Scrum Masters, ever feel like you’re “herding cats” instead of building high performing teams? Chances are this may be related to the sheer number of teams you’re working with.
One would expect scrum-related activities to increase with each team you’re part of. Typical activities would include facilitating ceremonies, administering agile tooling, reviewing agile metrics, and of course, agile coaching. These are what we’d expect with the Scrum Master role, and the overhead associated is fairly linear, as the graph below indicates in blue.
However, there are some other Scrum-related activities I failed to mention, namely:
- Impediment resolution
- Alignment with other teams/stakeholders
- Buffering against external forces
Given these activities the level of overhead increases — not linearly, but logarithmically, as the graph below indicates in orange.
Think about it: if on average just half of your teams report one (1) impediment in their stand-ups then you are running down 1-4 issues per day. What are the chances of resolving 4 issues within a day?
How about alignment? What if you need Team 1 (your team) to get on the same page with Team 15 (not your team), which happens to reside in a different location/time zone? And if Team 4 has a similar issue?
And what about external forces? What if Product is pushing for scope creep on Team 5 and a Business stakeholder is demanding fixed delivery dates on Team 3, whilst your boss is trying to sneak a side project into Team 2? Do you have the time to run interference for these three teams simultaneously? What if this were happening to all eight teams?
If any of this rings a bell, then what’s probably happened is that you’ve left the realm of Scrum Master and crossed over to Project Management — except it’s at the speed and intensity of Scrum. Very likely you’re running from meeting to meeting and sending a lot of frantic “action item” emails for those impediments (forget face-to-face resolution in this scenario). Worse, you’re probably sending such emails during your other scrum meetings, which sends a poor signal to the team members.
If you’re honest at this point, you’re barely keeping your head above water.
Where do you cross the line from Scrum Master to Project manager? Not certain, but I believe it’s somewhere between 3 and 4 teams. This is the “gray area”.
What’s the solution? Raise up more scrum masters. Look around you: there are qualified people on the teams and elsewhere in the organization. Train and nurture them in their new roles. Buddy them up with seasoned SM’s. Develop an internal coaching practice. Solicit support from agile change agents, management and HR. It’s worth it to you and everyone else.
Great article, Daniel.
Indeed, “forget face-to-face resolution in this scenario”. No time left for such a Scrum Master to build and maintain good relationship with the team(s) and coach them.
Multitasking creates waste and inhibits productivity.