10 signs your Scrum Master doesn't understand Scrum

As an enterprise Coach, I meet a lot of Scrum teams. Despite its widespread adoption Scrum is rarely done well. Many Scrum Masters, the pivotal role responsible for fostering a high-performing team, aren't even prepared to grasp the essence of their job. Being an advocate for continuous improvement and a firm believer in the power of sarcasm to make a point, I'm not here to cast blame or ridicule anyone, but to tigger a discussion. I genuinely believe that most Scrum Masters who find themselves in these situations came there unwittingly, and want to do better. But they may lack the right understanding or guidance to see what's wrong. So - here goes my Top 10 list of common pitfalls and misconceptions how a Scrum Master could get in their own way of fostering an environment of growth, learning, and continuous improvement:

10 Signs that Your Scrum Master Doesn't Understand Scrum

Customer Focus? Maybe Later - For Now, Let's Get Scrum Straight!

A Scrum Master who prioritizes "getting Scrum straight" over customer focus misunderstands the core value of delivering value to the customer. Scrum emphasizes customer collaboration and responding to their changing needs, ensuring that the team builds products that meet their expectations and bring maximum value.

Team Dynamics? We Had a Team Building Workshop at the Kick-off, So We're Good.

Believing that a one-time team building workshop is sufficient for effective team dynamics disregards the continuous effort needed for building and maintaining a high-performing team. In Scrum, fostering a collaborative and self-organizing team is an ongoing process, requiring consistent support and attention from the Scrum Master.

Transparency and Openness? Nah - Nothing Beats a Great Hidden Agenda!

A Scrum Master who drives a hidden agenda undermines the essence of Scrum's core foundation of trust. Transparency allows for honest visibility into the team's progress, challenges, and achievements, fostering trust among stakeholders. Hidden agendas defer problems caused by misalignment into the future, at which point they may have grown significantly.

Facilitation? Servant Leadership? No, They Need Someone Who Gives Them Clear Direction!

While there are reasons for being directive, that should be a last resort. Facilitating collaborative discussions and informed decisions improves understanding, and thereby reduces risk. By taking a directive stance as a default, the Scrum Master introduces themselves as a dependency into the team and hampers their growth and collaboration.

Focus on the Sprint Goal Now - We'll Talk About Impediments in the Retro!

Let's be clear - it's not an impediment unless it significantly impacts the team's ability to deliver value. What would you think about a car mechanic who told you, "Just ignore your flat tire, go to work and come back, you can always fix the tire later." Most likely, you won't be going anywhere with a flat tire - and even if you will, the price, cost and duration required to fix a broken hub will exceed the cost of the flat tire by orders of magnitude. While this could be necessary for survival, it should be an informed Product Owner choice, and definitely not a default strategy.

You Want Time for Learning? Just Look at All That Unfinished Work in the Product Backlog!

The Product Backlog is infinite, as it gets replenished in line with demand. A team deferring necessary learning in favor of Velocity loses their edge, and will eventually lose both. Learning isn't a luxury that competes with unfinished work, it keeps the effectiveness of the team up, and trades a bit of time in the short term for improvements to quality, scope and risk in the long term.

Releasable Product Increment? Once a Quarter - otherwise, it's Too Much Overhead.

Delaying the delivery of a releasable product increment contradicts Scrum's principle of delivering value with minimal delay. Even in settings where releases are scheduled at a low frequency, a failure to keep the Product in a releaseable condition introduces risk into the process: as long as our product isn't in a releasable state, we neither know how much work it is to bring it into this state - nor whether we will have the capacity to do so when we need to.

We Wouldn't Need Feedback if you Just Learn to Write Better User Stories!

Creating a false dichotomy between writing user stories and collecting feedback is a thorough misunderstanding of Scrum's empirical approach. User stories only inform us what we believe a priori about what users need, whereas feedback validates that we did indeed solve their problem. Just think of the last time you went to a restaurant and didn't like the meal: Would you have liked the waiter to blame you for not correctly specifying what you like?

That's the Standard Process. You Can't Change It Just Because It's Stupid.

Scrum is a vehicle for enabling the team to find the process that allows them to perform at their optimum. A broken or ineffective process leads this ad absurdum. Scrum encourages continuous inspection and adaptation to optimize processes and outcomes, fostering a culture of continuous improvement and innovation.

Definition of Done? Yeah, we have one ... somewhere ... Let me find it.

The DoD is one of Scrum's core commitments, as it defines how the team is committing to work. Lacking transparency, clarity or commitment to the Definition of Done is a common source of poor quality and conflict. A good, transparent Definition of Done builds shared understanding both within the team and with stakeholders.

Conclusion

Having a well-informed and capable Scrum Master is essential for a successful Scrum team. I have deliberately phrased the above signs with some sarcasm and hyperbole. In practice, they're often much more subtle. Recognizing them enables you to take proactive steps to improve the effectiveness of the collaboration between Scrum Master, team and stakeholders.

If you spot any of these signs in your team, maybe ... try raising it in the next Retrospective?

Let's Scrum better!