Before knowing the responsibilities of a Scrum master, it is necessary to understand what exactly Scrum is. In layman’s terminology, Scrum is a framework that brings teams together and gets work done.
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Scrum Master
As the name suggests, the Scrum Master is an expert or ‘master’ in Scrum. Yet, what does a Scrum Master do? Scrum Master coaches the team in the principles, values, and processes of the Scrum framework. A ‘Scrum Master’ works behind the scenes, is the center of this process, makes sure that the team follows best practices, and coordinates project activities; however, he is not involved in product strategy. They also help teams avoid chokepoints by assisting them in technical and organizational dependencies.
Here’s how Scrum works:
- The product owner submits the request
- The development team breaks it into Sprints
- Scrum Master coordinates project activities with business objectives
Responsibilities of a Scrum Master
1. Process authority:
Scrum Master has the authority to ensure that the team adheres to the Scrum values, practices, and principles. The scrum master is like a teacher, and whenever needed, he / she helps understand the scope and vision of the project and makes sure that the team adheres to the Scrum values and practices.
2. Implement best practices:
As mentioned earlier, a Scrum Master works with the team and makes sure that a team follows the best practices in project management. Creating, onboarding, integrating them into the organization, and providing a clear pathway of product to project teams is at the end of a Scrum Master. A Scrum master also facilitates smooth information and communication exchange between exterior and project teams.
In addition, another responsibility of a Scrum Masters is that they monitor a project’s progress, smoothen progress, provide feedback on time, boost agility culture, and nurtures a learning environment.
3. Host meetings:
A Scrum Master is responsible for a smooth process in project management. Hence, hosting daily team meetings to get updates on the project’s progress is necessary. This includes addressing potential roadblocks that the team might face during the execution of the project. But, of course, this can only happen if the internal and external communication is going correctly, and a Scrum Master must make sure that this happens without hurdles.
These meetings occur regularly, and during the sessions, teams share updates with stakeholders and the project’s progress. This way, a team meets all the deadlines, and Scrum Master is responsible for this job.
4. Coaching team:
A Scrum Master is a coach, a servant leader, a motivator who helps teams reach their goals on time. Scrum Master, also known as the leader of an Agile team or servant leader, educates the team on agile processes and helps team members follow all the best practices that lead to the success of a project.
It is the responsibility of a Scrum Master to establish a continuous flow and a high-performing team dynamic. These factors increase the progressive development of a Scrum team. In addition, a Scrum Master collaborates with the development team and Product Owner, who focus on building the product right and the right product, respectively. Hence, A Scrum Master enforces the practices, principles, and scrum values to get the right product for the customer.
5. Remove hurdles
A Scrum Master’s responsibility also includes looking for roadblocks that team members can find challenging to deal with and removing these hurdles. In short, smoothing the path towards betterment and easing software development is one of the responsibilities of a Scrum Master. While this sounds pretty simple, it requires a lot more than just removing hurdles in project management.
A Scrum Master executes the solutions, which involves creating and implementing proper communication about the limitations faced by the team. This eventually removes the hindrances in the way of the development team.
Conclusion:
Scrum Masters is the leader of a project and has extensive reach within any organization. Their responsibility is to ensure that the agile methods are implemented, adopted, and resulted in increment of team productivity and the quality of the project deliverables is intact. Most Scrum Masters come from a computer science background, but if you’re a person from a different background, you can also become a Scrum Master with a bit of training. Some organizations conduct training for Scrum Masters that help them understand the concepts, best practices, and agile teamwork.
