In the transition from traditional to agile, who is more suitable to be a Scrum Master?

Abstract: This article mainly describes the analysis of the role of Scrum Master in the transition from traditional to agile Scrum team.

This article is shared from the Huawei Cloud Community " the transition from traditional to agile, who is more suitable to be a Scrum Master? ", author: agile little wisdom.

At present, more and more IT companies and teams are beginning to make agile transformation, and the first step towards agile transformation is often to form an agile team. In the agile team of Scrum, the Scrum Master plays a vital role. In the process of transition from traditional to agile, who in the original team is more suitable for such a role?

This article mainly talks about the analysis of the role of Scrum Master in the transition from traditional to agile Scrum team, and other related content such as Scrum is beyond the scope of this article.

If you want to know who is more suitable, you must first know what the Scrum Master does.

As one of the three roles in the Scrum framework, Scrum Master has never had a good Chinese translation, and the word Scrum Master literally means not only proficiency but also control, but the role of Scrum Master There is no actual right to the above, so from the perspective of the word itself, it is full of contradictions.

According to the definition in the Scrum Guide, the Scrum Master is responsible for helping the team understand Scrum theories, practices, rules, and values. For the Scrum team, he/she is a service leader. The Scrum Master helps people outside the Scrum team understand how he/she interacts with the Scrum team. It is beneficial to maximize the value created by the Scrum team by changing the way he/she interacts with the Scrum team.

The responsibilities of the Scrum Master not only serve the Product Owner and the development team within the team, but also serve the organization, as follows:

The Scrum Master serves the product owner including:

• Ensure that everyone on the Scrum team understands the goals, scope and product domain as much as possible;
• Find the skills to effectively manage the product to-do list;
• Help the Scrum team understand why a clear and concise product backlog item is needed;
• Understand product planning in an empirical environment;
• Ensure that the product owner knows how to arrange the product to-do list to maximize its value;
• Understand and practice agility;
• Guide Scrum events when requested or needed.

The Scrum Master serves the team:

• As a coach, guide the development team in self-organization and cross-functional aspects;
• Help the development team create high-value products;
• Remove obstacles in the progress of the development team's work;
• Guide Scrum events when requested or needed;
• As a coach to guide the development team in an organizational environment where Scrum has not yet been fully adopted and understood.

The Scrum Master serves the organization:

• Lead and guide the organization to adopt Scrum as a coach;
• Plan the implementation of Scrum within the organization;
• Help employees and stakeholders understand and implement Scrum and experience-oriented product development;
• Initiate changes that can increase the productivity of the Scrum team;
• Work with other Scrum Masters to enhance the effectiveness of Scrum applications in the organization.

In addition to the Scrum Guide, Kenneth Rubin also gave the Scrum Master's scope of responsibilities: coaching, service-oriented leadership, process authority, "umbrella", "scavenger", change spokesperson, and well-informed, good at asking questions, and patient. , Collaborative spirit, team protection, openness and transparency (for more explanation, see Chapter 10 of "The Essence of Scrum: Guide to Agile Transformation")

Therefore, it can be seen from the above that as a role in a non-traditional team, the Scrum Master is a relatively comprehensive all-rounder who requires multiple skills and abilities, and also has certain requirements for personnel capable of this role. For example, the more popular T-shaped talents (with depth and breadth in knowledge structure) are even more specialized and versatile.

Generally speaking, in traditional teams, the main roles are: project manager, technical manager, QA, tester, developer, etc. From the perspective of fundamentalism alone, traditional roles may not be able to be Scrum Masters, but the Scrum Guide does not specify only what roles can be Scrum Masters, as long as they meet the competence requirements of Scrum Masters, no matter what you are before. Any role is fine. So the problem now is that who can be a Scrum Master may no longer be.

