Advancing as a Scrum Master or Agile Coach v2

Advancing as a
Scrum Master or Agile Coach
and helping others to understand the role
Rowan Bunning CST - June 2019
equinox.co.nz

@rowanb© 2018-9 Scrum WithStyle scrumwithstyle.com
My Agile journey 2005
2006
2008
2018
2017
2015
2010
• 2001 Introduced to eXtreme Programming in Smalltalk
• 2003 Introduced Scrum and became a Scrum Master
• 2005 Went on first Certified ScrumMaster course in Australia
• 2006 Became first Certified Scrum Professional in Australia
• 2006 Unsuccessful attempt to find Agile Coaching work in Australia
• 2007 Hired as an Agile Coach at top Scrum consultancy in London
• 2008 Worked mainly as a Scrum Master in London and Dublin
• 2008 Became a Certified Scrum Trainer
• 2008-2019 Scrum Training and Agile Coaching across AU and NZ
• 2018 One of world’s first Certified Agile Leadership credential II (CAL II)
• 2018 First Path to CSP Educator in AU/NZ with Advanced Certified ScrumMaster
• 2019 Approved to each CSP-SM completing the Path to CSP

Agenda
• Our Current Reality
• What a Scrum Master is not
• What a Scrum Master is
• How a Scrum Master operates
• Servant-as-leader
• Comparing Scrum Master with Agile Coach
• Scrum Master career paths

What does the Scrum Master role involve?
Instructions:
• Form pairs.
• Identify who will play Manager, the other is playing Scrum Master.
• Manager asks Scrum Master: “What does the Scrum Master role involve?”
• Manager takes notes on the key points.
• You have 3 minutes.

© 2018 Scrum WithStyle scrumwithstyle.com @rowanb@rowanb
Results from Wellington 12 June 2019

Results from Melbourne 23 July 2018

Results from Sydney 25 June 2018

Results from Perth 6 February 2019

What a Scrum Master is not
• Not an administrator
• Not a co-ordinator
• Not a part-time role “on the side”
• Not only development team focused
• Not an Agile Delivery Manager / Lead
• Not a Project Manager
• Not responsible for delivery progress

Common ScrumMaster
Anti-Patterns

Image: Barry Overeem

???
Source: What is a scrum master? - Atlassian Coach blog: https://www.atlassian.com/agile/scrum/scrum-master
What is a scrum master? - Atlassian Coach blog

Source: What is a scrum master? - Atlassian Coach blog: https://www.atlassian.com/agile/scrum/scrum-master

Scrum Master is not a project administrator

Scrum Master is not a co-ordinator
Pipe or connector?
e.g. representing teams at Scrum of Scrums

Not a part-timer with part-Focus

An Example Checklist for ScrumMasters
Michael James
Danube Technologies, Inc.
http://www.danube.com
michael@danube.com
14 September 2007
(Revised 13 November 2009)
A Full Time Facilitator?
An adequate ScrumMaster can handle two or three teams at a time. If you're content to limit your role to
organizing meetings, enforcing timeboxes, and responding to the impediments people explicitly report, you can
get by with part time attention to this role. The team will probably still exceed the baseline, pre-Scrum expectation
at your organization, and probably nothing catastrophic will happen.
But if you can envision a team that has a great time accomplishing things no one previously thought possible,
within a transformed organization -- consider being a great ScrumMaster.
A great ScrumMaster can handle one team at a time.
We recommend one dedicated ScrumMaster per team of about seven, especially when starting out.
If you haven't discovered all the work there is to do, tune in to your Product Owner, your team, your team's
engineering practices, and the organization outside your team. While there's no single prescription for everyone,
I've outlined typical things I've seen ScrumMasters overlook.
Part I -- How Is My Product Owner Doing?
You improve the Product Ownerʼs effectiveness by helping maintain the Product Backlog and release plan. (Note
Is the appropriate amount of inter-team communication happening? Scrum of Scrums is only one way to
achieve this.
Are teams independently able to produce working features, even spanning architectural boundaries?12
Are your ScrumMasters meeting with each other, working the organizational impediments list?
When appropriate, are the organizational impediments pasted to the wall of the development director's office?
Can the cost be quantified in dollars, lost time to market, lost quality, or lost customer opportunities? (But
learn from Ken Schwaber's mistakes: "A dead ScrumMaster is a useless ScrumMaster."13)
Is your organization one of the few with career paths compatible with the collective goals of your teams?
Answer "no" if there's a career incentive14 to do programming or architecture work at the expense of testing,
test automation, or user documentation.
Has your organization been recognized by the trade press or other independent sources as one of the best
places to work, or a leader in your industry?
Are you helping create a learning organization?
Conclusion
If you can check off most of these items and still have time left during the day, Iʼd like to hear from you.
Thereʼs no canned formula for creating human ingenuity. This paper lists points which may, or may not, help in
your situation.
Once you start to realize what you could do to make a difference, you may find yourself afraid to do it. This is a
…

