Scrum Master Dedication & PM to Scrum Master Transition

[Joanne Stone]

Dear Agile Coaching Support Group:
 
I need your help.  I have two main questions groups:
 
1. Does a scrum master have to be 100% dedicated to a scrum? Or can he/she manage multiple scrums?  How much time does the role of a scrum master take?  I am hearing that a scrum master's role can be fulfilled by anyone on the scrum team and the role only needs 25% of someone's time.  If this is the case, could we essentially have one full time scrum master on 4 teams?  If a scrum master can be on multiple teams, what is the suggested max they could be on ( I would expect that 4 would be too many)
 
2. In an organization that has 4 levels of traditional waterfall PM's (1 is a project co-ordinator (entry level), 2 is a junior, 3 is intermediate, and 4 is a senior PM) which one's typically move to the scrum master role?  Can more senior PM's typically manage more than one scrum, while the junior and intermediate manage 1?  I understand that it would depend on their ability to think scrum and be scrum.  However from your perspective, how have you seen transitions take place to the scrum role?
 
Thanks,
 
Joanne Stone.

[Mark Levison]

Joanne - welcome to the group. 

On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 10:21 AM, Joanne Stone <joann...@rogers.com> wrote:

Dear Agile Coaching Support Group:
 
I need your help.  I have two main questions groups:
 
1. Does a scrum master have to be 100% dedicated to a scrum? Or can he/she manage multiple scrums?  How much time does the role of a scrum master take?  I am hearing that a scrum master's role can be fulfilled by anyone on the scrum team and the role only needs 25% of someone's time.  If this is the case, could we essentially have one full time scrum master on 4 teams?  If a scrum master can be on multiple teams, what is the suggested max they could be on ( I would expect that 4 would be too many)

My experience leads to think in the main this is a full time role. If they take on two teams they're simply delaying the time it takes those teams to reach high performance. If they take on more than two teams then all they're doing is acting meeting planners and time keepers.

 
2. In an organization that has 4 levels of traditional waterfall PM's (1 is a project co-ordinator (entry level), 2 is a junior, 3 is intermediate, and 4 is a senior PM) which one's typically move to the scrum master role?  Can more senior PM's typically manage more than one scrum, while the junior and intermediate manage 1?  I understand that it would depend on their ability to think scrum and be scrum.  However from your perspective, how have you seen transitions take place to the scrum role?

First up not all PM's make good ScrumMaster's. What matters isn't their experience, age or anything else. What matters is can they step back, act without authority, support the team and help the team achieve its goals? This is a role that requires you set your ego aside. In most cases the best ScrumMaster's are people who have been dooers on the team who want to move to a people oriented role.

FYI ScrumMaster training doesn't necessarily equip someone for the role. It is merely a starting point.

Off to improve my ScrumMaster Training.

Cheers
Mark Levison
Agile Pain Relief Consulting | Writing
Proud Sponsor of Agile Tour Gatineau Ottawa Nov 28, Toronto 26 and Montreal 24

[Alan Dayley]

Joanne,

1. ScrumMaster is a full time position, 100% dedicated to one team. This is especially true for a team that is new to Scrum or a ScrumMaster that is new. And the new ScrumMaster and new team will need an Agile Coach or someone who is can be an Agile mentor.

Period.

An experienced ScrumMaster can handle three teams, maximum. And that is only if all three teams have been doing Scrum well for a while.

The ScrumMaster is NOT just a meeting facilitator and progress checker. See: http://www.bigvisible.com/2012/10/why-a-dedicated-scrummaster/ and http://www.bigvisible.com/2012/09/do-scrummasters-need-agile-checklists/

2. A significant number of PMs have a hard time changing their thinking from traditional to Agile. I would even go so far as to say that the amount of experience and expertise in PM skills does not correlate at all to how good or bad a PM will be as a ScrumMaster. PMs that can make the transition well are ones that are already striving to be a servant leader even before Agile. Simply re-titling PMs to ScrumMaster does not mean you have transitioned to Scrum.

Traditional PMs are required to "keep the project on track," "make sure deadlines are met" and "allocate resources." ScrumMasters don't do that, as you may have noticed in the reading of the links above.

What is the big picture to your questions? What can we in this group help you plan and do?

Alan

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[Mark Kilby]

Joanne:

Did you recently take SAFe training?  I suspect this is where the "25% scrummaster" recommendation comes from often these days.

I would say I'm with Alan and Mark in recommending that Scrummaster is a full-time position and EVENTUALLY a Scrummaster could take guiding 3-4 teams.  However, if you have a new Scrummaster and a team new to Scrum, you want a 1-1 ratio.  As the team gets comfortable with Scrum (e.g., can hit a steady velocity), then the Scrummaster may be able to launch a second team.  However, they will still check in with the first team to see if they can assist with impediments or help them devise a way for a productivity boost.  Should the Scrummaster get those 2 teams to a steady velocity, then a third can be launched.  I find a fourth team can be a stretch condition and it depends on the teams doing related work (i.e. maybe all working on the same product line or agile release train).  However, if you have 3 teams working on very different products, a fourth team will be extremely challenging for the ScrumMaster.

