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:

1. Product/Domain knowledge
2. Hands-on technical expertise - Java, .Net, mobile programming, etc.
3. Knowledge of tools - Jira, VersionOne, etc.
4. Facilitation Skills - encouraging participation from all, balancing participation, building consensus, etc.
5. Process knowledge (#Agile, #Scrum, #Kanban, etc.)
6. Practical Agile experience - any agile process/framework
7. Positivity (positive attitude, positive energy and positive language)
8. Rapport building skills
9. Analytical skills - ability to understand new and complex topics, ability to integrate multiple ideas.
10. 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...