Not only development team
focused

Origins of “Iteration Manager”
“When teams were struggling to ﬁnd high-priority work to do on one
particular project in 2000, the solution was to identify someone who could
provide a continual stream of high-priority functionality at a sustainable pace
to the delivery teams. This is the role that has grown into the iteration
manager (IM).”
- ”What Is an Iteration Manager Anyway?", Tiffany Lentz, The ThoughWorks Anthology, 2008.
“The split between release and iteration managers reﬂects the style and
preferences of the two individuals that do it... We don't think our solution is
one that necessarily everyone should follow.”
- martinfowler.com/articles/planningXpIteration.html

© 2008-18 Scrum WithStyle scrumwithstyle.com
micro-management
vs self-management
conflict

Not a Delivery Manager or
Project Manager

Spot the conﬂict
"a Delivery Manager is responsible for the delivery of projects and products,
particularly using Agile methods.”
- Australian Government Digital Transformation Ofﬁce blog: https://www.dta.gov.au/blog/so-what-does-a-delivery-
manager-do/

Project Manager has a lot less
overlap with Scrum Master than
Product Owner and even less
than Development Team

“The Scrum Master helps those outside the Scrum
Team understand which of their interactions with the
Scrum Team are helpful and which aren’t.
The Scrum Master helps everyone change these
interactions to maximize the value created by the Scrum
Team.”
- The Scrum Guide™, 2017
The Scrum Guide™
The Definitive Guide to Scrum:
The Rules of the Game
November 2017
Developed and sustained by Scrum creators: Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland

Scrum Master is to avoid local optimisation
Business
stakeholders
Managers
Project
Manager
partially cross-
functional
Team
Business
Stakeholders
Managers
Product
Owner
fully cross-
functional
Development
Team
Iteration Manager Scrum Master
SM optimising
globally
PM optimising
locally
IM optimising
locally

The focus of a ScrumMaster shifts over time

Not responsible for delivery
progress

The Authority Matrix: four types of team
Source: Leading Teams: Setting the Stage for Great Performances Hardcover, by J. Richard Hackman, Harvard Business Review Press, 2002.
Copyright (c) 1986 by the American Psychological Association.
Manager-led
teams
Self-Managing
teams
Self-Designing
teams
Self-Governing
teams
Setting overall direction
Designing the team and its
organisational context
Monitoring and managing work
process and progress
Executing the team task
____________ ____________ ____________
© 2015 Scrum WithStyle scrumwithstyle.com
Team’s Own Responsibility
Management
Responsibility
Typical pre-
Scrum
Required by
Scrum
Increasingly
recommended
“delivery” progress

The intrinsic motivation paradox
Edward L. Deci
Research variable:
“remember, it is your responsibility as a
teacher to make sure your students
perform up to high standards”.
Results:
2x as much time talking
3x as many directives
3x as many controlling statements

Responsibility for delivery undermines autonomy
Reference: Lv Yi https://blog.odd-e.com/yilv/2017/02/paradox-in-coaching-self-organizing-team.html
"Scrum is the only
approach that dedicates a
role to create environments
for learning, innovative
teams - without giving
contradictory
responsibilities.”
- Michael James, Shanghai Scrum Gathering 2013.

