The Scrum Master promotes and supports the use of Scrum

The Scrum Master acts so that the Scrum’s values, practices, and rules are understood and followed by the entire Scrum Team. He teaches Agile, Scrum and the empirical approach to the Developers and to the Product Owner, keeping an eye on deviations in the practice of Scrum and taking any steps deemed necessary to encourage the team to correct these deviations. The goal is to help the Scrum Team maintain focus on creating high value Increments each Sprint that meet the Definition of Done. It is the Scrum Master’s responsibility to ensure that all Scrum events are held effectively and that the respective schedules and timeboxes are respected. He also encourages the Developers to update the Sprint Backlog and monitor progress towards the Sprint Goal.

The Scrum Master promotes the autonomy of the Scrum Team, teaching and coaching them to self-manage around the Product Goal and the Goal of each Sprint, thus gradually increasing their accountability and ability to solve their own problems and arrive at their own solutions. The Scrum Master also stimulates them to develop as a cross-functional team and to practice continuous improvement in their way of working in order to maximize the value generated by them.

Whenever considered necessary, he acts so that other people in the organization understand and support the work of the Scrum Team. At the same time, the Scrum Master teaches the Scrum Team to operate in a changing environment that is frequently hostile to the use of Scrum.

The Scrum Master stimulates the Product Owner to learn Product Backlog management and goal definition techniques, ensuring that she is able to manage the Product Backlog in order to maximize the value generated and to define effective Product and Sprint Goals.

He also encourages the Product Owner and Developers to collaborate on preparing items in the Product Backlog and, depending on the context, to include customers, users, and other stakeholders. The goal is for them to arrive at the Sprint Planning meeting with the highest-priority items clear, concise, and ready for implementation.

A good Scrum Master, however, does not act as a process auditor, a role in which he would oblige those involved to use Scrum correctly. He also does not do some of the work for them to ensure the correct use of Scrum. As a matter of fact, one of the important goals of the Scrum Master is to become less and less necessary, increasing the Scrum Team’s autonomy. With this in mind, the Scrum Master teaches and enables the Developers and Product Owner to use Scrum in such a way that they depend gradually less on him, so that the values, practices and rules of Scrum are followed and used.

As an example, a common dysfunctional behavior occurs when the Scrum Master needs to tell the Developers every day when the time has come to hold their daily meeting. However, by doing that, instead of enabling and making them more independent, the Scrum Master may be leading the Developers to always depend on him for the meeting to take place. The Scrum Master would do his job better were he able to show and convince the Developers about the importance of maintaining discipline in holding the meeting, thereby creating a habit, and organizing themselves to do so.