"An Agile Coach know more than just Scrum", said one consultant in a boardroom meeting, "he/she knows organisation dynamics, executive coaching and other Agile practices like Kanban and DevOps", he continued.
"Stay silent, no need to correct him in this kind of forum", my inner voice said to myself, "take a deep breath".
I have seen many instances how the Scrum Master is perceived to have a more limited scope than the Agile Coach or have less knowledge about Agile than an Agile Coach or only takes care of the Development Team. In a worst-case scenario, I have seen how the Scrum Master is seen as someone who is more inferior than the Agile Coach hence reports to the Agile Coach. Many enterprises created a hierarchy where the Agile Coach is the boss of the Scrum Master. These days, we often see more and more consultant in the market sell Agile Coach as a more superior role than Scrum Master.
I was curious and asked myself how did people or many consultants come to this perception. My curiosity lead me to do some research on how did people came to the conclusion that Agile Coach is a higher rank than Scrum Master because from my personal experience helping enterprises in transformations, I do not feel that the scope of work of a Scrum Master is more limited than the scope of work of an Agile Coach nor does the Scrum Master have less knowledge about other Agile practices than the Agile Coach.
The Premise
Scrum is only one of the many Agile methodologies
Okay, I know Agile is not a methodology, but this is how many people see Agile. Agile is seen as a collection of methodologies and Scrum is one of the many methodologies that fall under the umbrella of Agile methodology. So Agile Coach is seen as somebody who knows many Agile methodologies.
Scrum is just a framework that consists of core elements and built on values and principles. To be honest, there is not much in Scrum, it is quite configurable to many different contexts. How Scrum is played and how the core elements are configured will be different from one organisation to another organisation. Scrum core elements provide built-in feedback loops, provide a clear area of accountability and increase transparency for product development in a complex environment. And those configurations and the strategy how Scrum is played may end up like eXtreme Programming (XP) or DevOps or may even have Kanban in it.
As Scrum is only a framework, it can even be used at the executive level for managing business strategies or even Enterprise transformations as written in Agility Guide.
Scrum Master is only focused on coaching at the team level
Many Scrum literature and training positioned the Scrum Master at the team level hence people came to a conclusion that Scrum Master is a team level role like a traditional technical leader. Scrum Guide itself mention that besides the Development Team and the Product Owner, the Scrum Master needs to also serve the whole organisation in understanding Scrum values and principles.
In Professional Scrum Master Course, we discussed how Scrum Master needs to coach other parties in the organisation like the executives even HR on understanding Scrum values and principles to help organisations becoming more agile. We believe that coaching the Development Team only leads to sub-optimal result. Scrum Master also need to go beyond coaching, he/she must master other stances like facilitation, mentoring, teaching and servant-leadership too.
Agile is more important than Scrum
"Agile is more important than Scrum", said one developer to me once. It made me wonder what made him thinks that you will lose agility after using Scrum. It turns out he has a bad experience from a misinterpretation of Scrum.
Agility is very important to Scrum and the end goal of Scrum is to help you become agile in achieving your goals. Implementing Scrum should not make organisation becoming less agile. Both of the co-founders of Scrum contributed to the agile manifesto, they're behind the agile movement. In many cases I have found that what people see as Scrum are just the ceremonies, story points, velocity and tools.
One of the principles of Scrum is continuous-learning. By continuously learning, organisations should become more agile from time to time. When organisations are becoming less agile after using Scrum, we need to check whether Scrum values and principles are being upheld in the organisation. Many times I've discovered that the value of Openness and Courage is not held by everyone in the organisation.
Scrum Master is the master in Scrum values & principles
I still remember when Ken Schwaber told me that Scrum is just empiricism, lean thinking, and bottom-up collective intelligence so Scrum Master is the master of empiricism, lean thinking and bottom-up collective intelligence. It was a big slap in the face for me when he said that because at that time I've been focusing on Scrum mechanics and ceremonies. That experience totally changed my perspective on Scrum. The core elements in Scrum as written in Scrum Guide is to support these foundational thinking. The values in Scrum differentiate whether an organisation is doing a mechanical Scrum or a professional Scrum. And when an organisation is upholding the foundational thinking and living the values, it should increase organisation agility.
