Minimum Set of Skills for Scrum Masters
This is what I learned after scanning through 100+ Scrum Master job descriptions from across the world.
👋 Hello, I’m Vibhor, and welcome to the 🌟 monthly free edition 🌟 of my weekly QnA Series powered by Winning Strategy. Every week, I answer one reader question and publish 2 posts about Agile Products, Role-Based Skills, and anything else that you need answered about your Career Growth. You can send me your questions here.
On to this week’s question!
Q: Hi Vibhor! I’ve been a Scrum Master for 5 years now. I understand that certain skills are absolutely a must for this role, but after talking to some senior members at my company, I've realized that the scope of skills I had in mind is rather limited. Can you please provide some insight into the skills I need to future-proof my role?
Thank you for the question.
While thinking of a reply, I realized that the confusion you are experiencing is the same as for any other role. So, I had to zoom out a little and draw inspiration from other roles that have encountered the same problem.
This post is the result of all the research.
Irrespective of their profession, when I asked people to identify the most important skills for their job, here's what most people said:
“Leadership.”
In short, they had “no idea.”
You see, when it comes to “skills,” the only time we talk about them or pay some close attention to them is when we’re looking for a job.
The easiest and, by far, most effective and practical way to identify the skills you need to do your job is to look at the job description.
So, I scanned some 100+ job descriptions from around the world. You can download them all here.
Zooming in, I found that for Scrum Masters, all the “most important” skills can be categorized into 11 broad groups.
This is the minimum set of skills you need to future-proof your role as a Scrum Master. Let's examine exactly what various companies and hiring managers expect from these skills.
Frameworks
This is about having the knowledge of implementing various Agile Frameworks including, but not limited to, Scrum, Kanban, and SAFe.
This may come as a shock, but when it comes to your role, “Scrum” isn’t the only framework they want you to be an expert in. They expect you to know all (as many as possible) scalable or non-scalable Agile frameworks.
Why?
So you can help the team apply the right mix to their specific situation.
Here’s what hiring managers expect from you when it comes to Agile frameworks:
New SMs:
“Understand various agile frameworks, events, and artifacts (i.e., Scrum, Kanban) and how to apply them effectively.”
“Help the team follow Scrum and Kanban processes, leveraging tools like JIRA.”
Mid Level SMs:
“Actively manage Kanban boards to ensure effective workflow and limit work in progress.”
“Exposure to implementing XP practices like TDD and BDD and hands-on experience with scaling frameworks like SAFe and Scrum@Scale.”
Senior SMs
“Facilitate and support all SAFe events: Program Increment Planning, Iteration Planning, Daily Stand-Up, Program Iteration Planning, and Retrospective.”
“Promote continuous delivery pipelines and built-in quality, adhering to Lean UX innovation cycles.”
Facilitation
As a Scrum Master, you are more than just a facilitator.
However, facilitation is the “primary technique” you use to accomplish the majority of your work. In fact, all your other skills shine through you only when you are facilitating something.
This makes “facilitation” the most “critical skill” for Scrum Masters.
Here’s what hiring managers expect from you when it comes to facilitation:
New SMs:
"Facilitate scrum events as required or requested: sprint planning, daily scrum, sprint reviews, retrospectives, product increment and release planning, and other events related to the team’s Sprint Goal"
"Facilitate discussion and conflict resolution" and "guide the team in efforts for contextually increasing self-management and continuous improvement"
Mid Level SMs:
"Helps teams and stakeholders to understand when to enact Scrum practices and empirical product development"
"Facilitate Agile practices and influence outside of immediate work/team"
"Guide development teams to higher Scrum maturity by facilitating the Scrum process"
Senior SMs
"Facilitate the coordinated preparation and execution of release planning for the Agile team"
"Lead continuous improvement efforts within teams through effective facilitation of retrospectives"
"Maintain process documentation, ensuring transparency and effective communication across the organization through facilitation"
"Guide teams in self-organization and cross-functional collaboration through facilitation to enhance project delivery"
"Assist with the coordination of cross-team activities through facilitation to ensure seamless project execution"
"Promote Agile best practices and facilitate the adoption of Agile methodologies within the team and broader organization"
Check out the posts below to learn this skill:
Impediment Removal
There is a big misconception about this one.
As a Scrum Master, you are not the “impediment remover.”
However, you help the team "identify and address” challenges that manifest as "blockers" and "impediments."
