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Please take one of these smiley stickers and tell the others how you feel now
I just recently learned what “scrum manager” is and it sounds like a cult of useless middle managers.
I started at a new company and have been filling a scrum master role until they find me a replacement and I can move to the position I was supposed to be hired for and honestly, its the worst job I’ve ever had. Its literally hand holding and baby sitting. Its terrible. I almost got pushed in front of traffic when I asked “why cant the engineers move their own boards…?”
Your company and mine seem to be very different. We have agile coaches, but they mostly organise cooperation and shoulder check our stakeholders if they try to scope creep some bullshit in.
We also have agile coaches but the way my team uses jira is not at all how its supposed to be used. They are basically forcing it on us and people arent thrilled so the agile coaches are trying to mold it to what they want but they dont want it. Its a whole thing. Im also not a scrum master, Im an engineer pretending to be a scrum master as well as doing my other work and our agile coaches are…clueless for lack of a better word. Jira works great for our other teams. Just not the team Im on.
Yeah, that sucks. Let’s hope for better times my friend
Hey thanks I appreciate it. Like I said, just waiting for them to find a real scrum master for my team then I get to do my actual job but at least its pushing me into more of a “people skill” position. Trying to silver lining it haha
The temporary construct is the most durable of them all 😔
The dirty secret is there are no SCRUM masters.
There are engineers with SCRUM training. There are project managers with SCRUM training. There are product owners with SCRUM training.
The organization believes in SCRUM master as a discipline. Physics does not.
I’m not sure if I’m being sarcastic or not. Let’s call it 80/20.
checking in from the 45 minute “stand up” in which 10 people have their cameras on but only 3 people speak. So we all know we’re just working with the window as close to the camera as possible so it looks like we’re listening
One of the teams in my pod are SO BUSY right now and I know they dont want to be in a meeting every day and no one talks and I have to roll through this daily script and I am met with deafening silence and its crushing. I want to tell my boss “dude this isnt benefitting anyone” but its what the company wants. And everyone suffers for it.
This reminds me of children who will get their toothbrush wet, put a little paste on their tongue so it smells like mint, run the water for 2 minutes, but not actually brush their teeth. You know, because they don’t want to, and/or they don’t understand the point.
They just know that the parents say they need to do this thing, and they’d rather be off playing. You’re standing there for two minutes holding a wet toothbrush and staring at yourself in the mirror. Why not just brush your teeth?
I get it, they’re very busy. They’re already gonna be on the call for 15 minutes. Just participate ya know. Why choose to make that 15 minutes a complete waste? I expect the above from a child, not people with jobs in tech =/
Scrum master = project manager.
Definitely not, Scrummasters should not be connected to the project at all. Their job goes directly against it, a PM is a stakeholder who will ask for everything to be done immediately, and needs to get stuff done. A Scrummaster should be neutral, and should uphold the process and defend the dev team.
Common scenario:
That right there highlights where a scrummaster should be working. Most companies do treat them as neutered dogs though, and don’t give them the power. True scrummasters have the ability to push back on PMs and defend their teams, keeping developers out of it so they can stay heads down. (Less useless meetings)
A project manager should never be a stakeholder. A project manager should be managing expectations and pushing back against scope creep and ridiculous demands for immediate results as part of managing the project based on available resources and the estimates of the project team compared to overall progress. They will also address situations where different interacting parts need to be timed correctly, but that would also be the same responsibility of a scrum master, because they manage the project when using agile terms.
Most places treat project managers as neutered middle men who are implementing the will of the stakeholders, which is why so many end up being the terrible type that you are stereotyping project managers to be. Those same organizations will do the same thing to the scrum master or whatever name they give to the person who is supposed to be managing the project. You know, a project manager.
Probably right, in my experience you’re describing a Product Owner, someone who is neutral on the business side who takes care of prioritization in a netural way vs a Project Manager, who does have requests, asks, and demands of the dev team
That sounds awful, I feel for you.
I earned certification in the early days. “Scrum Master” was supposed to be a team member who took on the role of interacting with external stakeholders, and help the team organize the work.
The scrum master protects the team from interruptions and un-scheduled work and facilitates planning meetings.
More recent iterations minimized the Scrum Master as a first class role. Scrum Manager sounds like a new role the process.
I did a search, came up with this gem.
All the other search results did not have “scrum manager”, and the end of the video indicates this is not an official role in Scrum, but a term used for managers who are all in on the values of the scrum process.
Yup. The hard reality is corporate america doesn’t like the role because they literally are meant to disrupt and defend the team, to push back on business and show them when things aren’t realistic. So instead of making realistic asks for dev teams, they neutered the scrummaster and removed the position in most cases
Having worked in a lot of scrum teams in positions ranging from Jr Dev to CTO, I have become a huge proponent of scrum masters.
And in my experience a SM becomes a full time position at about 15 devs.
Exactly right, scrummasters should be outside of the business and developer chain so they can uphold the process first and foremost. One of the phrases I hate the most is “we’re in crunch time, we don’t have time for process.” No, that’s when you need process the most! It doesn’t matter if it’s crunch time or whatever, PMs and business sometimes needs a reality check on what is possible and what isn’t, and developers need someone in their corner that isn’t also their manager.
From all of the replies it was to me that a Scrum Master can be very useful in specific projects that involve interplay between many departments. But in reality it seems like it’s a way for companies to avoid creating clear job requirements.
Def a way underrated comment.
Is why I joke that there are no SCRUM masters. Anecdotally, most of those I’ve met who were great at SCRUM mastering noped out of it within a year. It’s like physics abhors a great SCRUM master.
I’m currently assigning all of those responsibilities to the development manager and to the development team leads. That’s at least working without causing me to lose people.
Wait, are you talking about a scrum master under a different name or an actual position above that?
Honestly, I just heard of the turn “scrum” the other day on an application, and after some looking into what that is, I came to the conclusion that it’s the corporate version of a Liberal Arts degree. Not completely useless, but almost.
I’m sont have any influence on that applicant, btw, so I’m not influencing someone’s life based on my half assed googling.
Well, from experience I can say that scrum and a (good!) Scrum master can really turn things the right way.
Even something as simple as being the impartial moderator can be invaluable, given the borderline-autists many developers are (won’t even exclude myself there). A pointless 30min meeting can become a valuable sync up.
Apart from that a (again, good!) Scrum master can organize a lot of stuff away from the developer. The job literally means removing impediments and I’ve had the luck to work with one SM, who really took that seriously.
It’s not a management position, btw. At least it’s not supposed to be. It’s supposed to be on the same level as the devs. Unfortunately (and that’s the part where you are right), this position and scrum in general were churned through the corporate buzzword grinder so often, that it’s almost meaningless now and often enough just means pointless meetings and pointless metrics (ironically measured in “story points”).
depends how big the project is. large projects benefit from it being broken down into multiple smaller projects and communicated from week to week to coordinate. but smaller projects, it’s just a giant waste of time.
Yeah, I’m sure that position is actually useful when used for its intended purpose.