Scrum master or scrum mascot?
During our latest monthly call, Maaret Pyhäjärvi and I spent some of our time discussing agency, accountability and scrum masters. At one point I said something along the lines of:
Scrum masters often end up as scrum mascots.
Maaret said I should write a blog post about scrum mascots1, so here we are.
According to the 2020 Scrum Guide a Scrum Master2 is accountable for two things:
- “establishing Scrum as defined in the Scrum Guide”.
- “the Scrum Team’s effectiveness”.
Accountability implies (or rather: should imply) corresponding authority. You’re being held accountable for certain outcomes *and* you have sufficient power to influence those outcomes. That’s a scrum master. A scrum mascot is a very different beast: they have neither power nor accountability. And yet that seems to be what a lot of organizations (and scrum masters?) want.