Scrum Master motivations

I am writting an article for our Group IT newsletter about why I would like to become a Scrum Master and why traditional command - control Project Managers would be suitable for working as Scrum Masters.

If you turned the premise around, and wrote about why traditional command & control PMs might not be suitable as Scrum Masters, would it affect your interest in the role or the willingness to publish the article?

Dear Ian,

Thanks a lot for your comment.

No this could be also an interesting and valid point. The most important to define what is a good scrum master and what are the motivations for someone to become a scrum master (like characteristics and soft skills matching for this role)?

Thanks in advance.

Best Regards, Laura

Why not start by researching the various so-called “stances” a Scrum Master can have and posting your own thoughts on them here.

I thing that every man is different and has some unique skills. What I like about agile is that we can discuss our own way of doing things. As I said in one of my prevjous posts, everybody in the team can be scrum master. This is not orthodox thinking, as someone answered. I work already 20 years in the same place, so I have already enough knowledge.

Scrum master should be more oriented to people and communication rather than solving technical matters. However he/she should also know such matters and should be part of the team. In my organization there is no trained scrum masters. They rather elected within the team among volunteers.

Regards,

I am writting an article for our Group IT newsletter about why I would like to become a Scrum Master and why traditional command - control Project Managers would be suitable for working as Scrum Masters.

I think you might get some good response if you actually started the conversation with why you want to become a Scrum Master.  Given the type of people that usually respond, if you give them a more specific topic to discuss, you'd get better responses.  And by being transparent with your information, we can probably give you better support to your desires rather than us just trying to come up with quote worthy statements.  :)

Hello Laura,

One point that you can approach as quoted above by @Daniel is to understand why PMs are wanting to become a Scrum master or why someone would like to become a Scrum Master.

Giving a view of the PMs today, I noticed that many were frightened by this matter of agility and they ended up realizing that they should migrate from PM to Scrum master, but by evaluating the core of things here we have two totally different roles, where one paper focuses on projects and the other focuses on serving the team.

In fact one role does not kill the other and they must actually exist in harmony for a company to succeed.

Thinking on the line of why other professionals want to be scrum master, you could approach that this has been happening because the agility theme is fashionable and how this can influence these professionals in a positive or negative way.

I hope I've been able to contribute something to your article.

Good luck :)

Hi Laura,

I think we, as a Scrum community, need to make the distinction between a Project Manager and Scrum Master clear, especially to those who are not knowledgeable about Agile. While I do believe that there are some transferable skills between PM and SM, we shouldn’t see it as a ‘natural transition’ in this Agile Transformation Era.

In my view, a PM can make good Scrum Master but not necessarily the best. 

My motivation? Well, I see Agility as a means of adaptation for organisations in our dynamic world where customers needs must be met more efficiently - and I’m happy to facilitate teams’ agile transformation.

All the best with your article!

Additionally I would like to say that project managers are still needed in a company using agile way of working. Project managers do following:

1) assign workers to the teams

2) organize resources for work

3) help in solving impediments

4) organize inter-team communication

5) arrange meetings with customer representatives if needed

6) form team backlog together with product owner

Do you agree ?

Regards,

1) assign workers to the teams

In my experience, managers assigning workers to teams do a horrible job. It works a little better, if more than one person come together and discuss things before assigning, but you're still left with people being pushed onto teams and teams being pushed onto people.

Why not let teams organise themselves? If a team is looking for a new member, they can let everyone in the company know, see if anyone is willing to do it.

2) organize resources for work

This is so generic, I don't even know what you're referring to.

3) help in solving impediments

Yes, managers can help in solving impediments.

4) organize inter-team communication

Inter-team communication depends on teams communicating. What organisation do you propose Managers should do?

5) arrange meetings with customer representatives if needed

So Project Managers are the Product Owner's secretary? Why not have the people who need the meeting arrange the meeting?

6) form team backlog together with product owner

I'm not sure what you mean by "team backlog". The Product Backlog is maintained by the PO with the help of the development team. I'm not sure why you'd need an additional manager to do it.

I have proposed "self-selecting teams" on our internal forum but it was not accepted. I wonder there should be some rules defined regarding who can work with whom. We are located in few countries.

I have not a power of discussing what managers do. I work as a worker not manager.

Regards,

Marek

We are way off topic now, but fwiw, Marek, you're missing the point. There are no universally proposed (or accepted) "rules defined regarding who can work with whom". It's all about discussions and discussions and decide how to work. Given your international presence, in my experience, it is preferable to have cross-functional teams in each country (office) so that you don't start with pre-existing dependencies. 

Just make sure you stimulate as many discussions as possible in order to get the people involved and the best decisions reached.