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Did anyone actually need a scrum master, ever?

by ekster 5y ago

SippinLean 5y ago
Hot take, but if you're doing Scrum you sure do. A good Scrum master can make meetings much more productive.
- mberning 5y ago
  I have never seen a good scrum master in 20 years then.
  - maxk42 5y ago
    I've seen one in 20+ years. The others were all worthless. The net impact of scrum masters on all teams I've been a part of has been negative.
- ekster 5y ago
  Alternatively, agree to have an agenda for every meeting and then skip the scrum master.
  - RaketenStadt 5y ago
    Your dev team needs meetings? Sounds pretty disorganized. Our team is productive, manages their time well, and communicates without meetings. Did anyone actually need a meeting, ever?
monkeybutton 5y ago
My srcum master seems to think so.
nipponese 5y ago
On a perfect team, where everyone is great at time management, honest about productivity, has superb communication skills, and is enthusiastic/loves their tasks, yes, scrum is dumb. For but for the rest of us, the scrum master handles all the unpleasant organizational crap for the team, and thank god for them.
- ekster 5y ago
  You can be quite far from perfect and not need it. And they quite commonly can amplify the disfunction in a team with issues. This is made worse at a lot of companies by hiring the absolutely cheapest person for the role.
  - nipponese 5y ago
    Maybe not _need_ it, but it can help in a lot of cases. Though I have seen some cases of active resistance coming from participants, in which case toxic co-workers can really make the experience miserable.
    - ethbr0 5y ago
      This comes down to companies failing to fire people. If someone is toxic to a team, they shouldn't remain at that company (much less on that team).
jmartinpetersen 5y ago
I've had a full time scrum master for, what, 4 months out of 15 years of doing scrum. It made a lot of positive difference to have someone operating on the meta level of the team.
g051051 5y ago
That, and an "Agile Coach". They were the absolute worst people at the last place I worked.
- posharma 5y ago
  Oh gosh, Agile Coach is definitely the worst. Pure BS. I can get the job of the scrum master, but agile coach? Sorry, we should've a much higher bar for subjecting our engineers to this role.
tsss 5y ago
I'm not sure if we need one but I like him and I don't have to pay for it, so why not?
- ekster 5y ago
  You could in theory help train them learn to do something more useful.
  - monkeybutton 5y ago
    Ironically mine was a QA minion and did the scrum master training as a means to get on the manager track.
anish_m 5y ago
This is one of the roles that I passionately hated in my previous company. No value add, and just wasted time with meetings. If your team, product manager, eng manager has no clue on what they are doing, then yes scrum master's role has a concrete outcome (atleast to keep people busy working). but if any one in the team has any clue on what they are doing, I found no value. Most of the scrum master/agile coaches i interacted with are more married to the whole process of scrum ceremonies rather than the concrete goal they are trying to hit at end of month.
Uehreka 5y ago
Scrum master and Product Owner are both roles where, if I’d never seen someone do them at a high level of competency, I’d question whether they were necessary at all. Scrum master: One time I was having an argument with a couple engineers because we couldn’t figure out how to implement a particular thing. I said “if K (a senior architect) was here, we’d be able to settle this, but I’m sure his schedule is booked up”. We continued arguing in circles, then suddenly 5 minutes later K materialized out of the ether. Our scrummaster had overheard me saying that, and silently navigated the bureaucracy to get us immediate time with the person we needed, all without being asked, and that unblocked our team. When you have a good scrummaster, they’ll know when it’s OK to bend/break rules and when to enforce them, and they’ll have a “particular set of skills” necessary to keeping the team unblocked. Product Owner: At my previous job there was a Product Owner named Terry who I continue to hold up as the gold standard. She was totally unafraid to get her hands dirty learning about the part of the system she was stewarding. You could parachute her into a deeply technical area and within a sprint she’d have found the happy paths, the edge cases, the things customers cared about/didn’t, and she’d (this is critical) be in a position to reject stories that legitimately didn’t pass muster. She perfectly walked the difficult line of knowing when to call BS on someone and knowing when to trust their explanation. When done poorly, scrum masters fall back on rigidly performing ceremonies or processes without considering whether they’re providing value. When done poorly, Product Owners will ask developers “what’s this thing I’m accepting?”, and hopefully the developer did their job, because the PO won’t know if they didn’t and will just rubber stamp the story. The unfortunate thing is that there are a lot of folks in these roles who are simply “performing the motions”, and so the overall reputation of these roles gets tarnished as a result. But when done well, they deliver a lot of value.
- manquer 5y ago
  Yes when there are really good people, the roles are a godsend to developers who can then focus on writing code rather than negotiating bureaucracies and listening to users and customers. The problem is the vast majority of times you don't get those good people in these roles and it ends up hindering then helping on average.
  - 5y ago

Did anyone actually need a scrum master, ever?

by ekster 5y ago

Did anyone actually need a scrum master, ever?

