The Scrum Master is a critical role in the scrum team. It has two important activities: keep the scrum team ship afloat and get the scrum team ship to move forward. A great Scrum Master does not only strive to keep the ship afloat (i.e making sure that the day in and day out scrum activities take place) but more importantly, he/she will think hard on how to get the ship to move forward faster.
| Keep the ship afloat | Get the ship to move forward |
| – Do each role in the scrum team reenact their roles and responsibilities? – Does all scrum event take place accordingly? – Does the team deliver a done increment every sprint? | – How is my Product Owner doing? – How is my team doing? – How is our engineering practice doing? – How is the organization doing? |
The Scrum Master Checklist by Michael James, a Seattle-based senior agile coach from Scrum Alliance, should help explain and guide on what areas Scrum Masters should look into. This checklist provides source of inspiration on different areas of improvement (the scrum team, the product owner, the engineering practices, and the organization).
Reference:
Dare Mighty Things 