What Is The Most Important Responsibility Of A Scrum Master?

According to the Scrum Guide- The Scrum Master Responsibilities are

“The Scrum Master is accountable for establishing Scrum as defined in the Scrum Guide. They do this by helping everyone understand Scrum theory and practice, both within the Scrum Team and the organization.”

“The Scrum Master is accountable for team effectiveness”

The scrum master responsibility is to serve the Scrum team in various different ways. Scrum Master educates the team on Scrum and helps the team practice scrum values, events and rules. A scrum master plays a vital role building trust within a team and helps them become self-organized. Scrum Master facilitates scrum events, whenever needed and also facilitates team decisions, conflicts or any other team activities that are needed to accomplish sprint goals. 

A scrum master collaborates with all the team members, including Product owner and always looks at various ways to improve the overall team capabilities.

key Scrum master responsibilities

Coach Team Members-

The scrum master acts as the coach for the developers and product owner. He or she ensures that the team is delivering to the best of their potential. Scrum Master coaches the product owner in achieving product vision and goal and also coaches developers in their improvement goals. He or she does not solve team problems by herself, instead works with the team in a way that empowers them to build their own capabilities. Scrum Master constantly works with the team members in acquiring the knowledge of agile. 

Servant Leader-

A scrum master is also known as a servant leader. A servant leader can never ask, ” what are you going to do for me?”, rather they always ask the team what they can do for them that can make them more effective. A scrum master’s main objective is to increase teamwork and development. He or she improves teamwork and team effectiveness by facilitating decision making, achieving common goals and keeping the team focused. A servant leader should have some skills like encouraging others, empathy, listening to others, asking questions, humility, passion to serve and many more.

Protector of Team Members-

A scrum master always acts like a protector. If he/she feels like there is any interference from outside and which may create any disturbance or distraction for his/her team, he/she stops the interference. They try their best to protect their team from any problem.

Facilitate Scrum Events

A scrum master facilitates scrum events, whenever needed. Scrum Master facilitates sprint planning and sprint retrospective meetings. Scrum Master may also facilitate daily scrums, with an intent to teach his/her team on how to facilitate daily scrums. Scrum Master would be somebody who would have the art of facilitation in a way that keeps the team focused and enables the team to make their own decisions. Scrum Master ensures that scrum rules are followed during the scrum events and outside of scrum events. He or she ensures that the team, including the product owner understands and practices agile values and principles.

Cause the removal of impediments

One of a major scrum master responsibilities, is that a scrum master always helps the team to stay focused and motivated. If they notice anything that is slowing or blocking the team, he or she works with the team or people outside the team to cause the removal of those impediments. Scrum Master may not remove impediments by herself, instead help resolve the impediment by themselves. By doing so, he or she enables them to solve their own problems and become self-managed. There are also impediments that are beyond the team’s control and the team would actually need the scrum master to resolve them, in such situations scrum master helps resolve the impediment directly.  

Teach Scrum practices and values

A scrum master also plays the role of a teacher and a mentor. Scrum Master teaches scrum teams on how to practice scrum events, rules and values. A Scrum Master also educates organization leadership in scrum practices, which enables the company in agile transformation. Scrum Master works with other scrum masters in building a community of agile learners and spreading the practices of scrum.  

Scrum master facilitates the team towards self-organization and an agile mindset of continuous learning and value delivery. As the scrum team is responsible for the project outcomes. A good Scrum Master Certification, learnt from a good trainer, can help you to gain the knowledge and understanding that can further help you succeed.

In this blog, We listed scrum master responsibilities. A scrum Master helps your team grow as a self managed team and mature themselves in scrum and agile practices. 

Final Words on Scrum Master Responsibilities:

According to the 12th Annual State of Agile Report, “56% of companies use Scrum as their Agile methodologies.” As this number is continuously growing, simultaneously the demand for Scrum Master is also growing. For this reason, the demand for scrum master training and certification is also growing.

If you also want to pursue your career as a scrum master professional, you can also opt for the Scrum Master certification Program that will help you to learn and grow in your career. To know more you can check out: Professional Scrum Master Certification.