Hope that helps.

Mark Kilby

http://about.me/mckilby

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

[Mark Levison]

On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 6:48 AM, Mark Kilby <mck...@gmail.com> wrote:

Joanne:

Did you recently take SAFe training?  I suspect this is where the "25% scrummaster" recommendation comes from often these days.

Interesting - have you been to their trainings and can you confirm this is what they say? If so may I share this note with a few other people? 

I would say I'm with Alan and Mark in recommending that Scrummaster is a full-time position and EVENTUALLY a Scrummaster could take guiding 3-4 teams.  However, if you have a new Scrummaster and a team new to Scrum, you want a 1-1 ratio.  As the team gets comfortable with Scrum (e.g., can hit a steady velocity), then the Scrummaster may be able to launch a second team.  However, they will still check in with the first team to see if they can assist with impediments or help them devise a way for a productivity boost.  Should the Scrummaster get those 2 teams to a steady velocity, then a third can be launched.  I find a fourth team can be a stretch condition and it depends on the teams doing related work (i.e. maybe all working on the same product line or agile release train).  However, if you have 3 teams working on very different products, a fourth team will be extremely challenging for the ScrumMaster.

FWIW I think that the role stays mostly fulltime into the long term. My experience says as the team get amazingly good - adopted all the agile engineering practices, continuous deployment etc the ScrumMaster focuses upward and outward in tackling organizational challenges.

Cheers

Mark 

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[Alex Pukinskis]

I generally agree with the advice on this thread so far, and I wanted to add a little detail about what I've seen happen with shared ScrumMasters. 

When a ScrumMaster is responsible for multiple teams, they start to focus more on cross-team issues (metrics, higher-level retrospectives, systems problems).  This can be helpful, but it starts to change the relationship with the individual teams.  The ScrumMaster ceases to be a 'pig' on the teams, since they're not around all the time like everyone else.  When they become an outsider, it requires a lot of skill to provide guidance without it seeming like an imposition.  Very few ScrumMasters have this skill.

So a ScrumMaster working with many teams will often sense that the teams would prefer being left alone, and they wait until a team comes to them asking for help.  Most teams would rather work on 14" CRT monitors than ask for help - they tend not to reach out until things have gotten really bad.

If you can't afford to have a ScrumMaster for each team, I think it's more effective to have them focus on a single team for about 2 months at a time, and just leave the other teams fending for themselves.   In two months, you can build trust with the team and get better habits to stick.  This enables the team to function with more intermittent coaching for a while.

I have never seen particularly good results with team members acting as part-time ScrumMasters.  You'll get average results, but you rarely see the team move to really high levels of productivity.   Many organizations aren't worried about whether value delivery for each team is being optimized, so they make this choice.

-Alex

[Joanne Stone]

Mark - yes from there perspective in a DBT (Define Build Test) Scrum XP team of 7-9 developers they say "Scrum masters is approximately 25% duty for one team member".  It also assumes that the team is co-located.  This Scrum XP team is part of an Agile Release Train.  SAFe does not mention anything in there book about sharing a Scrum Master.  So, I was curious as to what this forum thought about it.  I agree with all that is said. It really depends on the team, the individual person who is plays this role and how new the team is.

 

Thanks Mark!

Hope that helps.

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Cheers
Mark Levison
Agile Pain Relief Consulting | Writing

Proud Sponsor of Agile Tour Gatineau Ottawa Nov 28, Toronto 26 and Montreal 24 --

[Alan Dayley]

That is interesting, Joanne.

I don't see a similar statement on their website. For example: http://scaledagileframework.com/scrum-agile-master/ does not document how much time a "Scrum/Agile Master" should dedicate. Or course, I have not read their entire site nor have I attended their training.

Different ideas, good or bad, become twisted into any original idea. While I'm not necessarily a fan of SAFe, I'm careful like Mark to understand the source of some ideas before repeating them as connect to each other.

Alan

[Mark Kilby]

Alan

I just took the 2-day SA course a couple of weeks ago and can confirm the "25% Scrummaster" recommendation. Several of us in the course raised the same concerns.  

To be fair, I think a Scrummaster could oversee 3-4 teams eventually.  However, as a starting point, I feel this is one possible way to slow (or wreck) the release train

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[Alan Dayley]

Thank you for the first-person clarification, Mark.

Alan

[Mark Levison]

On Sun, Feb 24, 2013 at 6:35 AM, Mark Kilby <mck...@gmail.com> wrote:

Alan

I just took the 2-day SA course a couple of weeks ago and can confirm the "25% Scrummaster" recommendation. Several of us in the course raised the same concerns.  

Very helpful. 

To be fair, I think a Scrummaster could oversee 3-4 teams eventually.  However, as a starting point, I feel this is one possible way to slow (or wreck) the release train

That hasn't been my experience but I respect you've done alot of this too and the world has room for multiple perspectives.

Cheers

Mark 

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[Tim Ottinger]

https://leanpub.com/smtb

This is written in sympathy to scrum masters who want to make some meaningful improvement but are not given full-time responsibikity.

It is still somewhat a work in progress so your suggestions and corrections are coveted.