The ScrumMaster is the keeper of the process. The ScrumMaster is responsible for making the process run smoothly, for removing obstacles that impact productivity, and for organizing and facilitating the critical meetings.
The ScrumMasters responsibilities include:
- Teach the Product Owner how to maximize return on investment (ROI), and meet his/her objectives through Scrum.
- Improve the lives of the development Team by facilitating creativity and empowerment.
- Improve the productivity of the development Team in any way possible.
- Improve the engineering practices and tools so that each increment of functionality is potentially shippable.
- Keep information about the Team’s progress up to date and visible to all parties.
The ScrumMaster should maintain a constant awareness of the status of the project (its progress to date) relative to the expected progress, investigate and facilitate resolution of any roadblocks that hold back progress, and generally be flexible enough to identify and deal with any issues that arise, in any way that is required. The ScrumMaster’s general approach towards the Team is to encourage and facilitate their decision-making and problem-solving capabilities, so that they can work with increasing efficiency and decreasing need for supervision. The goal is to have a team that is not only empowered to make important decisions, but does so well and routinely.