Role of SM to achieve Sprint commitments

If the team is committing to more work in a sprint than their capacity and failing to achieve their commitment.

Going to start with this.  The current edition of the Scrum Guide uses forecasts over committments.  A forecast is an expectation set forth of work that the feels could be possible within the time box of the Sprint.  The team's committment is to do as much work as they can to deliver incremental potentionally releseable value. If a team is consistently over forecasting, as a Scrum Master you should work with them to understand why.  Facilitate discussions about the Sprint in Retrospective to discuss exactly why some items weren't done.  But don't focus on those items, focus on the items that were completed to understand why/if they were more difficult than anticipated.  Determine the root cause of why they are consistently thinking that they can complete more work than they do. 

The Daily Scrum is where conversations should be occurring that will surface the possibility that their forecast might not be met.  The primary goal of the Daily Scrum is to replan the work each day based on what was completed and learned the previous day.  It is also the time you determine if your Sprint Goal is at risk.  If all of the items in your Sprint Backlog are needed in order to reach the Sprint Goal, this adds urgency to your discussions. 

A team should not be penalized for thinking that they can do more than they are capable. Nor should they be rewarded.  They should be encouraged to investigate why and come up with ways to limit the occurrance. That is your role as a Scrum Master. 

In my opinion I can only highlight the issue to the team that they need to wisely plan the next sprint 

Yes you should highlight the issue, then facilitate the team discovery on how to alter the behavior. And you keep highlighting and facilitating until the team feels they have reached a solution. 

Thank you Daniel for your helpful insight. However what is bothering is more is becoming a scape goat when management blames me for team's not meeting commitments. 

How do I address to that.

Did you talk about that issue with the team, what is their view? If we tend to value openness in Scrum, then at least Scrum Master should be a shining example of that.

Also, what Daniel points out, we forecast, we do not make commitments - at least plural form suggests that you may treat all selected PBIs during Sprint Planning as a teams' commitment, which shouldn't be the case. The only things that we are commits to are goals, in that case, the Sprint Goal. Everything else, such as PBIs and work are barely a forecast what we suppose we should do in order to achieve that goal, aka fulfill that commitment that we made.



So the question is:

• What your management bears in mind when they point out "not meeting commitment"?

And even if the team does not meet the Sprint Goal, still we should rather ask:

• Do we do everything that was possible and act accordingly to faced challenges, to maximize the chances for meeting our goal?
• Even if we are not able to achieve that goal during that sprint, do we still were able to produce, at least some kind of, a potentially releasable increment of a product - to be able to gather valuable feedback and learnings that may help us make better decision forward?

Last, but not least, how the management positions themselves in that situation? What do they do to help the team at least have better chances for meeting those commitments (whatever it is)? What do they do to help PO? And to be honest, where is he at that party?

I get blamed for not telling the team to reduce the workload they have committed

Why are they committing to a workload at all? If work is emergent, and needs Scrum, why not commit to a goal?