it's not common with all ;) therefore we need to be trained & acquire some common sense ;-) . Jokes apart & some serious thoughts sharing ....

Scrum Master Role - Is Scrum Master to be part of the team ?

There were two different opinions about it . One was that Scrum master should be part of the team and shall participate in sprint activities & task implementation , so that team feels he is part of the team and not somebody who is just a supervisor & seen as an outsider.
However on the other hand, if Scrum Master starts involved in sprint activities then he is not fully able to play his role as Coach or faciliator , removing the impediments , working with Product Owner etc which has to be his key activities.

After , long discussion it came to the conclusion that there is no straightforward answer to this and " It Depends " :)

But , I strongly feel that the Scrum Master should not be involved in the task implementation and concentrate more on the key Scrum Master activities. If he is part of the team then, he is also expected to solve the problems which is in conflict to the Scrum Master Role where he should only help the team identify the problem & not really provide the solution. It's team responsibility to own the problem & solve it.

Most of the times, it's somebody from R&D that plays the Scrum Master role , so there is always a tendency that he /she would also want to contribute technically as otherwise they feel there Technical competence is not getting utilized.

To add some last words on this, I feel Scrum Master should be an independent role outside the team !!