Recently during on of my CSM classes, one of my participants mentioned this. They were asked this by their manager in their annual performance review “What work do you do the whole day” and I was left wondering , where have I heard this before ? and then came the flashback!
Cut back to 1990s, We had this sweet couple in the neighborhood . The uncle used to go to work and earn the bread for the family while the aunty was a home maker. While uncle was out at work, she would ensure the house is clean, she would teach the kids, she would cook meals for the family, she would ensure the kids sleep on time and are ready for school the next day. She used to wake up early like 5 am and would go to sleep the last 11 pm!
But every household has its little ups and downs and one day we heard uncle arguing at top of his voice and while he was arguing with aunty, he said, I earn money for the family, I ensure the kids have education, roof our over head : ” What work do you do the whole day” ? Aunty dint reply back.
She just left for her maternal house for 4 days and last we heard uncle was pleading to her to get back home, to take care of the family and kids , to make their life live again.
If you have already guessed where I am going with this story , Kudos ! you understand what the ScrumMaster’s role is.
Unfortunately, most organizations using Scrum think, the role of ScrumMaster is limited to organizing meetings and housekeeping for the teams (arrange the backlog, maintain the graphs et al) aka a Facilitator but what I have known and seen over 2 decades trying to learn Scrum, a ScrumMaster can make or mar the team. A good one would take the team to new heights of coordination, collaboration, efficiency and success and a naive , uninformed , forced one would leave the team (and your product ) in shambles.. and 90% of the ScrumMaster’s work lies outside of those events of Scrum
So, this is a humble request to the leaders who are pushing their teams to use Scrum correctly, please understand the role of ScrumMaster before you appoint for your team and watch these two Bollywood movies to understand them better:
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