On yesterday’s Blue Jays post-game they were talking about the role of coaches. Most callers seem to want blame the coaches for lack of player performance, but in reality, the players are the ones who are ultimately responsible for their performance on the field. That view is championed by the host of the show who described the role of a coach at the major leagues as a facilitator of work.

Having been immersed in Agile for a week, this seems to ring similar to the role of a scrum master.

The scrum master removes roadblock and impediments and lets people do their job. (Really, that is all.) In other words, they facilitate work. This also means that the success of the team is completely dependent on the teams. Not the scrum master. The only time the scrum master can be held to task for the failure of a team is if they leave a roadblock in place they could have removed.

The Cult of the Coach exists in baseball. I suspect that the Cult of the Scrum Master also exists. But, if the scrum master is there just to facilitate work, then it is completely misplaced. In high functioning agile teams, the scrum master should be largely invisible working, if not behind the scenes then beside them, to grease the system to allow their team to operate.

So we can now add facilitator of work to the ways we can describe the role of scrum master to our existing circus ring master analogy.