I am a Scrum Master and I think it is a stupid ideology (if not religion). I regret it completely, but I already paid for it, so I still own the certificate (if it is worth something). So, I am not talking without knowing about the Scrum Master but the opposite, I know and I don’t like it.

Now, about this article

A lot of Scrum Masters talk about protecting and guarding the team. This is what I like to call the ‘babysitter’ Scrum Master anti-pattern. If you treat your team like babies, that’s what you get: babies. If you treat your team members like leaders, you will get leaders.

A proper leader protects his people. It is the first commandment of a leader, protect your people. sheesh!.

But let’s say the team works without the intervention of the leader. Do you know what is redundant? The leader.

Some leaders want to be relevant by creating useless meetings and tasks, it is not the idea, but the concept of a self-managed group only happens in a single institution: The Navy and the Navy still has Captain because sh*t happens often.

Now, let’s say we have a small team of one programmer and a web designer. Each one knows what to do.

1- The leader decides the priorities.

A seasoned leader knows that it is not the whole team. The customer is also part of the team.

2- The leader interconnects each part of the project.

Also, the project has deadlines and budgets. Who decides it? Maybe somebody outside of the team, the sales manager, the accounting division, etc. But somebody decided to “x money goes to y project”. In our example, we have that “somebody” decides that we should build a system in 3 weeks. The leader talked with the team and we decided that it is not rational (“are they crazy! minimum 3 months!”), so somebody (leader) must fight for it.

3- The leader must ask for resources and fight for it constantly

However, things could go south, it means that the team is failing to fulfill its promise. Somebody must ask for a budget or trade a new deal, or at least communicate the bad news.

4- The leader is responsible but a “my bad” is not a solution.

Let’s say the team has problems because of the designer (aka Monkey #1), the leader must decide to replace it (kick out the monkey #1 and find a new monkey) or solve it (giving bananas or a stick or both). A self-managed team? sure.

5- For the leader, each member of the team is a monkey (problem).