The Mastery of Scrum for Project Managers

When trying to become an agile organization, one of the first frameworks to be tried is usually Scrum. It is very popular and well understood, even if not easy to  implement. One of the most prominent roles in this context is the one of the scrum master.

Since the people in the team all have previous experiences, same goes for the scrum masters. Many of them have been projects managers and when the organization decided to switch to agile they had a choice to become either product owners or scrum masters. The ones closer to the product management tend to choose the product owner role. But the ones closer to the daily team work and hands on projects management, which probably will be the majority, jump into the scrum master role.

Being a project manager is a role, which in itself can be filled in many different ways. Some project managers tend to use command and control more, some let the team have a different degree of freedom. But one thing they all have in common: Project managers are held responsible for the success of the project. And to live up to that expectation they have to choose the best team, the best technologies and strategies. Put bluntly, a project manager has a goal and he is using all the means necessary to reach that goal. The developers are one of those means, the others being requirement analysts, architects, project management office and so on.

In a certain way, a project manager is the master of the project. He is watching over it, directing it, running everything. This is oversimplified, of course, but let’s ignore that for a second while we are looking at the role of the scrum master.

Reading the title scrum master, when being read through the eyes of a project manager, the word master somehow feels familiar. It reminds a lot of his current role and the tasks he has. After all, he is a project master right now, so just changing the methodology will not be that of a big deal.

But it turns out, that the master in the scrum master is something completely different. The master in this context refers to the mastery of the scrum as an agile vehicle, not to being above someone in the organizational hierarchy. It is just like the master in the kung fu master: He knows the depths of the kung fu. And the scrum master knows the depths of the scrum. But not just at the theoretical level, but on the mind and organization changing level.

So what change of the mind is necessary for someone like project manager to understand this new role and fill it appropriately? The core of this is that the scrum master is in fact a team servant, not a team master. His purpose is in serving the team to successfully reach its goals while at the same time becoming ever less needed by the team. In short this means helping the team to set the goals, to stay focused on them, to reflect on the best ways to reach them, to develop habits of improving themselves as a individuals and the team. On the other hand this also means providing the best possible organizational conditions for the team to be able to focus on their goals and not waste their time with jumping through the loops of the internal bureaucracy. Scrum master is also the person who will mediate solutions to the conflicts inside the team and provide the right setting for every team member.  And this is not where his day ends.

In the future posts I will deep dive into the most important aspects of the scrum master role and how to make all of this agile thing happen. For now this short listing of his goals and tasks gives a very rough frame, especially for someone coming from command and control organization and into an agile team.

In the conclusion, if a project manager, or someone coming from any other role is ready to serve a group of people instead of controlling it, help them become a successful team and celebrate the shared responsibility and success, he is the right person for the job. If you are not ready for the above, you and your team are going to have a rough time, until you realize the change of mind needed, master the scrum and you all together become masters of scrum.