Scrum Master role responsibilities

The Scrum Master role ensures that there is a balance between the development team and the Product owner as well as protecting the team from themselves sometimes. One of the main goals of the Scrum Master role is to support the team and monitor the work processes. Accordingly, he should try to improve the team if needed. The Scrum Master role should also work directly with the Product owner. Together they should strive for a better product on the one hand, but at the same time, the team should be constantly motivated to be able to work fully on the other.

Sometimes even the Scrum Master role has to protect the team from outside interference, and sometimes even from themselves. In Scrum, in no case should a member of the team be told to tell others what to do. Yes, the development team needs to work independently, but the Scrum Master needs to organize the synchronization itself and remove obstacles associated with relationships between team members, which is common. For example, when the team consists of more people and everyone has a different style of work. There is always a team of people with more experience and those with little or no experience. The role of the Scrum Master is also to help new team members get into the matter better and to help them understand how the team itself works. This will make them feel more comfortable with their new colleagues.

Q & A about the Scrum Master role

The Development team shares their idea that they want to offer you a Product Owner appointment and take over its features, and that the Product Owner Team assigned to your team go to another team and not have contact with it.

When a team has such views over things, especially about the suggestion that the current Product Owner goes to another team, it means that they are not happy with something and there may be some problem between them. In this situation, I will arrange a meeting with the two parties individually to find out exactly what happened between them so that the conflict, if any, can be clarified. On the other hand, the two positions are quite different. Being good at being a humble master does not automatically mean that you will be good at being a good Product Owner. Rather, I would like to clarify the conflict between the current team before moving on to some general redeployment and redeployment.

After 2 days you will have a meeting to present the current product progress. Your Product Owner role and most of the Development Team are on leave for another 5 days.

Here a lot depends on how many people on the development team are on vacation. Because they work as a team, each of them should be able to present the product and product progress appropriately. Where the product does not exist, this must be provided in advance and given instructions as to whether to hold the meeting without it and accordingly all parties should be informed. Option one is to have the meeting online whenever possible or to simply move the meeting to a time when all or most of the team is in person. As a Scrum Master, I would take care to discuss the options with everyone so that we could see which one would be most comfortable for everyone.

Business stakeholders share their view that the product is not progressing as expected.

In this situation, I will want to find out from them what expectations they have about the product's progress. Then I will have a meeting with the Product Owner and the development team to discuss the progress, what are the obstacles if there is something that prevents them from sharing their work so that they can consider eliminating it. After gathering the necessary information from all the team members, I will return to the stakeholders so that we can discuss the next steps and inform them why the product is not progressing and what it will take to progress.

You notice that the team spends more and more time in the games and entertainment room in your office.

In that case, I will want them to show me how far they have come and how they are progressing with product development. And accordingly, if there is still much work to talk to them about why this is happening and how I could help them. Then I will discuss it with the product owner. But if they are on time and the product is ready long before the deadline (or if it is the final right) I see no reason to ban playing time and fun for the team especially if they have done their job perfectly.

The Product Owner role in your team goes on a 2-month business trip to one of your customer support centers. No one has made any plans, no comments. The client shared nothing more, the Development Team.

In this situation, I will look for a Product Owner so that we can discuss how it should be done in a time that is not there. And if you have to look for a replacement. Or, depending on when he leaves, I will at least ask him to clarify the User Story for the future so that we can tell the team what needs to be done while they are gone.

One of the programmers in the team asks the designer for regular adjustments to the visual concepts he offers.

This, in my opinion, is not okay because the designer knows how to do his job in most cases. The programmer has no right to be confused in his work because most likely he will not understand anything about design. I would talk to the developer to find out why this is happening. Then I will talk to the designer as well when I get all the information about my work I will turn to the product owner so that the situation can be discussed and appropriate measures are taken to resolve it.

QA experts from your team testing the product plan to integrate additional testing technologies, tools, and procedures. According to the Product Owner, the role will double the work, and progress after the sprints will decrease.

I would discuss it with both parties. And, if possible, if we think that additional systems will improve the team's performance, then I will want to try with a small part of the team to see if they really work. Sort of like a pilot project. Because it is possible that new technologies can significantly improve the productivity of the entire team and make their work easier.

The designer and the developer have decided to take part in their work on their own initiative. The designer will take over some of the easy programming tasks, and the developer will do parts of the interface.

I do not think this is a good idea because they both work very differently. And they can't solve this on their own without discussing it with the product owner. It does not stop when team members have time to learn new things from each other, but not when it would be an obstacle to developing the current product.

QA specialists want you to assign them good testing tools for the next sprints, as you will already start developing new components that require a different type of testing.

I will arrange a meeting to get an idea of ​​what they are up to and what they expect. Then I will definitely discuss it with the product owner role so that an adequate decision can be made.

The development team wants to replace a major software part of your product. They are currently using a paid Enterprise popular environment. The license is paid by your client, who does not think the cost is a problem.

I think this is a very good idea, especially when the client does not think it will be a financial problem. If the development team thinks this will help them do their job well and make it easier for them, I'm ready to help them somehow.

Your client is not satisfied with the tests and wants to urgently increase the number of QA specialists in your team, with an additional 6 people, as soon as possible. He wants three more senior programmers to join the team by the end of the week. The project budget has been increased accordingly.

In this situation, I will immediately contact the Product Owner role as well as the HR department to see if we have the capacity and ability to recruit so many new people in such a short period of time. I will speak with Product Owner so we can see what the options are and give customer feedback. Accordingly, it can give them some time, because it is not always possible for everything to happen at the moment and to find a compromise with the resources that we have now until we find new ones.

Your director wants you to temporarily move for another month to another team. He discussed moving with Product Owner to your role, which will take over the Scrum Master function in a month, as he shared that he has time for that.

With time and effort put in by the team and the modest master role, some things should already happen more smoothly without the need for a modest master role to intervene so effectively. When this is present, I see no reason why a modest master cannot serve 2 teams at a time for half a day. This way he will be able to help the two teams at the same time.