work ethics

Hello, my friends. Today we’re talking about a very interesting topic, very controversial, and so a lot of Scrum Masters and Agile coaches might disagree, which I’m okay with but I’ll tell you my opinion.

What’s the difference between a great Scrum Master and an average one?

I have three criteria based on my ten years of experience, what defines a great Scrum Master.

1. Has cross-functional experience

First of all, a great Scrum Master needs to have a cross-functional experience. So, this person apart from being a Scrum Master should have had an experience in some different role (or roles) in the software development life cycle, whether it’s beings a developer, being a QA, being engineering manager, being a product owner, project manager, CTO, anything else apart from just being a Scrum Master because all those experiences will help you to better understand the situation from different angles. This is one of the most important things in our Scrum Master’s job.

2. Work ethics

A great Scrum Master should have great work ethics. You’re dealing with a lot of conflict, a lot confidential information, so you should always be able to know when to say certain things and when not to say certain things. Always have your team’s back. If something is happening, you should take responsibility and you should be able to act, you should be able to remove impediments. So, work ethics is very, very important.

3. Dealing with change

Thing number three – and it is for almost any profession, but for Scrum Master, it’s crucially important – is dealing with the change and learning on a fly.

You will have to do a lot of things you’re not comfortable with, that you’ve never done before – how you deal with that, that’s important.

Great Scrum Masters, they embrace the change, they do whatever is needed to be done to remove impediments, they learn on the fly, they are polyglots, they know a lot of different things and are able to support their teams in any way needed.

Those three things will be something that I think defines a great Scrum Master apart from the average Scrum Master. Sorry, average Scrum Masters if you don’t have one of those three, probably you’re not great yet but keep on doing it and keep on getting there.

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