Scrum Master job description

Scrum Master job description

Some time ago I posted a couple of blog posts about Scrum Master/Agile Coaching recruiting, in those blogs I wrote some ideas how you could interview the candidates, this blogs can be found here. In this blog I will post a possible Scrum Master job description. I believe this is quite useful for everyone that is looking for ideas how to write this kind of job description.

I want to highlight the fact that it was not me who created this description. The original description can be found here. I removed some of lines that I do not agree. Hope you enjoy.

Essential Duties:

• Guiding the team and organization on how to use Agile/Scrum practices and values to delight customers.
• Guiding the team on how to get the most of out self organization.
• Guiding the team on self organizing to fill in the intentional gaps left in the Agile/Scrum frameworks.
• Assessing the Scrum Maturity of the team and organization and coaching the team to higher levels of maturity, at a pace that is sustainable and comfortable for the team and organization.
• Removing impediments or guiding the team to remove impediments by finding the right personnel to remove the impediment.
• Building a trusting and safe environment where problems can be raised without fear of blame, retribution, or being judged, with an emphasis of healing and problem solving.
• Facilitating getting the work done without coercion, assigning, or dictating the work.
• Facilitating discussion, decision making, and conflict resolution.
• Assisting with internal and external communication, improving transparency, and radiating information.
• Supporting and educating the Product Owner, especially with respect to grooming and maintaining the product backlog.
• Providing all support to the team using a servant leadership style whenever possible, and leading by example.

Required Skills/Experience:

• Experience playing the Scrum Master role for at least one year for a software development team that was diligently applying Scrum principles, practices, and theory. (Adjust based on your necessity)
• Good skills and knowledge of servant leadership, facilitation, situational awareness, conflict resolution, continual improvement, empowerment, and increasing transparency.
• Knowledge of numerous well documented patterns and techniques for filling in the intentional gaps left in the Scrum approach(example: numerous Burndown techniques, numerous Retrospective formats, handling bugs, etc).

Preferred Skills/Experience (Any of these is a plus):

• Experience playing the Scrum Master role for at least two years for a software development team that was diligently applying Scrum principles, practices, and theory. (Adjust based on your necessity)
• Knowledge of other Agile approaches: XP, Kanban, Crystal, FDD, etc.
• Knowledge and/or experience with widely successful Agile techniques: User Stories, ATDD, TDD, Continuous Integration, Continuous Testing, Pairing, Automated Testing, Agile Games.
• Applicable knowledge of the technologies used by the team.
• Experience applying a wide variety of well documented patterns and techniques for filling in the intentional gaps left in the Scrum approach(example: numerous Burndown techniques, numerous Retrospective formats, handling bugs,etc).
• Previous experience as a team lead.
• Excellent communication and mentoring skills.

Some other things you(the job poster) might want to fill in:

• Required education level.
• Required software product development experience (I don’t recommend picking a particular development role — just general software development experience).
• Any other things that you feel are important to your project, company, or team culture.

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