Scrum is by far the easiest Agile methodology for companies to swallow. But it comes with its own jargon and baggage. One of these is the unfortunate term ScrumMaster. In particular, the Master part.

Too often people adopt Scrum and the Master would end up as being the ‘master’ of the project in terms of ‘Master and Servant’. But that is wrong.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

I remember hearing somewhere that the it should be thought of as a Ring Master or Master of Ceremonies. They don’t dictate, they direct and move things forward.

Brian Marick posted something last week on the idea of ScrumMasters which I think did a wonderful job of describing the problem and rephrasing the solution.

Too often these days, the ScrumMaster is thought of as the boss of the team, when in fact the roles were originally reversed: the team was the boss of the ScrumMaster. The team would say, “Behold, there is an obstacle in our path. Pray remove it, Good ScrumMaster.” And the ScrumMaster would do so.

The team bully is not the person who should be the ScrumMaster. The person who is on good terms with others in the team and the other teams you interface with is the ideal person I think for the role.