Rumor says that a great Scrum Master supports one team at a time. If that is true, how do you spend your time with the team members, helping them become self-managing? Moreover, what about stakeholders and the organization? Let’s gather some data on Scrum Master tasks anonymously and answer the question!
📈 Please join the 2024 survey on Scrum Master tasks here.
If you are looking to fill a position for a Scrum Master (or agile coach) in your organization, you may find the following 12th set of the Scrum Master interview questions useful to identify the right candidate. They are derived from my eighteen years of practical experience with XP as well as Scrum, serving both as Product Owner and Scrum Master as well as interviewing dozens of Scrum Master candidates on behalf of my clients.
So far, this Scrum Master interview guide has been downloaded more than 27,000 times.
The Scrum Master Salary Report 2024 is the fifth edition of the industry survey after 2017, 2019, 2022, and 2023. This free report is based on the answers of 1,114 participants globally. If you are considering a career decision this year, maybe whether you should join the industry as a junior Scrum Master, move to a new organization, or go independent, you will find the report’s information beneficial.
By the way, the average salary of the participants in the survey is $87,800, with a standard deviation of about $46,400. In the complete report, you will find more detailed information; see for yourself by downloading your copy of the Scrum Master Salary Report 2024 below.
Fewer Jobs for Scrum Masters, and now we see the universal Scrum GPT entering the competition: Will Scrum Masters change from essential practitioners to a niche role?
The job market is currently challenging for many agile practitioners, particularly Scrum Masters. Many are looking for new opportunities, while an increasing number of organizations consider the benefits they contribute to a team’s overall success. This is not just reflected in fewer job offerings for Scrum Masters; we also observe the demand for training significantly reduced.
To make the situation worse, AI has improved significantly over the last 12 months, too. Back in November 2023, OpenAI released GPTs, a hyper-customizable version of their GPT-4-based chatbot. (Please note that you need to have access to OpenAI’s paid version of ChatGPT to use GPTs.)
Besides the exciting market opportunity for many people with specific knowledge, data, or content, the question is what implication this new technology will have on the job market for agile practitioners when their roles are partly based on “knowledge” now available from a machine?
In this article, I uncover indicators that a Scrum Master’s or Agile Coach’s journey is coming to a close; they are sunsetting Scrum Masters.
These indicators include, for example, management’s deviation from first principles, reduced support for your change initiatives, an emerging preference for short-term fixes over long-term agile strategies, a shift back to top-down control, decreased communication involvement, exclusion from management discussions, neglected input, waning reliance from the team, being left out of new communication channels, and lessened requests for meeting facilitation.
Consequently, recognizing and addressing these signs is critical to maintaining integrity and effectiveness.
Finally, please do not fool yourself; sometimes, it is also time to move on.
In this article, I unravel the secrets of what makes a Scrum Master not just good but amazingly outstanding. From regularly achieving Sprint Goals, delivering value to customers, and building stakeholder rapport easily, discover the traits that set apart successful Scrum Masters.
Moreover, we also shed light on the pitfalls to avoid if you want to keep the respect of your teammates and probably your job.
