In scrum, only three roles exist: Product owner, Dev team and the scrum master.
While the product owner is responsible for driving the project and the dev team is in charge of realizing it, no one really knows exactly what the scrum master’s role is. Is he the one who animates the daily meetings, the poker plannings and retrospectives ? Or may be he is manager of the dev team?

Well he is certainly not the manager of the dev team because he doesn’t make decisions on their behalf. He also doesn’t assign tasks to dev team nor the dev team report to him in anyway. This is because the dev team have to be self organized. It’s in their responsibility to find the best way to make good decisions and increase their productivity.

Okay, how about animating scrum ceremonies ? Also false, in scrum, the dev team must have all the necessary skills to be autonomous. if we let the scrum master do the daily meetings for instance, a dependency on that person is created and may affect the team if he is not able to do the ceremony.

The real scrum master’s role is not obvious because it’s done behind the scenes. The scrum master has a key role of protecting the agile process from any violation. He is also the sworn enemy to all obstacles that may stand between the dev team and their best performance.

Whether it’s coming from the product owner, the dev team or any other person, a good scrum master should alert about violations of the scrum process. For example, an item is considered done while it was not yet deployed on a server hence not respecting the definition of done. Another violation is when the product owner asks for too many items in a single sprint. Even if the dev team is on fire, a wise scrum master should be realistic and avoid overloading the dev team. Remember, partially done items are considered impediments to the next sprint especially if they were deprioritized.

Besides watching out for violations, the scrum master must also watch over the dev team and even the product owner. His presence is essential to detect any possible obstacles such as lack of interest in the daily meeting, little agreement on estimations or even conflicts between colleagues.

Yes, it may sound weird and funny but the scrum master should play the role of shrink. He needs to have great social skills to read between the lines, decrypt the body language and analyse behaviour to understand what’s going wrong. As little as they might be, the scrum master should resolve these obstacles quickly to help his team move forward. However, solving issues must not by by handing over solutions, it should rather be by driving the team to find the best solution by themselves using creativity and diplomacy. This is because giving solutions right away causes dependencies may be even laziness unlike encouraging people to question themselves which dedicates responsibility and self improvement.

For instance, lack of interest in a certain ceremony means that the team has lost motivation which is bad for performances. So what’s wrong? Many reasons jump in such as: is the daily meeting done right ? Is everyone talking to the others or did it become a regular status report meeting ?

A bad approach will be “ you are doing your daily meeting wrong. It’s taking too much time bla bla bla. You must do this, this and this instead…” Notice how the scrum master here sounds like managers when he bosses people around. This is definitely not the best way to go.
The right approach will be to just ask the right question and start the discussion sparkle. For example: do you think your daily meeting is done right ? What don’t you like about your daily meeting ? How can you make it more useful ?
The scrum master has to make sure that this discussion leads to changes crowned by real actions. By doing so, he solves obstacles without creating dependencies but by coaching teams about continuous improvement.

Beside being the shrink of the team and his coach, the scrum master has one last role to play: Inspiring mentor. By playing the guardian of the scrum methodology, the scrum master should set an example in how to be scrum compliant.
Scrum masters have to be very careful with this point. If the scrum master does not respect the agile manifesto, how could you expect others to do so ?
My scrum master once asked me how many days ii need to finish feature A that i knew very little about. I couldn’t really give a proper answer but i felt forced to give an over estimation because he kept insisting.
You see here this is really not how scrum master should behave. It’s more like management or micro management. By doing such actions, the scrum master looses credibility. Inspiring is by making people listen to what you say, motivate them to follow you to the best path. This is not easy because it needs the scrum master to be perfect in every move he does and every word he says but it’s also not impossible.
It’s by staying behind the scenes that the scrum master gets a better view to analyse the situation, think correctly and act accordingly. It’s also important to stay neutral and not take anyone’s side unless that side is the right one.

Today, i think scrum master is more about personality rather than process. He should be a person who likes to serve others, protect and lead them to the right path. But unlike a classic leader who is there to get credits, the scrum master needs to stay behind the scene while the dev team/product owner is congratulated.

You can’t expect anyone to be good at such position but if you find a successful dev team, it’s very much likely that there is a skilled scrum master behind them.