Scrum Master is the master in empiricism
In empiricism, no assumptions are true until it is validated. In empiricism, there are no universal absolute truths. It is easy to make predictions based on assumptions. Traditional project management approach is based on this predictive thinking which often leads to a lack of transparency and at worst dissatisfaction from team members and low-quality products. The Scrum Master is the master in empiricism. He/she is able to increase transparency in the organisationm using the core elements as a starting point, so assumptions and politics have no room in the organisation. With his/her mastery in empiricism, he/she is able to help organisation grow their own agile model rather than just copying-pasting other organisation's agile model.
Scrum Master is the master in Lean thinking
Lean is about removing non-value added activities from the whole value stream. The Scrum Master often go down the genba to identify waste. Impediments are waste that Scrum Master remove to ensure the Development Team always deliver increments. The events in Scrum has a clear purpose and are designed so that no other meetings that may lead to waste of time and waste of creativity are needed during the product delivery. The roles in Scrum helps increase collaboration and remove silos that may lead to wasteful hand-offs, multi-tasking, and approvals. Scrum Master use the core elements in Scrum and Lean thinking to continuously remove waste.
Scrum Master is the master in maximising bottom-up collective intelligence
The Scrum Master creates a psychologically-safe work environment so people can thrive. With his/her mastery, he/she creates a blameless work environment that will maximise bottom-up collective intelligence. Because one of the values in Scrum is courage, many times the Scrum Master needs to jump out of his/her own safety zone to talk to the management or even the executives so a psychologically-safe work environment can exist in the organisation. It is easy to use top-down authority to tell people to do what we want but it is not as easy to get people to do something using our influence. There are inherent cultural issues that the Scrum Master need to navigate around so that he/she can maximise collective intelligence.
Scrum Master is the master in Scrum values
When the values of commitment, courage, focus, openness and respect are embodied and lived by the Scrum Team, the Scrum pillars of transparency, inspection, and adaptation come to life and build trust for everyone.
-- Scrum Guide
The elements in Scrum is the manifestation of teams living the Scrum values. It is easy sometimes to focus on what can be seen. The mechanics and the ceremonies that the team is doing is more visible and apparent hence we come to think that the whole purpose of Scrum is the ceremonies and the mechanics. The Scrum values are not easily visible, you need to live and observe closely within the organisation how organisation think and really behave to understand whether they actually live the Scrum values. The Scrum Master is the master in using Scrum values as a compass to identify the root cause of organisation's dysfunctions.
Scrum Master is the master in agile practices
Scrum is a frame-work. As with pictures, a good frame doesn't guarantee the picture inside would be beautiful. It just holds it in place.
— Andy Brandt
Scrum is a frame that provides structure for agility. The 17-pages Scrum Guide is barely enough to deliver great products. It is quite surprising to see many people just rely on what is written on Scrum Guide then blame Scrum when Scrum does not work for them. Scrum Guide is deliberately designed to be as thin as possible so that people can discover other complementary practices using their ingenuity. The Scrum Master is the master who maximise collective intelligence to discover Scrum complimentary practices that will increase agility inside the organisation.
At Scrum.org we help people to complement other agile practices like Kanban and technical practices like test driven development & continuous delivery with Scrum. There will be more training for agile practices that complements Scrum planned by Scrum.org for the future.
Scrum Master is the master of many stances
Scrum Guide mention some stances that the Scrum Master need to play depending on the context and the situation. The Scrum Master knows when to be a coach, a facilitator, a teacher, a mentor and a servant-leader. It takes years to master these stances and know when to play each stance effectively. Coaching is just one of the stance that the Scrum Master needs to play.
Scrum Master is the master in coaching
Coaching, in short, is about unleashing awesomeness from each individual through self-discovery. Coaching uses coaching techniques and coaching tools to help individuals or groups of people discover the solution to their problems. As written on Scrum Guide, in Scrum, not only the Scrum Master coach the Development Team and the Product Owner, but the Scrum Master also coaches everyone else in the organisation. The coaching body of knowledge is quite large. To be able to coach the whole organisation, the Scrum Master needs to also master behavioural science, executive coaching and organisation dynamics.
Scrum Master is the master in mentoring
Your greatest contribution in life is not something you do but someone you raise.
