TL; DR: Three Data Points Pointing to the Decline of the Scrum Master’s Role
If you hang out in the “Agile” bubble on LinkedIn, the dice have already been cast: Scrum is out (and the Scrum Master), and the new kid on the block is [insert your preferred successor framework choice here.] I’m not entirely certain about that, but several data points on my side suggest a decline in the role of the Scrum Master.
Read on and learn more about whether the Scrum Master is a role at risk.
🎓 January 27, 2025: The Advanced Product Backlog Management Course for Just $99!
👉 Please note:
- The course includes membership in my former professional students’ brand-new Hands-on Agile community.
- The course will only be available for sign-up until February 3, 2025!
🇩🇪 Zur deutschsprachigen Version: Geht die Ära des Scrum Masters zu Ende?
🗞 Shall I notify you about articles like this one? Awesome! You can sign up here for the ‘Food for Agile Thought’ newsletter and join 42,000-plus subscribers.
🎓 Join Stefan in one of his upcoming Professional Scrum training classes!
My Data Points: Downloads, Survey Participants, Scrum Master Class Students
Here are my three data points regarding the development:
Decline in Download Numbers of the Scrum Master Interview Questions Guide
Years ago, I created the Scrum Master Interviews Question Guide on behalf of a client to identify suitable candidates for open Scrum Master positions. It has since grown to 83 questions and has been downloaded over 28,000 times.
Interestingly, the number of downloads in 2022 (2,428) and 2024 (1,236) practically halved. I would have expected the opposite, with newly unemployed Scrum Masters preparing for new rounds of job interviews. Unless, of course, the number of open positions also drops significantly, and fewer candidates need to brush up their Scrum knowledge before an interview.
Cannot see the form?
Please click here.
Decline in the Number of Participants in the Scrum Master Salary Report
Since 2017, I have published the Scrum Master Salary Report more or less regularly. The statistical model behind the survey is built on a threshold of 1,000 participants, as the survey addresses a global audience.
It has never been easy to convince so many people to spend 10 minutes supporting a community effort, but I have managed so far. For the 2024 edition, we had 1,114 participants. In 2023, we had 1,146 participants; in 2023, there were 1,113.
But this time, it is different. Before an emergency newsletter on December 26, 2024, there were fewer than 400 valid data sets; today, there are still fewer than 650. (Likely, there won’t be a 2025 edition.)
Decline in Scrum Master Class Students
As a Professional Scrum Trainer, I run an educational business that offers Scrum.org-affiliated classes, such as those for Scrum Masters.
In 2020, the entry-level Scrum Master classes—public and private—represented 49% of my students. In 2021, that number dropped to 26%, but I also offered more different classes. In 2022, the number was stable at 24%, and it fell to 17% in 2023. In 2024, however, that number was less than 5%, and I decided to stop offering these classes as public offerings altogether in 2025.
Are those student numbers representative? Of course not. However, they still point to the declining perception of how valuable these classes are from the career perspectives of individuals and corporate training departments. (By the way, the corresponding Product Owner classes fare much better.)
Conclusion
Of course, in addition to those mentioned above, there are other indicators: Google trends for the search term “Scrum Master,” the number of certifications passed, or job openings on large job sites.
Nevertheless, while the jury is still out, it seems that the love affair of many organizations with the Scrum Master role has cooled significantly.
What is your take: is the Scrum Master a role in decline? Please share your observations with us via the comments.
Related Articles
👆 Stefan Wolpers: The Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide (Affiliate advertisement at no cost to you.)
Why Leaders Believe the Product Operating Model Will Succeed Where Agile Initiatives Failed.
Transformation to Agile Primitives: Rebuilding Agility from the Ground Up.
Agile Failure Patterns in Organizations 2.0.
The Uncomfortable Truth of Scaling ‘Agile’.
11 Proven Stakeholder Communication Tactics during an Agile Transition
Download the Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide for free.
📅 Scrum Training Classes, Workshops, and Events
Learn more about the Inverted MoSCoW Framework with our Scrum training classes, workshops, and events. You can secure your seat directly by following the corresponding link in the table below:
See all upcoming classes here.
You can book your seat for the training directly by following the corresponding links to the ticket shop. If the procurement process of your organization requires a different purchasing process, please contact Berlin Product People GmbH directly.
✋ Do Not Miss Out and Learn more about the Era of the Scrum Master — Join the 20,000-plus Strong ‘Hands-on Agile’ Slack Community
I invite you to join the “Hands-on Agile” Slack Community and enjoy the benefits of a fast-growing, vibrant community of agile practitioners from around the world.