Here’s what hiring managers expect when it comes to impediment removal:
New SMs:
"Identify and actively work to remove impediments to the team's progress"
"Empower team members to identify and remove impediments by providing them with tools and techniques"
Mid Level SMs:
"Facilitate the removal of impediments/obstacles through direct action or by coordinating efforts of the team and external entities"
"Act as a liaison between the team and external departments to negotiate and remove obstacles"
"Monitor project progress to preemptively identify potential impediments and devise plans for their removal"
Senior SMs
"Ensure timely identification, communication, and resolution of impediments, leveraging organizational resources"
"Develop strategies for effective impediment removal, including proactive identification and resolution processes"
"Lead efforts in diagnosing and resolving complex impediments that affect project delivery"
"Collaborate with other Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches to share best practices for impediment removal"
"Organize and lead sessions focused on impediment removal”
Checkout the posts below to learn more:
Coaching & Mentoring
This one is kind of obvious.
As a Scrum Master, you need to be a coach and a mentor.
But very few know “when” to act like a coach and “when” to act like a mentor.
How to figure out the appropriate role for a particular issue or situation?
It is quite simple.
You Ask!
You ask your team or the individual you are interacting with what they want you to be.
You say,
“For this particular issue, in this particular situation, do you want me to be your coach or a mentor?”
When acting like a Coach, ask questions like:
“What actions can you take to reach your end goal?”
When acting like a Mentor, ask questions like:
“What support can I offer to help you reach your end goal?”
Note: You don’t give these options when the team or individual is new to Agile.
When they are new, your role is to “Teach.”
Figure out what they need to learn and be a Teacher first.
That said, here’s what most hiring managers expect when it comes to coaching and mentoring:
New SMs:
"Act as a coach to colleagues less experienced in the use of agile frameworks and propose improvements that support the delivery of features"
"Coach the team to apply the techniques of Agile Principles with Scrum Framework to enable their success"
Mid Level SMs:
"Coach and mentor the team in how to use Scrum events and artifacts to identify emergent issues within each Sprint and collaboratively work to self-organize to resolve them"
"Coach teams in self-organization, developing cross-functional skill sets, acquiring domain knowledge, and communication."
“Coach teams and stakeholders to understand and enact Scrum and empirical product development"
Senior SMs
"Lead and coach the team in its Scrum adoption; help stakeholders learn and demonstrate their understanding of agile ways of working."
"Support the ongoing development of a positive work environment that promotes service to the business, quality, innovation, and teamwork and ensure timely communication of issues/points of interest"
"Provide thought leadership and/or industry knowledge for Agile execution and participate in capability building for the team and business unit"
"Coach and facilitate requirements meetings with product owners and work with business analysts, software architects, and other scrum masters to break down and load user stories"
Checkout the posts below to learn more:
Stakeholder Engagement
This involves communicating effectively with stakeholders, including
product owners,
development teams, and
upper management
Here’s what hiring managers expect from you when it comes to stakeholder engagement:
New SMs:
"Act as the point of contact for external communications (e.g., from customers or stakeholders)"
"Manage stakeholders and maintain good relationships with internal and external collaborators"
Mid Level SMs:
"Work closely with Business clients & Product owners to understand their product vision"
"Liaise with internal stakeholders to include product owners from multiple product teams, software teams, business analysts, software quality assurance, and DevOps teams"
"Facilitate Agile practices; influence outside of immediate work/team"
Senior SMs
"Engage stakeholders in the Agile process through effective facilitation of Scrum ceremonies"
"Engage and lead appropriate stakeholders to identify and manage impediments and required outcomes of projects for the business"
"Ensure everything the Agile team is working on is acknowledged and accounted for in the Product Backlog, protecting the team from distractions"
"Develop strong relationships with stakeholders, including executives, product owners, and external partners, to ensure alignment, collaboration, and support for agile initiatives."
Checkout the posts below to learn more:
Backlog Management
This simply refers to:
“Collaborating with product owners and team members to refine and prioritize the product backlog making sure it is aligned with project objectives.”
Here’s what hiring managers expect from you when it comes to backlog management:
New to Mid-Level SMs:
“Assists the Product Owner with backlog maintenance and internal and external communications”
"Ensures everything the Agile team is working on is acknowledged and accounted for in the Product Backlog, protecting the team from distractions."
“Works with team members to keep product backlogs and plans visible, relevant, and prioritized”
"Works closely with the Product Owner to ensure that the product backlog is well-maintained, prioritized, and aligned with the project goals."
“Able to provide clear communication of the vision, goals and product backlog items to the development team”
Senior SMs
"Guide product management teams in defining MVPs, story mapping, writing stories, backlog prioritization, and management"
“Collaborate with product owners and stakeholders to prioritize using the WSJF framework and manage the product backlog effectively.”
Checkout the posts below to learn more:
Performance Metrics Monitoring
This refers to “tracking and reporting” on team performance metrics to assess progress and areas for improvement.
