Many thanks to all of those people who responded to my survey. I had around 100 responses from active ScrumMasters, so while it’s only a small sample size, I found the results very enlightening. Lots of people have been asking to see the results so here goes. I’m really interested in reader’s feedback of these too, so please add a comment at the bottom of this blog post if you have an opinion.

This gave me an idea of the level of understanding those responding to the survey should have.

Similarly, it was useful to know much experience as a ScrumMaster those responding had.

Interestingly, the ScrumMasters that responded mostly seemed to be working in well-established Scrum teams. However this didn’t really tell me anything about the self-organising capabilities of those more established teams, or whether those teams had actually been doing Scrum for that duration.

So despite most of those teams being quite well established over time, most of the ScrumMasters had been part of those teams longer than 12 months. Which tells me that maybe despite the team being well established, maybe Scrum or the role of the ScrumMaster was a more recent change.

The most interesting and shocking (for me) result so far. Around 75% of ScrumMasters surveyed dedicate less than half their time to ScrumMaster duties for their team. This worried me more as the role of the ScrumMaster “seemed” to be a new one to these teams. I wanted to find out what these ScrumMasters were doing besides being a ScrumMaster.

This is something I feared was happening in a lot of organisations. ScrumMasters being encouraged to ScrumMaster several teams at once. 45% of those surveyed were supporting 2 or more Scrum teams. This seems to be more focus of managing scrum compliance within many teams, rather than leading one team to the greatness of self-organisation.

7.   Define your role as ScrumMaster in a single logical sentence using no more than 100 chars.

The reason for asking this question to check people’s understanding of what defines a ScrumMaster. There was inconsistency in the results and generally they fell into three different categories:

The Good:

• White-water river guide; The invisible gorilla watcher/minder; Uber Facilitator; Chaos Controller; Team whisperer; Team system Mirror/Reflector;
• Being a sheepherder, keeping the team on point and shielding them from wolves.
• I help the team to become as good as they can be - individually as well as a team. Same for the organisation.

The Bad:

• Making sure that all the scrum meetings happen, making sure that issue tracking software data is up to date
• Help team on planning maintain wbs & artefacts
• Monitoring daily situation on weekly meetings. Checking hours buffers and people's availabilities

The Ugly:

• Helping defend team members from management bullshit.

This showed me that there are misunderstandings about the role of the ScrumMaster. Some people genuinely believe it’s just about managing a process. But in my view it’s so much more – helping people and teams do better and achieve more.

8. Which other duties/responsibilities do you have beyond that of a ScrumMaster on your team? (Summarised below)

A common pattern I see is that a project manager is seen by organisation as a natural fit for the ScrumMaster role. This can lead to a command and control approach, and micro managing a team’s sprint backlog that will prevent a team benefiting from the freedom Scrum gives them. Disappointingly only 12% of those surveying said they didn’t have time to do anything else, other than ScrumMaster their team.

This reassured me that most of those surveyed agreed with my vision for a ScrumMaster, however a significant percentage believe the ScrumMaster is a process controller and a pragmatist when it comes to introducing Scrum.

10. Which of the following activities do you focus on most as a ScrumMaster?

I have selected the ten most popular and the ten least popular from all the activities I listed in the survey.

Most Popular

This is consistent with what people hear most about what the ScrumMaster should be doing, and I can’t disagree with them at all.

Least Popular

What I found more interesting was the activities people didn’t select (above). Whilst I am not saying a ScrumMaster is personally responsible for these activities, the question was around focus. The common theme here was around quality agile engineering practices, which is something a lot of Scrum team fail to see a need for. The ScrumMaster’s job whilst not strictly a technical one, is to help the team build reliable working software in every sprint. I have never seen a team get there without using rigorous agile engineering techniques, such as XP.

I found these results interested as it helped highlight to me that most ScrumMasters don’t dedicate all of their time to being a ScrumMaster. Whereas I believe they should. Scrum is more than a process – it’s a mirror for continuous improvement. If ScrumMasters were focussing more on that they should quickly establish that there is so much more they can do for their teams and their organisations.