Q: Can we release by date X?
Assuming we are producing Potentially Releasable Product Increments, the answer is…
A: “Yes! We always have a releasable product.”
(This shifts the question not to whether we can release but what the content of the release will be.)
Q: “What will the content of the release be?”
A: “Whatever our business decided was the highest value content as we Sprinted constrained by
the reality of ﬁnite capacity or capability.”
Q: “What if the capacity or capability isn’t sufﬁcient to have what we need by the time?”
A: “Then our business has the option to apply more teams to it or invest in building the capability.”
Capacity increase: immediate $ and opportunity cost with no long term net gain
Capability increase: short term investment for ongoing long term net gain.

Image: Bary Overeem

Sponsoring
Management Innovator
First ScrumMaster Technical Coach
Source: https://www.slideshare.net/jmeydam/facebook-and-scrum

From the original Certiﬁed ScrumMaster
training material by Ken Schwaber - 2006
Customer collaboration over contract
negotiation
No intermediaries
Teacher to primary business stakeholder
Humanist, cultivate people
High agency team, bounded autonomy
Change agent to power distribution
Impediment removal facilitator
Team end-to-end cross-functional
Tech practices as core part of role

Scrum Master is a leadership role
"The Scrum Master is a servant-leader for the Scrum Team.
The Scrum Guide™
The Definitive Guide to Scrum:
The Rules of the Game
November 2017
Developed and sustained by Scrum creators: Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland

Scrum Master in three words
capability improvement leader

Scrum Guide deﬁnition of Scrum Master (1)
Scrum Master Service to the Product Owner
The Scrum Master serves the Product Owner in several ways, including:
• Ensuring that goals, scope, and product domain are understood by everyone on the Scrum
Team as well as possible;
• Finding techniques for effective Product Backlog management;
• Helping the Scrum Team understand the need for clear and concise Product Backlog items;
• Understanding product planning in an empirical environment;
• Ensuring the Product Owner knows how to arrange the Product Backlog to maximize value;
• Understanding and practicing agility; and,
• Facilitating Scrum events as requested or needed.
Scrum Master Service to the Development Team
©2017 Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland. Offered for license under the Attribution Share-Alike license of Creative
Commons, accessible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode and also described in summary form
at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. By utilizing this Scrum Guide, you acknowledge and agree that you
have read and agree to be bound by the terms of the Attribution Share-Alike license of Creative Commons.
Page | 7
coordination. Large Development Teams generate too much complexity for an empirical process
to be useful. The Product Owner and Scrum Master roles are not included in this count unless
they are also executing the work of the Sprint Backlog.
The Scrum Master
The Scrum Master is responsible for promoting and supporting Scrum as defined in the Scrum
Guide. Scrum Masters do this by helping everyone understand Scrum theory, practices, rules,
and values.
The Scrum Master is a servant-leader for the Scrum Team. The Scrum Master helps those
outside the Scrum Team understand which of their interactions with the Scrum Team are helpful
and which aren’t. The Scrum Master helps everyone change these interactions to maximize the
value created by the Scrum Team.