SippinLean 5y ago

Hot take, but if you're doing Scrum you sure do. A good Scrum master can make meetings much more productive.

mberning 5y ago
I have never seen a good scrum master in 20 years then.
- maxk42 5y ago
  I've seen one in 20+ years. The others were all worthless. The net impact of scrum masters on all teams I've been a part of has been negative.
ekster 5y ago
Alternatively, agree to have an agenda for every meeting and then skip the scrum master.
- RaketenStadt 5y ago
  Your dev team needs meetings? Sounds pretty disorganized. Our team is productive, manages their time well, and communicates without meetings. Did anyone actually need a meeting, ever?

monkeybutton 5y ago

My srcum master seems to think so.

nipponese 5y ago

On a perfect team, where everyone is great at time management, honest about productivity, has superb communication skills, and is enthusiastic/loves their tasks, yes, scrum is dumb. For but for the rest of us, the scrum master handles all the unpleasant organizational crap for the team, and thank god for them.

ekster 5y ago
You can be quite far from perfect and not need it. And they quite commonly can amplify the disfunction in a team with issues. This is made worse at a lot of companies by hiring the absolutely cheapest person for the role.
- nipponese 5y ago
  Maybe not _need_ it, but it can help in a lot of cases. Though I have seen some cases of active resistance coming from participants, in which case toxic co-workers can really make the experience miserable.
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    This comes down to companies failing to fire people. If someone is toxic to a team, they shouldn't remain at that company (much less on that team).

jmartinpetersen 5y ago

I've had a full time scrum master for, what, 4 months out of 15 years of doing scrum. It made a lot of positive difference to have someone operating on the meta level of the team.

g051051 5y ago

That, and an "Agile Coach". They were the absolute worst people at the last place I worked.

posharma 5y ago
Oh gosh, Agile Coach is definitely the worst. Pure BS. I can get the job of the scrum master, but agile coach? Sorry, we should've a much higher bar for subjecting our engineers to this role.

tsss 5y ago

I'm not sure if we need one but I like him and I don't have to pay for it, so why not?

ekster 5y ago
You could in theory help train them learn to do something more useful.
- monkeybutton 5y ago
  Ironically mine was a QA minion and did the scrum master training as a means to get on the manager track.

anish_m 5y ago

This is one of the roles that I passionately hated in my previous company. No value add, and just wasted time with meetings. If your team, product manager, eng manager has no clue on what they are doing, then yes scrum master's role has a concrete outcome (atleast to keep people busy working). but if any one in the team has any clue on what they are doing, I found no value. Most of the scrum master/agile coaches i interacted with are more married to the whole process of scrum ceremonies rather than the concrete goal they are trying to hit at end of month.

Uehreka 5y ago

Scrum master and Product Owner are both roles where, if I’d never seen someone do them at a high level of competency, I’d question whether they were necessary at all. Scrum master: One time I was having an argument with a couple engineers because we couldn’t figure out how to implement a particular thing. I said “if K (a senior architect) was here, we’d be able to settle this, but I’m sure his schedule is booked up”. We continued arguing in circles, then suddenly 5 minutes later K materialized out of the ether. Our scrummaster had overheard me saying that, and silently navigated the bureaucracy to get us immediate time with the person we needed, all without being asked, and that unblocked our team. When you have a good scrummaster, they’ll know when it’s OK to bend/break rules and when to enforce them, and they’ll have a “particular set of skills” necessary to keeping the team unblocked. Product Owner: At my previous job there was a Product Owner named Terry who I continue to hold up as the gold standard. She was totally unafraid to get her hands dirty learning about the part of the system she was stewarding. You could parachute her into a deeply technical area and within a sprint she’d have found the happy paths, the edge cases, the things customers cared about/didn’t, and she’d (this is critical) be in a position to reject stories that legitimately didn’t pass muster. She perfectly walked the difficult line of knowing when to call BS on someone and knowing when to trust their explanation. When done poorly, scrum masters fall back on rigidly performing ceremonies or processes without considering whether they’re providing value. When done poorly, Product Owners will ask developers “what’s this thing I’m accepting?”, and hopefully the developer did their job, because the PO won’t know if they didn’t and will just rubber stamp the story. The unfortunate thing is that there are a lot of folks in these roles who are simply “performing the motions”, and so the overall reputation of these roles gets tarnished as a result. But when done well, they deliver a lot of value.

manquer 5y ago
Yes when there are really good people, the roles are a godsend to developers who can then focus on writing code rather than negotiating bureaucracies and listening to users and customers. The problem is the vast majority of times you don't get those good people in these roles and it ends up hindering then helping on average.
- 5y ago