If you would like to join all you have to do now is provide your credentials via this Google form, and I will sign you up. By the way, it’s free.
Prepare yourself to support Pure Scrum by studying the free Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide:
Yes!! The role of Scrum Master is unfortunately…dying!!! But its death has nothing to do with a lack of tangible benefits or its inability to create productive efficient, “self-organizing” development teams that can deliver high-quality software more predictably. Nor does it have anything to do with the suggestion of a complex format, content or implementation strategy or process…quite the opposite!!
In fact, in my opinion, it’s because of the enormity of an “across-the-board” incompetence in software development management skills and massive offshoring and poor to no relevant project management skills. This is to say nothing of the grossly absent basic people management skills.
I live in in San Francisco and quite frankly based on “countless” actual interviews and onsite corporate chaos the salient level of ignorance and incompetence at all levels having to do with the most basic aspects of just Scrum alone is mind blowing.
Countless times I have asked the hiring manager, when asked if I had any questions, I would then ask them to explain simply what led to their decision to stand up a scrum team in their department or more broadly their enterprise and without fail most couldn’t even make up an answer, let alone just be honest and say, “I’m don’t know much about Agile or Scrum, but here are my pain points?” In a couple of instances they would pause and then just hang up on me.
And this does not include several full on temper tantrums when they would try to inject themselves into a team’s Scrum development activities and then it would become painfully clear to the entire team that they had no clue!! And these are not small startups, many are huge federal agencies and corporations within the federal defense complex, healthcare, utilities, banking, The Fed of San Francisco, multinational/multi-billion dollar tech companies…the list goes on.
In other instances hiring managers would reduce the interview period from one hour to 30 minutes in an effort to curtail the interview to avoid having to answer candidate questions, again because they knew they were not able to do that. And then lastly, a very common tactic is for hiring managers to send questions to the recruiting admin and have that person interview the candidate when they themselves had no background whatsoever in project work, software, or Agile Scrum at all. Insane!!!
Or lastly, hiring managers would include in some cases a half dozen or even over a dozen interview questions directly in the online job application. Again this was to avoid the possibility of having to interact with, or to answer ANY direct questions from the candidate.
In the 12+ years I’ve been in this business, from Los Angeles, CA to Seattle, WA literally… this pattern is consistent along the entire West Coast and now, since we emerged from the pandemic, seemingly across the U.S. as a whole.
It’s sad, but the above notwithstanding, what is the broader IT management complex going to do now? So…what now, everyone is going to do SAFe? I’ve seen every possible “customized version” of Scrum…and it’s a messy failure.
One other possible explanation in my opinion is that American business management, at least, has a difficult time not being in total control of everything and everyone “24/7” with new product development, especially when they can’t plan out in advance every single little micro-detail and then have it come out perfectly at the end…”on time, on budget, within scope!!!” Basically…they can’t handle the swings and inherent unknowns in NEW development work.
Cheers and best of luck to my fellow “Agilists.” This could have been great…
Great to see data on this. Andreas Wittler’s comment above does a great job of summarizing the cultural challenges. Add to this that Scrum is over three decades old now
and very widespread (people think they understand it), and the framework is lightweight by design (not so hard to learn; in fact CSM classes are only a few days and you walk out a certified Scrum Master), that it’s not hard to see why the SM role is in decline. Of course, many smart and highly capable people who work or have worked as Scrum masters, like Andreas, quickly realize that there is a lot more to Agile development and software development in general than Scrum, and depending on their background and interests try to make forays into strategy, product, or technical practices. Unfortunately, since Scrum is often installed as a “checkbox” process tool within the confines of the existing culture and management model that are often at odds with Agile values, these efforts are generally strongly rebuked as unnecessary or even disruptive. Unfortunately, these factors have reduced the demand for Scrum Masters and made the role much more frustrating for those that find employment. In any case I could never see how focusing exclusively on the Scrum Master role could provide long term employment, versus for example training POs and developers on Scrum (training being a separate skill that can be applied to other frameworks and provide more reliable employment over time. I know several very good agile coaches/consultants that made this move by necessity).
Agile and scrum are evolving. Having a dedicated person in the SM role is a thing of the past. The responsibilities of the SM are still valid but absorb to the team or a hybrid role with a delivery/project manager. As companies are right sizing, you will see less and less SM stand alone roles. The coaching role is another role on the decline and will have to evolve to stay relevant. Agile is still strong but how it is being used is in a pivotal time. You will see more customer focused models like the product operation model layered in with Agile practices and the end of the stand alone SM role.
Not sure you’re data points provide much real info. Here are my thoughts:
1. Decline in Download Numbers of the Scrum Master Interview Questions Guide – let’s be honest. Once you’ve read this once or twice there’s probably little change year-over-year, so I would almost expect readership to decline.
