Tips to Avoid Common Scrum Master Mistakes

Scrum Masters: You are NOT the team secretary. One of the most common (and costly) mistakes I see? Scrum Masters stuck in admin mode: 📅 Scheduling every meeting 📝 Taking notes 📊 Chasing updates like project coordinators Let’s be real… 👉 That’s not your job. Your true value lies in how you coach. - How you challenge. - How you lead—not manage. - How you create space for growth, ownership, and transformation. So why do so many fall into this trap? Because they confuse servant leadership with servant tasks. - They try to help so much… they forget to lead. - And in doing everything, they dilute their impact. 🔁 It’s time to make the shift; from helper to high-impact Agile leader. 3 Powerful Shifts You Can Make This Week: 1. Reframe Your Mindset → You're not there to do for the team. → You're there to grow the team. → Ask yourself: “Am I enabling autonomy—or just being useful?” 2. Facilitate, Don’t Micromanage → Great Scrum Masters don’t dominate the room. → They create space for others to step up. 3. Lead Through Retrospectives → This is your arena. → Challenge assumptions. Surface dysfunctions. Empower change. 💡 When you lead with clarity and consistency: ↳ The team takes ownership ↳ Velocity rises ↳ Culture evolves Leadership isn’t loud—it’s intentional. So here's my challenge to you this week: 🚫 Stop doing for the team. ↳ Start growing with them. You’re not a helper—you’re a leader. Let’s act like it. Scrum Masters: What’s one thing you’re letting go of this week to step into true leadership? Drop it in the comments. Let’s grow together.

Hey Scrum Masters, Stop Facilitating Every Scrum Event I've noticed that Scrum Masters often misunderstand their responsibilities when it comes to Scrum events. The Scrum Guide says the SM is responsible for "ensuring that all Scrum events take place and are positive, productive, and kept within the timebox," but it doesn’t say they must schedule or facilitate every meeting. With your kind permission, I'd like to suggest a better approach: The SM should foster an environment where the team manages its own events. This shift will help the team develop autonomy and self-management - which are key Scrum principles. The SM is accountable for the Scrum Team’s effectiveness by enabling them to improve their practices within the framework. SM facilitation may sometimes be preferred or appropriate, but it doesn’t have to be the default. Teams should manage their own events, with the SM acting as a coach and supporter. Facilitating every event can lead to problems. First off, it creates a dependency on the SM that undermines the team’s ability to self-manage. The PO and devs may feel they can’t run events themselves, which stifles their growth and confidence. This can lead to disengagement. If team members see the SM as the "owner" of the events, they may view them as someone else’s responsibility, which reduces active participation and accountability. If the SM is late or absent, then what? If SMs are constantly facilitating, they may neglect other important aspects of their role, like coaching, addressing impediments, and fostering continuous improvement. Instead, SMs should guide teams toward independence. Coaching the team on the purpose of each event helps them understand the "why" and discover the format that works best in their context. This is the foundation for ownership. Observing the team as they facilitate their events is another way to support growth. By stepping back, the SM can assess performance and provide constructive feedback without interfering. Facilitation should be reserved for situations where the team genuinely needs help. New teams may require more support as they learn the basics. A team dealing with conflict or struggling to collaborate may benefit from the SM's neutral facilitation to restore focus. Encouraging the team to share facilitation responsibilities promotes self-management. Rotating facilitators for planning, scrums, or retros helps team members build confidence and creates shared accountability. Over time, this fosters a culture where the team takes collective ownership of their own processes. The SM is accountable to serve the team, not to lead every discussion. By supporting the team in taking charge of their own events, SMs may better fulfill their ultimate goal: helping the team grow into a self-managing and highly effective unit. Letting go of facilitation doesn’t mean neglecting core responsibilities; it means trusting the team to rise to the challenge, providing guidance, and celebrating progress.

A common antipattern that many new Scrum Masters (or those who have just learned a new pattern or practice) will do is come into a team excited with solutions. They observe something, build an entire solution, and then present it to the team saying, "I've solved all of your problems." The issue? They are using their point of view to apply a fix, disregarding other team members and removing autonomy. But what if the team doesn't agree that it’s a problem? Or if they see the problem but feel your solution doesn't align with it? What next? So, here's a call to all who support teams: ▪ Begin with curiosity. ▪ Share non-judgemental observations. ▪ Show humility. ▪ Let your team guide the improvements. BTW, having an extensive backlog of patterns and practices is great. Just wait to show it off until the team is ready. #scrummaster #agilecoach #continuousimprovement