Becoming a scrummaster often means changing your point of view. Neutrality and transparency are a prerequisite. To quote André Comte-Sponville: “where complexity grows, so do the requirements for clarity and distinction” (which I could twist as follows: in the complex world of agile, transparency and separation of roles and responsibilities guarantee its proper functioning).

Because contrary to what many people imagine: educating people about agility means evolving in a complex world. Being a scrummaster means ensuring that the liberating constraints necessary for the emergence of agile practices are present and adapted. It’s about ordering (order and rigor in agile) the container that will allow the system and its agents (the organization and its members) to “co-evolve” (to use the term from Dave Snowden, ALE 2011 video).

Often I’m confronted with future scrummasters who are very involved (in a very operational sense) in projects. Often because these people know their organization, their projects perfectly and they have an opinion -often good- on many things. All of this is positive but ultimately can be very detrimental to their role, all these skills and knowledge may perhaps be too invasive.

To better apprehend this new role of scrummaster I can advise them this little game: try for a few minutes to be me. You are me (I’m having fun but this isn’t an exercise to further amplify my oversized ego). That is, someone who will be a coach, scrummaster, facilitator, in a company he doesn’t know (imagine that you know neither the structure, nor its past, nor the people, etc… I know it’s hard, conditioning is a relentless enemy).

So, you are me arriving at your place:

In what way am I legitimate to know what the product owner’s need is ? (my role is to support the product owner to better/well express their need).

In what way am I legitimate to commit in the team’s place on the scope they will deliver? (my role is to ensure that the team has committed with full knowledge and honesty, as accurately as possible).

In what way am I legitimate to have an opinion on the team’s estimates? (my role is to ensure that the team provides the estimates they deem realistic, potentially to ensure that all team members have been able to express themselves -and even there I’m touching a limit-)

In what way am I legitimate to arbitrate certain choices during the iteration ? (my role is to ensure that the roles and responsibilities of each of the actors are well respected, or otherwise that these choices have been known, analyzed, validated by the project actors with full knowledge of the facts).

In what way am I legitimate to assign tasks to certain team members? (I have no role in this matter, generally I suggest they describe the tasks necessary for the success of the project, the iteration, the objective because this “design” effort is recognized as a help since Descartes’ method rules)

etcetera etcetera

This distancing helps to better apprehend the role of scrummaster. It’s necessary to truly liberate teams. And the pleasure you’ll have observing this liberation is much more pleasant than the simpler and more immediate pleasure of taking action in the team’s place.