The author has coached two companies for agile transformation for a period of time, both of which are relatively small entrepreneurial companies. In the initial stage of transformation, one of the companies A, after internal discussions, decided that the Scrum Master should be a member of the original team with better skills. This member is mainly responsible for development, requirements discussion, operation and maintenance, etc., in the Scrum team. In addition to doing the previous work, the Master also serves as the Scrum Master. Due to factors such as people's low-voicing, the promotion of Scrum meetings and practices has been blocked in many ways. The other company B, on the contrary, their Scrum Master is held by their CEO, so it is conceivable that the process of implementing Scrum is very "smooth", but their CEO is also acting as the product owner. . During the process, the team often couldn't tell whether he was the Scrum Master or the Product Owner, and it was inevitable that he would talk about it.

The above situation is not a good example of the transformation from a traditional team to an agile team. There are still many problems in the transformation process. This is basically due to the deviation of the transformation team’s understanding of the role of Scrum Master. For this The new role seems to be unsuitable for any traditional role, but it seems that it can be assumed. The "Scrum Master" itself has a certain contradiction. From the description of "service type" or "servant type", it seems that there is no management. Right, even inferior, but the Scrum Master does manage the Scrum process, creating the greatest value for the team. So after switching from traditional to agile, who is more suitable to be a Scrum Master?

solution

From the traditional team to agile, the Scrum Masters are: project manager, technical manager (architect), QA (QUALITY ASSURANCE), testing, these are all the notes I saw and learned. As mentioned in the analysis, there is no indication of what role is suitable for Scrum Master in Scrum. If we have to choose a relatively more suitable role, we can generally use the responsibilities of this role in the Scrum Guide ( serves the product owner, serves the team, serves the organization ), and gives the respective advantages and disadvantages of the above four roles (Note: Since each company has different definitions of the roles, the following The analysis is only based on the author’s cognition). as follows:

Perhaps, some readers may be unfamiliar with the role of QA, so I want to introduce it here.

QA and is to enable managers and project personnel to objectively understand the compliance of the activities and work products performed by the project with the established process requirements and product standards.

The characteristics of the QA role are roughly in five aspects, namely, the effect on the implementation of the quality system, the effect on the QCD (Quality, Cost, and Delivery) of the project, the effect on the manager, the effect on the corporate culture, and the effect on the customer. as follows:

To sum up, the role of QA is not only the manager (organization) and the personnel (team) in the project, but also the customer (demand or product owner) and the process promoter of process improvement. Compared with For other roles, the degree of fit of the Scrum Master's functions is the highest, and when a team transitions from waterfall to agile, QA guarantees the effectiveness and continuity of the process. Therefore, the conversion of QA to Scrum Master is the one I have seen the most and the most successful. In addition, the author also gives a ranking of personal preference for the transformation of other roles: test>project manager>technical manager. If there is a role of BA (Business Analyst) in a traditional team, the author believes that the priority of BA is higher than that of testing (because the scope of responsibility of a qualified BA includes business and technology, etc.), so the final ranking is : QA>BA>Testing>Project Manager>Technical Manager. Readers can make reference according to their own situation.

However, although a ranking is given, in the real team transformation process, it is not enough to simply transform a certain original role into a new role, but also to cooperate with the change in ability and thinking, no matter where it is. For this kind of role, if you want to become a qualified Scrum Master, you need to start from the "heart". In addition to improving your own skills, you must also fundamentally change your thinking (compassion, empathy, service-oriented, etc.).

Finally, we often say "there is no silver bullet". It is true. In actual work, even if a Scrum Master fully conforms to the definition of the role of the Scrum Master, it will be OK if it does not meet the definition. It may only be seen by the Scrum Master. It is a Scrum Master. It does not necessarily mean that the team can become an excellent and high-performance self-organizing team, nor does it necessarily mean that all processes and problems can be perfectly implemented and solved. Perfect in summary, and become perfect only after transformation in ascension. Don't forget, you are an agile team. Put your ideas into iteration and slowly explore the path that suits your team.

Reference appendix

The Essence of Scrum: A Guide to Agile Transformation

《The Scrum Guide》

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