What skills a Scrum Master should have?

I am taking the interviews for the scrum master position for one of my clients and I asked the very basic starting question as an interviewer: "Tell me about your skills and experience as SM?"

Interviewees: "I am playing the role of a scrum master for the last X number of years and I am taking care of scrum ceremonies like sprint planning, daily standup, sprint review, sprint retrospective, and backlog refinement as well. I also know a few other frameworks like Kanban & SaFe but never get full exposer on these frameworks."(8 out of 10 interviews I received a similar answer)

Me: What else apart from the host duties you do? (my expectations in the other technical area knowledge not in-depth but in width at least)

Interviewees: "These are the only duties we are expecting from the scrum master role so I know all of these ceremonies and different type of retrospectives and feedback collection techniques"

Me: ok and what you know about the business or domain knowledge?

Interviewees: "Those come under product owner role not scrum master forte" (Most of the responses)

Now from these interview conversations, I understand two problems with this role's expectation.

1. Basic requirements in the scrum master job descriptions. (we can solve easily by adding the right expectations and filter out the candidate at screening level)
2. Understanding the scrum master role and responsibility. (we will try to understand here)

Before going toward the solution let's try to understand the misperception from this role

1. A Boss:- who always tries to command and control the team.
2. A Secretary:- who only planning the scrum events.
3. An Admin:- who just works in the tools like JIRA and provides the related assistance.
4. A Host:- who leading the ceremonies, making notes, and sending the MOM.
5. Decision's Influencer:- who always try to drive the things his/her own perception

Then what a scrum master should do?

According to the scrum guide and founders of the scrum, SM is a servant leader and has different responsibilities for the scrum team, product owner, and organization.

The Scrum Master serves the Scrum Team in several ways, including:

• Coaching the team members in self-management and cross-functionality;
• Helping the Scrum Team focus on creating high-value Increments that meet the Definition of Done;
• Causing the removal of impediments to the Scrum Team’s progress; and,
• Ensuring that all Scrum events take place and are positive, productive, and kept within the timebox.

The Scrum Master serves the Product Owner in several ways, including:

• Helping find techniques for effective Product Goal definition and Product Backlog management;
• Helping the Scrum Team understand the need for clear and concise Product Backlog items;
• Helping establish empirical product planning for a complex environment; and,
• Facilitating stakeholder collaboration as requested or needed.

The Scrum Master serves the organization in several ways, including:

• Leading, training, and coaching the organization in its Scrum adoption;
• Planning and advising Scrum implementations within the organization;
• Helping employees and stakeholders understand and enact an empirical approach for complex work; and,
• Removing barriers between stakeholders and Scrum Teams.

Now apart from these here are the following skills SM should have:-

1. Knowledgeable
2. Listening skill
3. Patient
4. Transparent
5. Collaborative

and if we applying the T- shaped skills learning then whatever things we discussed till now are verticle bar learning where we should have expertise. Whereas the horizontal bar is the ability to collaborate across disciplines with experts in other areas like

1. Understanding of programming principles for understanding technical problems
2. Code refactoring & Code Quality
3. DevOps Foundations
4. Pair programming concept
5. Test-Driven-Development & Behavior-driven-Development
6. Agile Project Management

Here are few learning paths which will help you to understand all these horizontal skills:-

Master Agile Software Development

Applying Lean, DevOps, and Agile to Your IT Organization

I am providing free coaching on agile project management and scrum master career growth, feel free to connect with me on Linkedin.