What's been your experience with Scrum Master?
What's been your experience? Have you seen Scrum Master positions add measurable value to delivery velocity and team satisfaction? Or have you found alternative models that work better?
2 comments
I’ve had one good scrum master who seemed to take a lot of administrative tasks off our plate, keep work flowing, and made things generally pleasant.
All the others have been awful. My current one is the worst so far. I’m not even sure if he knows what scrum is, despite being certified in SAFe. Most people don’t bother showing up to his meeting anymore; that includes him most of the time as well.
All the others have been awful. My current one is the worst so far. I’m not even sure if he knows what scrum is, despite being certified in SAFe. Most people don’t bother showing up to his meeting anymore; that includes him most of the time as well.
The contrast you're describing is interesting, one great one who made things pleasant vs the rest being net-negative.
I've been looking at what differentiates the good ones, and it seems to come down to:
1. Actually removing blockers (not just logging them in Jira)
2. Taking admin work off the team vs creating more process overhead
3. Protecting the team's time vs adding more ceremonies
The SAFe certification thing you mentioned... I tracked certification-to-effectiveness correlation and couldn't find one. Plenty of certified SMs who don't understand the work, and great facilitators with zero certs.
What did that one good SM do that the others didn't? Trying to identify the pattern.
I've been looking at what differentiates the good ones, and it seems to come down to:
1. Actually removing blockers (not just logging them in Jira)
2. Taking admin work off the team vs creating more process overhead
3. Protecting the team's time vs adding more ceremonies
The SAFe certification thing you mentioned... I tracked certification-to-effectiveness correlation and couldn't find one. Plenty of certified SMs who don't understand the work, and great facilitators with zero certs.
What did that one good SM do that the others didn't? Trying to identify the pattern.
> 3. Protecting the team's time vs adding more ceremonies
I'm ok with some ceremonies if they are useful. The issue with our current SM is we have the ceremonies, but we don't actually do anything. In the "backlog refinement" meeting, he talks about the stories in the current sprint, which we already talked about on the stand up. In "Sprint Planning" he just talks about a bunch of random stuff... small talk... and then hangs up the phone. The one meeting we really need, a retrospective at the end of sprints to try and right the ship, he "forgets" to schedule. He'll do it once if enough people yell at him, but it takes a lot and ends up being a one time thing. He also doesn't know how to run it, so it becomes an issue. Multiple people have straight up yelled at him in the middle of some of these calls to do the thing we're actually there for instead of whatever random other thing he is trying to do instead. The behavior never sticks. He's simply a bad fit for the role... any role, as far as I can tell.
> What did that one good SM do that the others didn't?
For starters, she was a people person; she'd probably make a good pharmaceutical sales rep. So she was excited to talk to everyone and that helped get other people talking. She tried to mix it up and make it fun. Around various holidays she'd theme the retro for the holiday and get us answering questions in different ways to draw out new answers. Asking the same questions every sprint gets stale. Since she was social, she had a lot of connections to help clear blockers. Our current guy has a lot of connections too, but doesn't use them for anything useful. When something came up on the retro or in a random meeting for her to do, or an idea for a change in how we work, she'd actually implement it.
A lot of it is pretty basic stuff. It's just a question of doing it. The bad SMs I've had simply don't do their job.
I'm ok with some ceremonies if they are useful. The issue with our current SM is we have the ceremonies, but we don't actually do anything. In the "backlog refinement" meeting, he talks about the stories in the current sprint, which we already talked about on the stand up. In "Sprint Planning" he just talks about a bunch of random stuff... small talk... and then hangs up the phone. The one meeting we really need, a retrospective at the end of sprints to try and right the ship, he "forgets" to schedule. He'll do it once if enough people yell at him, but it takes a lot and ends up being a one time thing. He also doesn't know how to run it, so it becomes an issue. Multiple people have straight up yelled at him in the middle of some of these calls to do the thing we're actually there for instead of whatever random other thing he is trying to do instead. The behavior never sticks. He's simply a bad fit for the role... any role, as far as I can tell.
> What did that one good SM do that the others didn't?
For starters, she was a people person; she'd probably make a good pharmaceutical sales rep. So she was excited to talk to everyone and that helped get other people talking. She tried to mix it up and make it fun. Around various holidays she'd theme the retro for the holiday and get us answering questions in different ways to draw out new answers. Asking the same questions every sprint gets stale. Since she was social, she had a lot of connections to help clear blockers. Our current guy has a lot of connections too, but doesn't use them for anything useful. When something came up on the retro or in a random meeting for her to do, or an idea for a change in how we work, she'd actually implement it.
A lot of it is pretty basic stuff. It's just a question of doing it. The bad SMs I've had simply don't do their job.
This is the part that gets me. When it works, it's just someone doing basic execution. When it doesn't, you're paying $120k for someone to send calendar invites and forget retros.
That contrast you described, pharma-sales-rep energy vs the guy people yell at mid-meeting got me thinking about the actual ROI. I've been tracking salary data and trying to see if SM presence correlates with delivery metrics (deployment frequency, lead time, that kind of thing). Looked at around 40 teams. Couldn't find any meaningful difference.
Wrote up the whole thing here: https://agilelie.com/blog/scrum-master-salary-data-2026-wort...
Would love to know if I'm missing something in the analysis.
One thing I keep wondering: that good SM you had, would she have been just as effective as a tech lead who spends 10% of her time on facilitation? Or does the dedicated role actually matter when you find the right person?
That contrast you described, pharma-sales-rep energy vs the guy people yell at mid-meeting got me thinking about the actual ROI. I've been tracking salary data and trying to see if SM presence correlates with delivery metrics (deployment frequency, lead time, that kind of thing). Looked at around 40 teams. Couldn't find any meaningful difference.
Wrote up the whole thing here: https://agilelie.com/blog/scrum-master-salary-data-2026-wort...
Would love to know if I'm missing something in the analysis.
One thing I keep wondering: that good SM you had, would she have been just as effective as a tech lead who spends 10% of her time on facilitation? Or does the dedicated role actually matter when you find the right person?
I've had a few scrum masters that were good in that role; the rest were middling to bad. Also, every job I've ever had a scrum master later made that position redundant & reassigned their responsibilities to the teams.
That pattern of making the role redundant is interesting - I've been tracking this across companies and it seems pretty common.
I analyzed time allocation data from Scrum Masters and found they spend ~60% of their time in meetings about meetings. The actual "servant leadership" part averages 4.2 hours per week according to an Agile Alliance study.
The teams that work best seem to be the ones that either: 1. Rotate facilitation duties among senior devs (~10% time) 2. Have tech leads who code 80% and facilitate 10%
Curious if that matches what you've seen when those responsibilities got reassigned to teams?
I analyzed time allocation data from Scrum Masters and found they spend ~60% of their time in meetings about meetings. The actual "servant leadership" part averages 4.2 hours per week according to an Agile Alliance study.
The teams that work best seem to be the ones that either: 1. Rotate facilitation duties among senior devs (~10% time) 2. Have tech leads who code 80% and facilitate 10%
Curious if that matches what you've seen when those responsibilities got reassigned to teams?