When trying to identify the title for this blog, I went back and forth on the made-up term "UnScrum Hero." What is a ScrumMaster? Is what we do really definable? Can we explain our job duties to someone outside of the company on a short trip down an elevator? Can we explain that to someone inside our company, for that matter? As ScrumMasters, these are all questions we've asked ourselves at some point in our career. This entire blog is an attempt to clear up the identity crisis as well as highlight some of the challenges I have faced as a SM of an eight person engineering team for an internet business-to-business marketing & lead generation company.
Is the play on "unsung hero" a cheeky and accurate summary of our contributions or a bloated crowning of professional self-worth? Depending on who you ask (engineers, product managers, executives) it can be any one of these. If you ask me (and since it's my blog) I'll tell you that ScrumMasters are really all of these interpretations and more.
Face it, the term "ScrumMaster" is a bit cheeky to begin with. You can't hand a non-technical person your business card without a smirk on your face as they read your title. If you're like me, the term "Technical Project Manager" may precede the funny made-up word in order to deflect the usual "what is a ScrumMaster?" type of questions. (We really shouldn't do that, btw).
Whoever coined the term (was it Ken Schwaber?) knew the amused and misunderstood responses traditional professionals would have to it. We are supposed to get people to ask questions about what we do. We are supposed to inspire a little unorthodox excitement in the face of traditional engineering procedural methodologies. What we are doing is (relatively) new and a complete departure from the old-school DuPont-style of project development. Embrace your slap-stick professional title (just don't expect to see average salary information for the title on glassdoor.com). When you're trying to integrate businessy product people with nerdy developers, you had better have a sense of humor or you're going to find yourself losing weight because of stress. Sure we are under constant pressure to deliver features, but being able to laugh and make engineering fun is a critical part of what we do.
So how about being an unsung or 'unscrum' hero? All non-executive staff thinks they are unsung heroes (coincidentally all executives think they are sung(?) heroes), so what makes us any different? Didn't they tell us in ScrumMaster Certification class that we are just members of a development team; no different than engineers or web-dev guys? Make no mistake about it, ScrumMasters are not above the team. Sure, we may deal directly with product managers, executives, and other external contacts so the tendency is for others to see you as a mid-level manager and sole representative of the development team, but you must resist the urge to see yourself as more powerful than your fellow engineers. Any praise you receive (and it will be little), make sure you step out of its way and push it onto the team. All you do is facilitate action and the team does the physical work.
However, that's not to say facilitating action is easy. It's not. It's actually quite difficult and gets harder as the team grows, product managers come & go, executives shift corporate structure, etc. This is why I'll get on my soap-box for a moment here and tell you that I think ScrumMasters really are under-appreciated assets. It doesn't help that our responsibilities are hard to define. It's really easy to say that ScrumMasters are like shepherds who protect their flock from negative outside forces, but that only generically scratches the surface. Being a ScrumMaster is akin to being a director of a symphony. You prepare your musicians so well that come the performance, all you need to do is keep the tempo and make sure everyone is coming in on time. Ok maybe that's not the best analogy but you get it.
ScrumMasters communicate complex issues to product, stakeholders & developers. We coach engineers. We coach product. We coach executives. We foresee roadblocks and adjust around or plow over them. We report. We manage tools. We define processes. We bust-up ineffective overhead. We laugh at everyone. We empower those around us. We manage (effective) meetings. We lead by example. We ship (damn good) code. We take the blame. We deflect the praise. We listen. We suggest. We test code. We manage code release. We rally the troops. We make work fun.
More importantly than all else, however, we seek & speak the truth.
Yes, we are unsung heroes because you can't put that stuff on a job description; it always comes off as a posting for a Director of Engineering job or something and even then you only scratch the surface on what a good ScrumMaster does. It's non-quantifiable come review time.
We are unsung because we want to be. Because seeing your teammates get acknowledged in front of the company by a manager outside of the department makes you happier than receiving your own personal accolades. Because you'll go to war for your team just for those "you make my job so much better" comments from engineers at the holiday parties.
An UnScrum Hero will always put the team first not because someone told them to, but because they know that doing so will empower the team and improve the entire company.
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