Scrum Master and Decision Making

A Scrum Master manages people's understanding of Scrum, whether it be in the team, the organization, or across the value chain. There are always critical decisions to be made in this regard. Most immediately, there is often a balancing act to be struck between being a change agent and not being fired, for example.

In my very humble opinion Scrum master manages FRAMEWORK which is quite a lot to manage. Scrum master observes and manages duration of the Scrum events, ensures the existence of artefacts, protects the Scrum team from negative outside influence conducting Scrum incorrectly by explaining things and pointing out mistakes.

Scrum master is promoting Scrum in the organisation who is hiring the whole Scrum team, and eventually can informally influence the decision of rewarding the Scrum team or preventing the unnecessary removal of the developer from work

The command over framework gives Scrum master enough power to direct the events in the right direction. 

Like for example many teams have a temptation to "skip" retrospection "to save time". It is in the power of Scrum master to explain that current Sprint is in progress and will be in progress until retrospection will happen or time boxed duration will expire, and influence others to make proper decision.

Scrum master can make sure that Daily scrum takes place at the same time and place by booking room or online conference and explaining everyone how important is everyone's presence.

It is up to Scrum master to figure out how to motivate team to follow Scrum and to figure out what is motivating a team. And yes money is always a factor.

Scrum master is a guru, not a commander.

He is Buddha not the Shiva

Thats just an opinion 

I'll list a few decisions you can make as a Scrum Master.

You can decide if:

• the organization actually understands the Scrum framework
• people know how to best interact with the Scrum Team
• the stakeholders understand the importance of their involvement in order to deliver what they need
• the team could benefit from coaching on empiricism
• the team needs help in removing an impediment or coaching in how to remove impediments
• the team needs any encouragement or praise about their efforts to self-organize and deliver

There are others but I think these convey the picture.  You can't make decisions for the team but you can make decisions that help the team and the organization in which you all work. 

Now, having said all of that I want to state that is my pure Scrum answer.  Real life may have different results because many organizations do not actually understand the Scrum framework and you may have other duties assigned to you for whatever job title/position you have at the organization in which you work.  As @Ian implied, you may have to make decisions that are outside of the Scrum framework in order to keep your job.

I do like the way that @Nicholas ended his post.  The analogy is very good!

Hello, Pawel, great diagram, but please allow me also to quote from

https://www.scrum.org/learning-series/self-managing-teams/myths-and-mis…

"Myth: When self-managing teams encounter challenges it’s always best to let them work it out themselves.

Reality: Self-managing teams work hard to remove their own impediments, but this is not a license to ignore challenges that they cannot overcome. We’ve heard horror stories of “busy” stakeholders who do not provide adequate guidance on high-level goals or adequate feedback on the work being done, claiming that they are allowing the team to “self-manage.” Similarly, we’ve heard of Scrum Masters who, upon identifying unhealthy conflict among team members, ignore the growing team dysfunction and claim that they are allowing the team to “self-manage” their way to a solution.

Neither of these examples are supporting the team’s self-management, they are examples of abandoning their responsibilities to the team."

So solving problems is always two way traffic.

Thanks for the feedback everyone. This is very useful.