Here’s what hiring managers expect when it comes to performance tracking:
New SMs:
"Maintain team data in project management software (i.e. JIRA, TargetProcess, etc.) to support estimates and execution."
"Collect and share team metrics with the team, determine when new metrics are needed, and develop improvements in metrics"
Mid Level SMs:
"Track and communicate team progress, including sprint burndown charts and velocity metrics"
"Deep understanding of agile metrics (tasks, backlog tracking, burndown metrics, velocity, user stories, etc.) to analyze and improve sprint planning"
"Maintain backlog; Iteration plans and publish Jira reports to ensure product owner is updated about team’s progress"
Senior SMs
"Develops, tracks, and communicates team’s agile adoption and progress metrics, including velocity, burn-down and cycle time"
"Responsible for the end-to-end Jira Tool administration and Project tracking. Prepare roadmaps in Jira to track project progress”
“Create dashboards in Jira for Development and Leadership Teams”
"Presents high-level project readouts for senior management."
Checkout the posts below to learn more:
Risk and Dependency Management
This involves:
identifying potential risks and dependencies
Identifying them early in the project lifecycle and
developing strategies to mitigate them.
Here’s what hiring managers expect when it comes to risks and dependencies:
New to Mid-Level SMs:
"Assist in the management of risks, dependencies, roadblocks and also track and escalate impediments"
"Work with the Product Owner to ensure effective backlog refinement, taking risks and dependencies into account"
"Ensure timely identification, communication, and resolution of risks, leveraging organizational resources"
"Monitor project progress to preemptively identify potential risks and devise plans for their mitigation"
"Facilitate risk assessment and dependency mapping sessions with the team and stakeholders"
"Collaborate with other Scrum Masters to share strategies on risk and dependency management"
Senior SMs
"Develop strategies for effective risk management, including proactive identification and resolution processes"
"Implement risk mitigation plans and coordinate with other teams to manage dependencies"
"Lead efforts in diagnosing and resolving complex risks that affect project delivery"
"Report to project stakeholders on risk status and dependency management efforts"
Process Improvement
This skill helps you hunt for opportunities to optimize:
team workflows,
processes, and
overall efficiency
through various feedback loops, whether available or custom-made.
Here’s what hiring managers expect when it comes to risks and dependencies:
New SMs:
"Monitors and improves the scrum process and project progress, helping to resolve impediments in the development process"
“Dedicated to continuous process improvement through feedback loops, coaching, retrospectives and individual improvement"
Mid Level SMs:
"Assess the maturity of scrum team, provide support & coach the team to a higher level of maturity & promote continuous process improvement"
"Optimize scrum team velocity to identify improvement opportunities to achieve higher levels of team performance"
"Collaborate with others to increase the effectiveness of the application of iterative development in the organization"
Senior SMs:
"Develop collaboration and alignment across cross-functional teams, promoting transparency, exchanged opinions, and collective accountability"
"Drives a continuous improvement culture within the team and business"
"Drive continuous improvement and change for 3-4 Agile teams, acting as a change agent to adapt processes to maximize productivity throughout the project lifecycle"
"Identify opportunities for process improvement and organizational change, advocating for agile standard methodologies and driving initiatives to enhance efficiency, quality, and productivity"
"Champion continuous improvement initiatives within the team and across the organization, driving increased efficiency and effectiveness"
Leadership
Servant Leadership is not just for Scrum Masters. A true leader always exhibits a servant-leader attitude.
This attitude helps you understand why:
team empowerment
self-organization, and
a positive working environment
is crucial for team productivity.
Here’s what hiring managers expect from you when it comes to leadership:
New SMs:
"Promote Agile values, principles and practices within the organization"
"Serve as a dedicated Scrum Master for multiple teams, guiding them through the agile process and ensuring adherence to Scrum principles and practices"
Mid Level SMs:
"Engages with any needed business entity to help remove obstacles to his or her teams being able to deliver on stated goals and helps to negotiate working agreements"
"Collaborate closely with the product owners and technology leads to pushing the agile development process forward"
"Engage and lead appropriate stakeholders to identify and manage impediments and required outcomes of projects for the business"
Senior SMs:
"Demonstrate a collaborative approach to accomplish work and be able to influence a wide range of key internal and external stakeholders of all levels"
"Collaborate with others to increase the effectiveness of the application of iterative development in the organization"
"Develop collaboration and alignment across cross-functional teams, promoting transparency, exchanged opinions, and collective accountability"
"Operates at a group/enterprise-wide level and serves as a specialist resource to senior leaders and stakeholders"
Conflict Resolution and Negotiation
This involves:
mediating conflicts within the team
mediating conflicts between stakeholders
The purpose is to ensure a harmonious work environment. Developing this skill requires mastering active listening and expertise in negotiation.
