Knowledge Base / Scrum Team / Scrum Master / How is the Scrum Master?
The Scrum Master is competent in soft skills
The individual who performs well as a Scrum Master has behavioral and personal skills that allow him to conduct his work. These are called soft skills.
Facilitating the work of the Scrum Team, an important part of the Scrum Master’s work, includes promoting the detection and transparency of problems and ensuring good rapport among the Developers and between them and the Product Owner.
The Scrum Master uses good communication and an active voice – but without commanding – to accomplish this work. He also uses his negotiation and political skills to encourage conflict resolution and guide the Scrum Team’s decision-making process towards a consensus. A Scrum Master who does not have the right profile may find it difficult to carry out his responsibilities.
A self-confident, courageous, and proactive Scrum Master acts as a change agent in the organization and, through persistence and perseverance, promotes the necessary changes so that the Scrum Team can deliver value to its customers.
The Scrum Master uses these same skills to articulate at different organizational levels with the goal of removing impediments and defending the Developers (and teaching them how to defend themselves) from external interferences and changes that may affect the Sprint Goal.
The following are examples of desirable soft skills in a Scrum Master:
- Is a skilled communicator
- Knows how to listen
- Is flexible and adaptable
- Has negotiation and political skills
- Has problem-solving and critical-thinking skills
- Has the ability to teach, through coaching or mentoring
- Has facilitation skills
- Is collaborative
- Is self-confident
- Is self-aware
- Is patient
- Is persistent and persevering
- Is sociable
- Hnows how to manage time
- Has a positive attitude
Discussion: Does the Scrum Master need technical knowledge?
A common myth suggests that an effective Scrum Master must have prior experience as a Developer. In reality, the skills needed for technical work – such as, for example, knowledge of computer programming for software development – and the skills needed to be a Scrum Master are very different. I do agree that technical knowledge can help the Scrum Master insert himself more quickly into the work context of the Developers, in addition to facilitating his reading of scenarios in each situation.
But what I see in practice is that a good Scrum Master doesn’t really need this knowledge to get the job done. By using the proper soft skills, he will gradually learn the language of the Developers, understand the important terms of their work, fit in, and earn their respect.
By avoiding a technical Scrum Master, we also aim to avoid a common problem in these scenarios: using that knowledge to interfere in discussions (and, therefore, in the content) of the Developers’ work, undermining their autonomy. Myself, having a strong technical background in software development, had to deal with this issue carefully in my early career as a Scrum Master.