I always feel that Scrum trainings neglect to mention one critical point: Not everyone is well-suited for every Scrum role. Perhaps the reasoning behind not mentioning this too clearly is the fear that some people might immediately think „Oh, Scrum is not for me!“ This would possibly even be a correct conclusion (I strongly believe that Scrum is not for everyone), but perhaps many Scrum trainers feel that they don’t want their audience to reach that conclusion during their training. When I introduce Scrum to people, I always emphasize that there are different characteristics or qualities that one should possess to fill a specific role in a Scrum Team.
So obviously, I have a long list of characteristics that I believe a Scrum Master should have. I am sure it is not an exhaustive list, and I am sure there are certain points which are disputable or controversial. Also, different Scrum Masters have different styles, so the different Scrum Master „flavors“ would influence the composition of that list.
However, I believe there is one point which in im opinion is absolutely essential: I believe a Scrum Master needs to be an optimist.
Scrum Masters need to be optimistic towards the teams: It can take a great amount of optimism about a team’s willingness and ability to self-organize when given the freedom to do so.
Scrum Masters need to be optimistic towards the project: Especially if you have already seen projects fail, it can be difficult to believe that a project can succeed (or even is more likely to succeed) without top-down planning, a command-and-control structure and intense micromanagement.
Scrum Masters need to be optimistic towards their role: They need to be intrinsically motivated to fulfill their tasks. Otherwise, they cannot expect team members to be intrinsically motivated, which is a key aspect of encouraging a true agile mindset. A Scrum Master who is a Scrum Master because „I do this, because it’s my job and I get paid for it“ must expect the team members to feel the same way.
I believe that optimism is the key quality of a Scrum Master not only because optimism leads to trust, perserverance and intrinsic motivation, but also because in my experience pessimism is deeply ingrained in non-agile processes. Cynicism, defeatism and mistrust can be found in many aspects of waterfall-like work modes, so I feel that a pessimistic Scrum Master will either not reap all the potential benefits of an agile approach or – even worse – will unwillingly assist in turning the Scrum framework into a Scrumerfall cargo cult process.
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