Here’s what hiring managers expect from you when it comes to conflicts:
Mid Level SMs:
"Mediate conflicts within the team and with external parties"
"Facilitate discussion leading to collective decision-making, goal setting and conflict resolution within the team"
"Work through conflicts and differing opinions and provide solutions to a common goal"
"Resolves team impediments internally and externally of your team by helping to identify them early and working with relevant stakeholders who will be able to remove impediments"
Senior SMs:
"Diagnose problematic situations, facilitate their resolution by ensuring the implementation of solutions"
“Manage project conflicts, challenges and dynamic business requirements to keep operations running at a high performance”
"Balance competing or conflicting goals of various departments/stakeholders, requiring a mature, diplomatic approach"
What Differentiates New SMs from Senior SMs
One common mistake made by many Scrum Masters is assuming that all Scrum Master roles are the same.
There are 3 levels of expertise in Scrum Masters.
New
Mid-Level with 3 years of experience
Senior with 5+ years of experience
Also called Scrum Master I, II and III, each level comes with a different set of expertise and expectations (from the team and hiring manager).
Scrum Masters with different levels of experience excel in different types of roles.
New SMs
These Scrum Masters do the foundational stuff usually with single teams. They have the following skills:
Scrum Framework
Transparency
Retrospective
Mid-Level SMs
These Scrum Masters focus on improving multiple teams. They possess all of the New SM skills plus:
Evangelizing Agile/Scrum:
To achieve this, combine your Scrum Framework Knowledge with communicating the benefits of Agile and Scrum to all levels of the organization
Scaling Scrum:
To achieve this, combine your Scrum Event Facilitation Skills with knowledge of scaled frameworks
Mentoring:
To achieve this, combine your Team Level Coaching Skills with sharing your knowledge and experiences
Multi-team Conflicts:
To achieve this, combine your Team Level Conflict Resolution Skills with understanding of inter-team dynamics and the ability to mediate issues that could impact multiple teams
Handling multiple teams:
To achieve this, combine your Team Level Communication Skills with managing communications between multiple teams and stakeholders
Risk Management:
To achieve this, combine your Backlog Management Skills with learning how to identify, assess, and prioritize risks in product development
Change Management:
To achieve this, combine your Team-Building Skills with skills to overcome resistance and facilitate the adoption of Agile and Scrum practices across the organization.
Multiple frameworks:
To achieve this, combine your Stakeholder Management Skills with understanding the nuances and benefits of Agile frameworks beyond Scrum, such as Kanban or XP. Learn how to integrate these practices to meet the needs of different stakeholders and project types.
Advanced Agile Metrics:
To achieve this, combine your Transparency Mindset with metrics to provide deeper insights into team performance, product health, and delivery forecasts across multiple teams.
Product development:
To achieve this, learn to leverage your Retrospectives to refine product strategy, enhance user experience, and optimize delivery across multiple teams.
Senior SMs
These Scrum Masters organization-wide. They possess New SM skills plus Mid-Level SM skills plus:
Strategic planning:
To achieve this level, learn to align Agile frameworks with the organization's long-term goals
Scaling Scrum org-wide:
To achieve this, apply your knowledge of Scaling Scrum at the organizational level. Learn to customize frameworks like SAFe and LeSS to fit your company's unique context.
Enterprise level coaching:
To achieve this enhance your mentoring skills to include enterprise-level coaching. Develop the ability to coach not just teams and individuals but also senior executives and leaders.
Organizational Design:
To achieve this use your experience in resolving Multi-Team Conflicts to influence organizational design. Promote structures and processes that minimize conflicts and communication barriers.
Leadership:
To achieve this build on your experience with Multiple Teams to develop Leadership Skills that inspire the entire organization. Focus on
leading by example,
articulating a clear vision for Agile within the company and
motivating everyone, from team members to top executives, to commit to and work towards that vision.
Process Innovation:
To achieve this, learn to Identify Risks not just at the team or project level but in organizational processes and workflows.
Agile Transformation:
To achieve this, learn to deepen your Change Management expertise with a focus on Agile transformation. This involves leading the shift in organizational culture, processes, and mindset to fully embrace Agile practices at all levels
Multi-Product Dynamics:
To achieve this, learn to apply different Agile Frameworks across various products or services within the organization. Learn to customize frameworks to meet the specific needs of each product.
Executive Communication:
To achieve this, learn to communicate the value of Agile practices, progress, and outcomes in terms that resonate with senior management, using data and Advanced Agile Metrics to support your case
Fun fact about Scrum Master job descriptions
I ran all of the 100+ SM job descriptions through a word cloud generator. Shows how a SM’s life revolves around their “team.”
You can download the job descriptions I used for research here.
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Vibhor Chandel