Common Challenges for a Scrum Master

Scrum Master role is a Leadership role where Scrum Master is expected to be a: Scrum Expert, Change Agent, Impediments Remover, Servant (True) Leader, Team Protector, Coach, Facilitator and so on. Unfortunately, many organizations and also the individuals who play the Scrum Master role do not have a proper understanding of this role properly. Hence, it leads to ineffective results. 

This article covers some of the common challenges that Scrum Masters face in organizations and possible remedies to address those challenges.

#1: Scrum Master is considered as “Extra” player rather than contributor:

This is like the 12th man in cricket. When you consider someone as “Extra” obviously the value that person brings will be treated as low and people do not even care about the existence of the person playing the role. On top of it, the role will be used for different purposes. Reason for this challenge is, the management or Leadership of the Organization does not have proper understanding of the Scrum Master role in a Team and Organization.

Remedy: If you are going to an interview in an Organization for a Scrum Master role, please clarify what kind of understanding is there in the person who is interviewing you. If the conversation is going like “we want one person as Scrum Master just for the sake of being there” or “Because Scrum says there should be a Scrum Master in the team we are trying to have one”, that may not be the right organization for you. Also, check how the Organization treats the role of a Scrum Master in the conversation.

If you are already part of an organization and if they are transforming into Agile, and if you are asked to take up the Scrum Master role, do not take up without having a proper understanding of the role and whether you are capable enough to play the role or not. If you are confident and capable to play the role, then speak to the management about what they expect from the role and if it is not aligned with actual responsibilities, you have to educate them before taking up the role.

#2: Scrum Master is treated as “Admin” or “Scribe”:

This is a very common challenge for Scrum Master. People including teams think that Scrum Master has to book meeting rooms, send meeting invitations, and take notes and prepare minutes of meetings and so on. With this kind of expectation on the Scrum Master role, he/she will be left as “Servant” instead of being a “Leader”.

Remedy: When you take up the role in a team as Scrum Master, have some expectations set up at the beginning on how you will be going to add value and what kind of activities will reduce the impact of your role. Educate the teams to be self-organized and try to focus on helping teams in terms of bigger things such as creating psychological safety for them, removing global/systemic impediments for the team and coaching them to become better. Providing support in moving things faster when there are inter-team dependencies, resolving the conflicts within the team and/or between the team and the Product Owner effectively. This will help the team to treat you as a “Leader” rather than a “Servant”. 

#3: Scrum Master is a “stop gap” role:

In some organizations, the management feels that Scrum Master for a team can be provided based on demand. So they make a small group of Scrum Masters and rotate them as and when teams need them. They do not understand the purpose of the Scrum Master role and they feel the role is to fulfil some short term activities.

Remedy: Is there any sports team in this world without having a coach? No, why? Teams need a coach to support them in improving their behaviour, performance, communication and overall relationship and collaboration within the team. Teams need someone to protect them and create an environment with uninterrupted focus. This needs a relationship to be built, and it takes time. So if you are asked to do a “stop-gap” Scrum Master role, please try to explain the management the disadvantages of doing so and what would be the consequences. 

#4: Lack of Courage & Fear of Transparency for the Scrum Master:

Some Scrum Masters will not have the courage and they are afraid of transparency. The reasons behind this may be several such as lack of confidence, lack of knowledge in Scrum, or reporting structure in the organization. This will eventually lead to the poor performance of the Scrum Master and he/she will create less impact on the role.

Remedy: Build a relationship with the team and explain how visibility helps them in terms of exposing the issues. When you have to take up something to management’s attention, try to gather as much information as possible that supports your point. When data and logic supports you, anyone who is on the other side will at least try to hear what you say. Try to practice being courageous and confident during such discussions.   

#5: Conflicting HR Policies:

In some organizations, HR policies such as reporting and performance appraisals will create conflicts within the team. For example, Scrum Master and the Development Team reporting to the same person, individual performance instead of team-based performance. These practices will create suboptimal results with Scrum because Scrum heavily based on teamwork. 

Remedy: Work with other Scrum Masters in the Organization and try to help the HR team to come up with reporting structures that are not conflicting and also to help HR to come up with performance appraisal models such as 360-degree feedback based. This may not work overnight but at some point, someone has to start. So why not you? There is lots of information available on how HR policies can be updated to suit team-based appraisal models. 

