Teaching the Scrum Master Role using Professional Agile Coaches and Communities of Practice

Abstract

As Scrum seems to be the most popular Agile method at the moment, most universities teaching software development teach it. A Scrum Team consists of a Scrum Master, a Product Owner, and developers. The Scrum Master role is vital in the team. However, looking at the industry, companies have difficulties both in hiring good Scrum Masters and convincing their developers or other personnel to take that role. Agile trainers do offer short Scrum Master training courses. However, we lacking information on how to train Scrum Masters in university education.

In this paper, we report how we arranged a one-semester long Scrum Master training course. During the course, students worked as team Scrum Masters under the guidance of professional agile coaches and collaborated in a Scrum Master Community of Practice.

We collected data by performing 13 post-course semi-structured interviews with Scrum Masters and by analyzing the learning diaries of 37 students from three course instances.

Team-specific Agile coaches supported their Scrum Master first by example, then by observing the Scrum Masters in action and providing feedback and ideas, and finally by helping students to reflect. Students found the coaches extremely useful and wished they had utilized their coach more. Scrum Master community of practice worked best when students self-organized, shared practices and tools, and provided peer support when facing problems. Finally, students with a non-technical background, as well as female students performed better as Scrum Masters than computer science and male students.