Towards a Good Scrum Master Job Description

This description is for an “Experienced Scrum Master” who would be a Scrum Master for 1-2 software development teams of appropriate Scrum team size.

Feel free to use this job description as you please, and no need for attribution. Cut, paste, do whatever you want with it. Just don’t mangle it and then say it was from ScrumCrazy.com. Also, use at your own risk — no warranties, no promises, etc.

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Essential Duties:

– Strongly serving and supporting the Product Owner and Development Team in their quest to do everything possible to delight customers

– Providing all support to the team using a servant leadership style and leading by example. This person should personify Scrum and Agile.

– Guiding and Coaching the Scrum Team and organization on how to use Agile/Scrum practices and values to delight customers

– Guiding and Coaching both the Scrum Team and the Development team on how to get the most out of self organization

– Guiding and Coaching both the Scrum Team and the Development team on self-organizing to fill in the intentional gaps left in the Agile/Scrum frameworks

– Assessing the Scrum Maturity of the team and organization and coaching the team to higher levels of maturity, at a pace that is sustainable and comfortable for the team and organization

– Removing impediments or guiding the team to remove impediments by finding the right personnel to remove the impediment.

– Building a trusting and safe environment where problems can be raised without fear of blame, retribution, or being judged, with an emphasis of healing and problem solving.

– Facilitating getting the work done without coercion, assigning, or dictating the work.

– Facilitating discussion, decision making, and conflict resolution

– Assisting with internal and external communication, improving transparency, and radiating information

– Supporting and educating the Product Owner, especially with respect to refining(aka grooming) and managing the product backlog.

Required Skills/Experience

– First level Scrum Master certification (PSM I, CSM )

– Experience playing the Scrum Master role for at least two years for a Scrum Team

– Good skills and knowledge of servant leadership, facilitation, situational awareness, conflict resolution, continual improvement, empowerment, and increasing transparency

– Knowledge of numerous well documented patterns and techniques for filling in the intentional gaps left in the Scrum approach(example: numerous Burndown techniques, numerous Retrospective formats, handling bugs, etc)

– The ability to distinguish between what “is Scrum” what is “not Scrum”

Preferred Skills/Experience (Any of these is a plus)

– Second or Third level Scrum Master certification (PSM II, PSM III, CSP, CTC)

– Experience playing the Scrum Master role for at least four years for a Scrum team.

– Experience being on multiple Scrum teams in a variety of different contexts (different team sizes, different organizations, different cultures, co-located vs. distributed, etc)

– Track record of continued and recent education in Scrum, including training, conferences, user groups, self study, etc.

– Knowledge of other approaches discussed in the Agile space: XP, Kanban, Nexus, LeSS, SAFe, Crystal, FDD, etc

– Knowledge and/or experience with widely successful Agile techniques: User Stories, ATDD, TDD, Continuous Integration, Continuous Testing, Pairing, Automated Testing, Agile Games

– Applicable knowledge of the technologies used by the team

– Experience applying a wide variety of well documented patterns and techniques for filling in the intentional gaps left in the Scrum approach(example: numerous Burndown techniques, numerous Retrospective formats, handling bugs,etc)

– Previous experience as a collaborative leader

– Excellent communication and mentoring skills

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Some other things you(the job poster) might want to fill in:

– You’ll want to add all of the standard stuff that you normally add to your organization’s job descriptions, especially some language about your company’s culture. Due to the importance of a cultural fit, you’ll probably want to put that before the job description.

– Required education level

– Pay type, pay range, etc.

– Required software product development experience (I don’t recommend picking a particular development role — just general software development experience)

– Any other things that you feel are important to your project, company, or team culture.