#6: Improper Management Expectations:

Management in some organizations will have improper expectations such as Scrum Master should be hands-on coding or testing or force the Scrum Masters to push the team to improve the velocity every Sprint by X%. This type of anti-Scrum practices will create less room for playing the Scrum Master role effectively.

Remedy: When you are assigned as a Scrum Master, it is better to have a fair discussion on what is expected from your role and explain to the management what activities will create less transparency and impact the collaboration and trust within the team. Explaining the corresponding consequences will help you to avoid such practices in the beginning itself. So creating a role clarity is the first thing you should do before entering into the role.

#7: Lack of “Agile/Scrum” awareness in the Teams:

When teams do not have a basic understanding of Agile and Scrum practices and start working on Projects, it leads to disaster situations. Reason for this is, they start using the traditional practices such as big upfront designs, creating static plans or too much focusing on the output rather than the outcome. Basic “teamwork” and “collaboration” concepts go for a toss.

Remedy: When you are assigned as a Scrum Master to any team, you can have a simple Survey to know the team’s current level of Agile/Scrum knowledge. If they found to be too low in terms of the foundational knowledge, your first step is to give them basic training on what is Agile, explain to them the Agile manifesto values and principles, Scrum framework and elements of Scrum framework, how iterative and incremental way of work happens. This will help the team to have a basic level of understanding.  

#8: Command & Control type Product Owner:

Product owners converted from traditional Project Managers, or with lack of proper awareness and understanding of Agile and Scrum will end up becoming team manager type and show command and control based. This leads to low trust and lack of transparency between the Product Owner and the Development Team eventually.

Remedy: The moment you identify such a Product Owner, the first thing you have to do is to have a one-on-one discussion with the Product Owner. Explain the consequences of such behaviours to the Product Owner. For example, if Product Owner tries to push too much work to the Team, they start compromising the quality standards, If Product Owner gets into too much micromanagement, the Team might start inflating the estimates. You need to clearly explain the Product Owner these consequences and create awareness on what will be eventual results on the overall relationship and also on the Product increment. If still, the Product does not change, you need to take it up with the concerned person in the organization to highlight the Product Owner’s behaviour.

#9:Unable to “Timebox” the Meetings:

The purpose of timebox in Scrum is to limit the number of unwanted activities and to focus on critical things that help them move fast. Unfortunately, many teams do not understand the importance of Timebox and the meetings go for long hours. This is the reason most of the time teams feel that they are spending most of their time in the meetings, so the purpose of the meeting is lost. The very purpose of the events in Scrum is to inspect and adapt which will be sidelined due to not following the timeboxing.

Remedy: Understanding the purpose of the meeting, clear agenda, right participants are the key to timeboxing. At the beginning of the meeting itself setting up the expectation on the duration of the meeting is important. Keeping a Digital timer on the Screen helps everyone to have an eye on the remaining time. Focusing the discussion only on the agreed agenda points will also help maintain the timebox. Avoiding the cross-talks, jumping to a different topic suddenly, bringing in different participants suddenly into the meeting will lead to a waste of time. So as Scrum Master, you have to focus on these factors while facilitating the events.  

#10: Improper Impediments Management:

The faster impediments are resolved, the faster the teams can move on. More the impediments piled up, less value is delivered. There can be several reasons for impediments in a Scrum team. Some of them within the team level and some of them are beyond the team level. If Scrum Master is unable to remove the impediments ontime, it will slow down the team and also it leads to losing the respect of the team.

Remedy: First of all, you need to be able to identify the difference between team level and global impediments. Wherever the team has power/ability/knowledge of removing the impediments on their own, you should encourage and educate them to remove on their own as they should be self-organizing. For the impediments that are beyond team level, you should take ownership to resolve them. Having a good network within the organization, influential skills, prioritizing the impediments will help you to focus and get the impediments resolved. Using a visible impediments board with a separation of team level and beyond team level, introducing organizational-level impediments board with the support of management will also help you quickly highlight the impediments and to get the respective team/individual help in resolving them faster. 

Conclusion: The Scrum Master role is definitely a challenging role as it is not a people management role instead, it is a people enabling role. So in order to be successful in that role you need to have Passion for people, courage, empathy, interpersonal skills, conflict resolution skills with an attitude of continuous learning.