-- Andy Stanley
While coaching is about unleashing awesomeness, mentoring has a different purpose. Mentoring is about passing down values to the next generation, it is about investing in other people's life. Mentoring is about mutual learning. Not only the mentee learn from the mentor, the mentor will also learn from the mentee. Unlike coaching that uses tools and techniques, mentoring bring personal life experience. A Scrum Master cannot be a great mentor if he/she does not have much experience to share and pass down to the mentee. A mentor also has a charisma that is able to attract others. This is what makes people follow the Scrum Master, not because he/she has authority [because the Scrum Master do not have authority] but because he/she has charisma.
Scrum Master is the master in teaching
Teaching is one of the stances that the Scrum Master need to master. Teaching adult is different and not easy to do it effectively. When not done effectively, people get bored and do not own the whole learning process. I found one of the best teaching methods is the Montessori method where it encourages students to select what they want to learn throughout the day. Montessori method encourages failing forward and the tools provided in the school provides a self-corrective action for students to learn from their own failure with minimal teacher assistance. I stole many of the principles from Montessori method to teaching people about Scrum and other agile practices. A Scrum Master is a master in teaching and knows when to be a teacher and when to stop being a teacher.
Scrum Master is the master in the art of facilitation
facilis [Latin]: to render easy.
Facilitation comes from the Latin word facilis, which literally means to render easy. So the goal of facilitation is to make tough discussion, whether that is brainstorming, negotiation or conflicts, to become easy and create a mutual outcome. At its core, the Scrum Master facilitates the events in Scrum. Outside of Scrum Guide, the Scrum Master may need to facilitate tough discussion with the executives or management and the customer. Effective facilitation should lead to increased understanding, increased trust, increased learning, reduced conflict, reduced defensiveness and fewer self-fulfilling & self-sealing process. The Scrum Master is able to navigate in between organisation politics in facilitating effective discussion. Therefore poor decisions made by the group is partly the facilitator's ineffectiveness in facilitating. The Scrum Master is the master in facilitation process that leads to a shared decision that is owned by the whole group.
Scrum Master is the master of servant leadership
Servant Leader is the stance that the Scrum Master needs to master, a stance that I constantly fail to do well from time-to-time. In a world where people are focused to self-fulfill their personal agenda, being a servant leader where the goal is to fulfill other people's agenda first is definitely not easy. As a servant leader, the Scrum Master is selfless, humble, compassionate, open to his/her own vulnerability and caring. His/her agenda is not for his/her personal glory but for the greatness of those whom he/she is serving. Being a servant-leader is not easy and a noble thing. I've written about servant leadership in Scrum here.
Closing
The Scrum Master is definitely not a role that is less than Agile Coach. The Scrum Master does not have a smaller scope than an Agile Coach inside the organisation. The Scrum Master should not be coached by an Agile Coach as the Scrum Master should have the same capability and knowledge as an Agile Coach. Perceiving the Scrum Master to be less than an Agile Coach is a misunderstanding in translating the Scrum Guide.
The Scrum Master is the master of other agile practices that complement Scrum, such as Kanban, Lean UX and DevOps. With his/her mastery he/she is able to discover complementary practices that are able to increase organisation agility. The Scrum Master not only provide coaching at the team level but also at the organisation level, helping the executives and other departments like HR and Marketing to understand the values and principles behind Scrum. The Scrum Master should know executive coaching, organisation dynamics, behavioural science and whatever else that is needed to provide effective coaching at the executive level. But also remember that the Scrum Master is not only a master in coaching but also in other stances, like teaching, facilitation, mentoring and servant-leadership. The Scrum Master continuously learn to improve and fill in the gap in his/her ineffectiveness in providing service to the whole organisation. The master is a humble one and mastery itself is a never-ending journey.
For me personally, there are still many things that I haven't master yet and there are still lots of room for improvement to be a master. How about you yourself? Where are you now in your journey of mastery? Hopefully, this article inspires you to be an awesome Scrum Master and identify the gaps in being the Scrum Master. Don't forget to leave a comment below.
Would you like to learn more how to improve your coaching skills as a Scrum Master? Check out our Scrum.org Advanced Professional Scrum Master Course.