Essential Skills for a Scrum Master
What skills should we look for while selecting/hiring a Scrum Master or Team Coach (a framework-agnostic term)?
Recently, I posted this question on LinkedIn and asked fellow Agile experts to select top five skills that they consider essential from the list of ten commonly expected skills below:
- Product/Domain knowledge
- Hands-on technical expertise - Java, .Net, mobile programming, etc.
- Knowledge of tools - Jira, VersionOne, etc.
- Facilitation Skills - encouraging participation from all, balancing participation, building consensus, etc.
- Process knowledge (#Agile, #Scrum, #Kanban, etc.)
- Practical Agile experience - any agile process/framework
- Positivity (positive attitude, positive energy and positive language)
- Rapport building skills
- Analytical skills - ability to understand new and complex topics, ability to integrate multiple ideas.
- Experience interacting with Client and senior management
You can find the original post here.
I was happy to see good overall response to the post. My sincere thanks to all who responded.
There was a good variety of responses, some almost the opposite of one another, but I could sense some pattern in there. While I did not intend this to be a formal survey, given that there were enough responses, I thought of analysing the data.
Below is how the Scrum Master skills would rank based on the list of about 40 expert responses:
Quick notes:
- To keep it simple, only those votes were counted that mentioned the original list of skills I shared.
- Some individuals shared the list of more than 5 skills. Only the first skills were taken into consideration.
- Weighted score is based on: score of 10 for the first skill selected by an individual, 9 for second skill, and so on.
Personally, I would agree with this list quite a bit. While it is a collection of some 40 random responses and does not follow a structured sampling technique, I think it captures the essential skills for a Scrum Master in a very meaningful manner.
I think more than the ranking, it is important to understand the relevance of each skill, which sometimes might vary depending on a particular context. I am sharing below my opinion categorizing each skill as 'must have', 'should have' or 'could have' (or nice to have):
=> Positivity (positive attitude, language and demeanour)
- Must have. In my experience, a skeptic (or negative) person will be quite ineffective in Scrum Master role, no matter how knowledgeable or experienced.
=> Analytical skills
- Must have. This combined with Positivity gives you a person who is eager to learn and adapts quickly.
=> Facilitation Skills
- Must have: if sourcing from outside.
- Should have: if sourcing internally, but must have good communication skills so they can learn facilitation skills quickly.
=> Process Knowledge (#Agile, #Scrum, #Kanban, etc.)
- Must have in depth knowledge on at least one process
- Should have knowledge on multiple frameworks
=> Practical Agile Experience
- Must have if you are sourcing from outside
- Should have if you are sourcing it internally
=> Rapport Building Skills
- Must have. Somewhat overlaps with Positivity.
=> Knowledge of tools - Jira, VersionOne, etc.
- Should have exposure to at least one tool to speed up the learning curve
=> Hands-on Technical Expertise
- Must have if you want the SM to work as individual contributor or play the role of architect also (All the best!!)
- Could have if you are looking for a full time Scrum Master (an enabler)
=> Product/Domain Knowledge
- Could have
=> Experience interacting with Client and senior management
- Not needed. If the person has other 'must have' skills, they should be able to interact comfortably with any human being, including customers and senior management. ;-)
Hope you find some value in this quick analysis of Scrum Master skills. Look forward to hear your thoughts...
Intrapreneur & Innovator | I help companies create better products faster | Training, coaching & consulting. ?? PM me.
6 年Your a Scrum Master now! Who knew? Great stuff. Such a good way to work isn't it?
Lead - QA l Practitioner Shift LEFT l SAFe 4.0 & Certified ScrumMaster? l Lending Products -Home Loan, Personal Loan, Overdraft & Credit Card. Payments - xBoarder, OSKO, Insurance, Healthcare l Azure DevOps I AU Citizen
6 年Good work done and considering dynamic nature of every project some have’s might rank up or down but overall it does make lot of sense ??
Experienced agile practitioner
6 年Sanjay Kumar: "Should have exposure to at least one tool to speed up the learning curve" -- so a Scrum Master who has been able to manage perfectly well in teams without a tool such as Jira would be at a disadvantage? Dependency on tools is seen as a good thing?
Visionary Human Potential Catalyst | Personal and Professional Growth with AI | Agile Transformation Leader | Storyteller
6 年Jeppe Agerbo this might come in handy?
Agile Transformation Coach, Enterprise Agile Coach, Author
6 年Friends, I have reworked the later part of the article, categorizing skills as 'must have', 'should have' and 'could have'. Please review if it makes better sense. Thanks!