Scrum Guide deﬁnition of Scrum Master (2)
• Ensuring the Product Owner knows how to arrange the Product Backlog to maximize value;
• Understanding and practicing agility; and,
• Facilitating Scrum events as requested or needed.
Scrum Master Service to the Development Team
The Scrum Master serves the Development Team in several ways, including:
• Coaching the Development Team in self-organization and cross-functionality;
• Helping the Development Team to create high-value products;
• Removing impediments to the Development Team’s progress;
• Facilitating Scrum events as requested or needed; and,
• Coaching the Development Team in organizational environments in which Scrum is not yet
fully adopted and understood.
Scrum Master Service to the Organization
The Scrum Master serves the organization in several ways, including:
• Leading and coaching the organization in its Scrum adoption;
• Planning Scrum implementations within the organization;
• Helping employees and stakeholders understand and enact Scrum and empirical product
development;
• Causing change that increases the productivity of the Scrum Team; and,
• Working with other Scrum Masters to increase the effectiveness of the application of Scrum
in the organization.

© 2019 Scrum WithStyle scrumwithstyle.com @rowanb
Self-OrganisationEmpiricism Time-boxingValue Focus
Principles
Sprint Review Daily Scrum
Sprint
Retrospective
Sprint
Product Owner
Product Backlog
Practices
Enablers of Scrum Outcomes
agility
Highest
Customer Value
Learning
Team
Performance
Outcomes

As a developer, I debugged software…
As a Scrum Master, I debug the organisation
Image credit: Smithsonian
Archive Centre

We have lots of debugging to do
#DarkScrum occurs when we focus on enforcing Scrum mechanics rather
than reinforcing Agile Values and Principles.
Scrum — Agile Values = DarkScrum
“The most serious impediments to using Scrum are habits of waterfall,
predictive thinking over the last twenty to thirty years; these have spawned
command and control management, belief that demanding something will
make it happen, and the willingness of development to cut quality to meet
dates. These are inbred habits that we aren’t even aware of anymore.”
- Scrum is Hard and Disruptive by Ken Schwaber, 2006

Teams and Managers
SMs work on the system not just in the system
Teams and Managers
operate within the current capability
“Management works in the system;
Leadership works on the system.”
- Stephen R. Covey
ScrumMasters lead improvement to capability

Transparency LeadershipTransparency Increase Opportunities
To make more transparent… Options…
Product
Backlog
What a Product Backlog Item (PBI)
does and does not cover.
How fine-grained PBIs relate to bigger
picture concerns relevant to
stakeholders.
Sprint
Planning
What is expected in the medium-term
that the new Sprint is a step towards.
Why the top backlog items are to be
developed.
Whether a PBI is actually understood
by a less engaged participant.
Where the current planned work may
exceed capacity around certain skills.

Daily Scrum How probable it is that the team will
achieve the Sprint Goal.
When a Sprint task can be expected to
be completed (even ones that are
difficult to estimate precisely).
Transparency Increase poster (1 of 2)

To make more transparent… Optio
Sprint Backlog
/ Information
Radiators
How the team is progressing in terms
of Done PBIs.
What the current impediments are
and their status.
How much of the team is currently
working together on a single PBI.
Sprint Review Projected timing of release or
completion of a multi-Sprint output
goal.
Significance of Increment relative to
interests of stakeholders present.
What the feedback on the Increment
is.
The changes to the Product Backlog
arising from the Sprint Review.
Sprint
Retrospective
Issues for which participants could be
judged negatively.
All of the team’s ideas as to on how to
address an improvement opportunity.

Uses “subtle control”, Opportunistic Nudges
Although project teams are largely on their own,
they are not uncontrolled. Management establishes
enough checkpoints to prevent instability, ambiguity,
and tension from turning into chaos. At the same
time, management avoids the kind of rigid control
that impairs creativity and spontaneity.
- Takeuchi & Nonaka

Scrum Master is the teacher
• Constantly looking for “teachable moments”
• Teaching closely coupled with challenge
TEACHER

Q: Do you frequently offer Scrum,
Agile, Lean, Systems Thinking etc.
knowledge in “teachable moments”
and support application to context?
Teacher

Bulk of time spent on impediment resolution
• Includes impediments resolution campaigns over
multiple weeks/months
• Requires ability to persuade those with authority
outside of the Scrum Team Image: Barry Overeem

