It’s a basic question – who can become
a scrum master? Is it going to be a developer, a tester, a project manager, a
documentation person or a line manager? To be honest, it’s a topic normally
influenced by who the deciding person is and why type of a leader is he / she.
In a test service providing organization, my vice president was overtly
political and will put his close group contacts in key position and this
effectively overrides the fact that he / she could have any proficiency J. In
another development organization, there was a trend of developers and that too high
performing ones becomes a scrum master. In one particular team, a project
manager from previous organization had become a scrum master as she wasn’t
interested in people line and she will not fit into a product management line.
One of my managers was a high risk taker (to the extent of being called a
gambler) that he chose to make a PM as a scrum master of multiple teams and
also overloaded the colleague with multiple other responsibilities.
Inspite of the preferences and the
logic hijacks, who is best suited to be scrum master? There are some specifics
like the ones mentioned below which is normally seen.
1.
Skills required for scrum
master has no mandatory connection with what the technical proficiency of
person but certain skills are good to have for some teams. Foe g. if a product
development team has a team of developers using some proprietary technology and
the deadlines are very close by, a rampup time in technology will be additional
risk. So in such cases, it preferable that scrum master has a bit of background
on the technology. However, its not required to be proficient in the
technology.
2.
Scrum team is cross functional
team and the scrum master should be comfortable to handle concerns / issues of
all team members and should be able to comfortably drive the individual
streams.
3.
Non dominant attitude : I am
often insistent that scrum master is a slave leader. So, any misunderstanding /
passion towards leadership is a risk. Its often desired that project management
experience is there but should in principle be able to adher to the principle
of scrum.
4.
Passion for lean and scrum and
its various practices.
5.
Should be able to improvise and
sustain the value coming out of system, and should be recognize, visualize and
remove the waste.
However, to summarize, its really not
required that only a PM can be scrummaster. Any one could be a scrum master.