2. Decline in the Number of Participants in the Scrum Master Salary Report – kind of the same comment as above. If you have some level of info that indicates you’re salary is in the range, maybe from past reads, the info gets kinda boring year after year. We know there aren’t significant changes. Its not like SMs are so in demand that salaries are skyrocketing.
3. Decline in Scrum Master Class Students – I don’t know what this tells us, but I’m not concerned. The entire Scrum industry (pick a company) was so gung-ho on increasing revenue they decided to provide certifications after 4 days of class without ANY actual working experience. Then, we had a pile of **Certified SMs** go out into the wild and fail companies miserably. I see it all the time. SMs that think their primary job is to run the Daily Scrum and setup meetings.
As an agile coach, I’ve actually started to get away from evening mentioning frameworks. I think Scrum has so many good attributes that when I explain them to clients without using buzzwords it almost immediately sinks in. “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if every couple of weeks we actually got into a room with representative users and watched them use our new features in order to get feedback before we release.” “What if we met on a regular basis, say once/month, to get feedback from the team on how we might improve. Really listen and take action. Versus post-mortems where we typically do that after a failed project.” “Instead of individuals implementing solutions on their own, and possibly struggling or doing it wrong, what if the team got together every couple of weeks to debate solutions. And the best solution is what actually gets implemented. We could do that for all of our work and use it as knowledge transfer, because everybody on the team would be a part of every solution, regardless of what they end up working on.”
As every trend, Scrum is no more appealing as it was 10 or even 3 years ago.
I still work as a Scrum Master, but it’s clear that it’s not a hot position nowadays. It happens, everything changes sooner or later.
About the no-more-sold-out beginner classes… may it be because Scrum is so widespread that nobody seems to need a beginner class anymore?
At my organisation the Scrum Master role was never fully embraced and was not remunerated particularly for that role. Rather it was deemed a hatted role i.e. intended that many people in the team each have a turn whilst still completing their nominal role. However, not everyone is suited to the role of the Scrum Master. The teams that adopted Agile well were those where the scrum master was engaged fully in the role and took up support from the Agile Coach to embed practices to uphold the framework.
Also, they changed the name from Scrum Master to Scrum Lead (not liking the tone of what a “master” could be interpreted as). I actually applied for a coveted role as a full time Scrum Master (or Lead) and even though I had PSM1 & PSM2 training, there was no getting around the fact that my role description was being altered to suit the group that I was allocated to. It was sold as it’s an “enabler” role i.e. you do whatever the group needs & support your Product Owner. This was sold as; the position in this group is more like a Group Scrum Lead role (custodian of the Agile System of work & help facilitate the group’s delivery) whether it be planning, admin, resourcing, finance & facilitation.
As a Scrum Master since 2017, I evidenced a lot of different contexts while playing my role. However, a few things were always there: Scrum mostly seen as a ‘tool to deliver’ (not to discover), but in the context more of a ‘Team-only’ process, not something, the whole organization respects.
Consequently, the PO role not being laid out as developed through the Guide or Scrum Theory, having the final say and accountability on the Product, but as a hierarchical leader of the Scrum Team and a ‘Product Backlog Items Prioritizer’ (with fixed milestones and more or less fixed scope to be delivered). The scope of the Product, as well, being defined by someone in the organization, not the PO, and not the Scrum Team.
As a result, Scrum Masters, me included, tried to work with the organization to change this context, shifting to more autonomy for the Scrum Team, establishing Pull (against Push), advocating for value discovery and more flexible Product Boundaries (against something defined and set in stone).
The general direction of these outcomes on all my and others’ initiatives: resistance to change in the organizations’ commanding or controlling of the Scrum Teams’ constraints. And if I wanted to stay in the field, I had to compromise heavily to avoid destructive conflict. Sometimes even with the Developers, who wanted to work without this ‘stress’ of having to discuss and engage with the organization.
What, in turn, went against my inner values (as I’m a big fan of true collaboration). What made me go away after some time … having had impact by scarifying myself is not a sustainable model, isn’t it?
So I listened to Jeff, having had the opportunity 2-3 times. And he stated: ” … and if top management is not fully supporting the change inevitably connected to introducing Scrum, I won’t go in there or send any of my Teams into that organization!”
Well, if a name of this kind is somewhat overwhelmed, what’s in my power?
I take good care of myself first and try to impact wherever wanted, as long as possible, recovering for a while, … trying as long as I see need and honest demand… more as a Change Agent, having to create my mandate for this Change on the fly, as focusing on value delivery or collaboration.