Facilitator
"The facilitator’s job is to support everyone to do their best
thinking. To do this, the facilitator encourages full
participation, promotes mutual understanding and cultivates
shared responsibility. By supporting everyone to do their
best thinking, a facilitator enables group members to search
for inclusive solutions and build sustainable agreements.”
– Sam Kaner, Facilitator's Guide to Participatory Decision-Making
Time
Groan
Zone
Divergent Zone
Closure Zone
New
Topic
? ✔
Diagram adapted from: Sam Kaner et al., Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making
Convergent Zone
FACILITATOR

Q: Do you make interactions easier
outside of formal meetings? Are you ﬂuent
with a wide range of facilitation techniques
and know when to apply them?
Facilitator

The Scrum Master is the
Agile Coach in Scrum

Coach
(v.) coaching:
“Partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative
process that inspires them to maximise their personal and
professional potential.
Coaches honour the client as the expert in his or her life and work
and believe every client is creative, resourceful, and whole.
Standing on this foundation, the coach's responsibility is to:
• Discover, clarify, and align with what the client wants to achieve
• Encourage client self-discovery
• Elicit client-generated solutions and strategies
• Hold the client responsible and accountable”
- International Coach Federation (ICF) coachfederation.org
COACH

Q: Do you use structure coaching
conversations with follow-up regularly?
Coach

Manager
• managing impediments,
• eliminating waste,
• managing the process,
• managing the team's health,
• managing the boundaries of self-organization,
• and managing the culture.
Image: Barry OvereemMANAGER

Q: Do you call out violations of Scrum rules,
principles, values regularly in constructive
ways that explore alternatives?
Manager

Change agent
“The focus of using Scrum is the change from old
habits to new ways of doing business. Scrum is not
implemented or rolled-out as a process; it used to
foment change.”
- Ken Schwaber
(v) Foment: instigate or stir up
• Activist
• Improvement experiment designer
• Catalyst
CHANGE AGENT

Q: Do you actively instigate, cultivate
and amplify change campaigns?
Change agent

Mentor
(n) Mentor
an experienced and trusted adviser.
“Mentoring transfers your agile knowledge and
experience to the team as that speciﬁc knowledge
becomes relevant to what’s happening with them.”
Image: Barry OvereemMENTOR

Q: Are you seen as a trusted advisor by your
team, Product Owner, key stakeholders?
Do they actively seek your guidance?
Mentor

Scrum Master is a human mirror
“We as ScrumMasters are holding a mirror for the teams
and organisations to see themselves.
Transparency on the current level of maturity creates
awareness. Awareness creates desire to change. Growth
is happening daily and on different levels. That's why we
are there. To notice it, reﬂect on it and celebrate it with
everyone.
Being a ScrumMaster is not a just fulﬁlling a role
description.
It is a way to look and work with the world around us.
It is not just a full-time job.
It is a mindset.
- Alexey Krivitsky CST
REFLECTIVE OBSERVER

CHANGE AGENTSERVANT-LEADER MANAGER
FACILITATOR TEACHERCOACH
MENTOR REFLECTIVE OBSERVER
IMPEDIMENT REMOVER
ScrumMasters operate from each of these stances

© 2019 Scrum WithStyle scrumwithstyle.com @rowanb
______
_________
_________
_________
_________
_________
______
______
______
______
__________________
________
________
Vision
Product Owner
Sprint planning
Product backlog
Sprint backlog
Daily Scrum
Potentially
Releasable
Product
Increment
Sprint retrospective Sprint review
Backlog
refinement
Lean in the Scrum framework
Customer Focus Visual Management
Limited WIP
Respect for People
Handoff minimisation
Small batch
Pull Scheduling
Delay Minimisation
Flow Management
Knowledge
Spreading
Go See
Develop People & Teams
Root cause analysis
Continuous Improvement

Example Improvement Areas
• Done Improve cross-functionality and development practices to produce
Potentially Releasable increments (at least) every Sprint
• Team performance team to high performance, perhaps exceptional
• Impediments management actively resolving team and organisational
impediments
• Educate management such that they consider Agile and Lean principles in
every decision
• Educate stakeholders so that they understand how to see progress in terms
of value and exploit the competitive advantage of agility
• Create a culture of continuous improvement

Servant-Leader
A Servant-Leader helps others meet their highest
priority development needs.
• Seeks ﬁrst to serve, then aspires to lead.
• Self-interest is deeply connected to the needs and
interests of others.
• Serves in a manner that allows those served to
grow as persons.
• Expresses genuine care and concern for others.
- Sipe, James W.. Seven Pillars of Servant Leadership: Practicing the Wisdom of Leading
by Serving . Paulist Pr.
SERVANT-LEADER

Scrum Masters invite and challenge people to grow
Anxiety
Boredom
High
Low
HighLow Skills
Challenges
0
Flow
Increasingchallenge
Increasingchallenge
Increasing skills
Increasing skills
Apathy

Servant-Leader is a “Post-heroic” stage
Explorer
Enthusiast
Operator
Conformer
Expert
Achiever
Catalyst
Co-creator
Synergist
Childhood stages
Adult stages
Heroic
Post-heroic

Proportion of Leaders per development level
10%
45%
35%
10%
Pre-Expert
Expert
Achiever
Catalyst and beyondCurrent ceiling in most orgs
Agile
Not Agile

Famous servant-leaders

Seven Pillars of Servant Leadership
Diagram adapted from: Sipe, J., Frisk, D., Seven Pillars of Servant Leadership: Practicing the Wisdom of Leading by Serving, Paulist Press, 2009.

Studying Servant Leadership

Be a Systems Thinker
Image credit: pinterest.com/pin/481885228855226794

Unseen System Dynamics that cost Microsoft $$$
Goal: conform to
original schedule
pressure to try
actions to confirm to
original schedule
exhortations, bribes, and
threats to developers to
meet schedule
% use of “secret toolbox”
inc. hacking to generate
poor quality code quickly
% of clean code with
good design
# of defects
duration and
effort to add new
features
actual variance to original
schedule
duration between creating
and fixing a defect
duration and correctness
in fixing a defect
O
O
short term
only
QF
QF
O
Credit: less.works

Comparing Scrum Master
with Agile Coach

The ﬁrst “Agile Coach” ?
Brought in as an external consultant
Pete Behrens

Outside-in vs Inside-out change
Development
Team
Scrum
MasterDevelopment
Team
Agile Coach
Organisation Organisation

Myth: Scrum Master is a junior Agile Coach
"When organisations choose to work with Scrum, there should
be no need for Agile Coaches.”
- Barry Overeem

Scrum Master: embedded in value
creation gemba
Gemba (Japanese)
“The Real Place”
“Go see requires observing the
teams and asking lots of open
minded questions with a sincere
interest in their work and
problems. In software products,
this is likely to involve watching
and discussing code.”
- Craig Larman & Bas Vodde, Large-Scale Scrum: More with LeSS,
Addison Wesley, 2017.

Scrum Master vs Agile Coach vs coach
Scrum Master Agile Coach Professional coach
Authoritative role
deﬁnition
✔ ✘ ✔
Origin Internal External External
Agenda
Scrum-based agile
adoption mandate
Agile adoption mandate Client’s agenda
Leader stance ✔ ? ✘
Deﬁned values Scrum values
Various statements with
limited recognition
ICF values
Accreditations offered CSM, A-CSM, CSP-SM
PSM I, PSM II, PSM III
CTC, CEC Few in Australia
Many in N. America and
UEurope

Advancing as a Scrum Master or Agile Coach v2

Advancing as a Scrum Master or Agile Coach v2

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