Editorial note: Transcribed and lightly diarized from audio for readability.
Ryan Ripley: All right, welcome. It’s a new episode of Breaking the SAFe with professional Scrum trainers, me, Ryan Ripley, and Yuval Yeret, and also SAFe fellow Yuval Yeret. So Yuval, you came back. So happy you joined us again. Actually really appreciate the community’s warm reception to the videos.
Lots of really great questions. And that’s what we wanted. We want your pushback, we want your questions, we want that all to be done respectfully. And I think so far, everyone in the comments has been really cool about asking very interesting questions. Would you agree, Yuval?
Yuval Yeret: Yeah, definitely. A full backlog. We have a full backlog of questions to address. So.
Ryan Ripley: Yeah, and we’re going to try to tackle one of those today. It’s one that I actually, this is one of my personal favorites. I’m glad it came up so many times. Why did SAFe redefine the Scrum Master role?
And so, let’s start with the why, maybe we’ll get into the how and some of the mechanics and the principles, but just any as much as you can speak to it.
Why did the SAFe powers that be decide that what’s in the Scrum guide is not exactly what they’re going to put into the scaled agile framework?
Yuval Yeret: Yeah. I so maybe it makes sense to actually start with what changes were made so we should understand the why. Sure. Yeah. So I guess the biggest change between the Scrum guide, Scrum master, the professional Scrum master, and the safe Scrum master is that the safe Scrum master is more of a focal point.
They’re expected to do everything that the professional Scrum master is expected to do, where, have all the choices, where all the hats, operate from all of the stances of a coach, a mentor, a teacher, all of that is great. Beyond that, the safe Scrum master is more of a focal point for the team.
You could even say more like a technical lead manager for the team. You could still see it as a technical as a leader who serves the way we describe it in the Scrum guide. So I don’t think there’s a huge difference from that perspective. But what safe did was what a lot of organizations do if we’re honest about it.
They struggle to figure out this weird role, the Scrum master role. It is a weird role, right? And in most organizations, the Scrum master takes on more than just removing impediments for the team. Takes on some active leadership, active project management roles for the team.
Whether we talk about it, in the Scrum guide or not, that happens in the trenches. And what Safe did is it actually brought that real world practice from the trenches into the definitions in Safe. Why did they do that?
I wasn’t there when that decision was made, but like many other decisions, Safe is trying to streamline the path of change for organizations that are trying to become more agile. Safe is taking the approach of evolution rather than revolution.
If you remember back in the day when, there was this huge argument around, is the right approach to change management the Scrum burn all your ships approach, comban provided, a more evolutionary approach of start with what you have, respect the current way things are working, respect the current roles, but agree to pursue evolutionary change.
Safe is actually closer to comban from a change management perspective. And I think a lot of Agile don’t really realize that. Safe is respecting the way things are done to a fault, sometimes.
Sure. And if you’re respecting the way things are done too much and not challenging the comfort zone, you would not change. So what you need is to start from a certain place, but pursue evolutionary change.
Move more to operate more from a coaching mindset, from a servant leadership mindset, and kind of over time put aside the classic management, project management choices that that these people are used to making.
Ryan Ripley: So how does SAFe define that path? So, so when I’m hearing you say is and I want to make sure I’ve got this right. From a safe perspective, the Scrum master is expected to do all of the things that we would teach in professional Scrum, but, but the safe powers that be they said, look in the trenches, this is a very difficult transition.
We have people still acting as managers, team leads, project managers, let’s codify some of that and then over time expect more. Is that the case?
Yuval Yeret: Over time, expect less of that. More of the servant leadership, right.
Ryan Ripley: More of the servant leadership, right.
Yuval Yeret: More of the servant leadership. Yes, that’s more or less how it’s described. Also, if you look at the framework definition, maybe even if we open scaled agile framework.com and go to the Scrum master page.
Sure. You won’t have that much of an argument with what’s written there. I mean, I haven’t looked recently, but we won’t have too much of an argument there. Our main argument would be with how this is practiced and with the emphasis the people have.
At least the. So, it’s really important for people that are implementing SAFe to emphasize the Scrum master choices. I think it would be great if all, safe Scrum masters actually get exposed to the content of the professional Scrum master and especially the professional Scrum master, advanced to, and, advance to, content, class, mindset.
Scrum masters in SAFe are exposed to advanced facilitation techniques and liberating structures, and that’s even part of the safe classes. I don’t think it’s as evil as, people portray to be, and I don’t think the gap is as big as people portray to be.
Ryan Ripley: What do you think is the biggest gap? Like, for, some of these horror stories about a safe Scrum master, they don’t come out of thin air, right?
And so there’s got to be some very direct language where you would say, yeah, this kind of makes sense for people to be a little upset, right?
Yuval Yeret: The focal point is one of the biggest gaps, that I see. So, in safe, the Scrum masters are the teams are represented for the Scrum of Scrum, for example.
They are the focal point in pi planning that when you make those choices, you put these people into a mode of leading the team and the team actually relinquishing some power to the Scrum master rather than being self-managed.
Ryan Ripley: Yeah.
Yuval Yeret: So, so that’s the biggest gap.
Ryan Ripley: So how does SAFe define that path? So, so when I’m hearing you say is and I want to make sure I’ve got this right. From a safe perspective, the Scrum master is expected to do all of the things that we would teach in professional Scrum, but, but the safe powers that be they said, look in the trenches, this is a very difficult transition.
We have people still acting as managers, team leads, project managers, let’s codify some of that and then over time expect more. Is that the case?
Yuval Yeret: Over time, expect less of that. More of the servant leadership, right.
Ryan Ripley: More of the servant leadership, right.
Yuval Yeret: More of the servant leadership. Yes, that’s more or less how it’s described. Also, if you look at the framework definition, maybe even if we open scaled agile framework.com and go to the Scrum master page.
Sure. You won’t have that much of an argument with what’s written there. I mean, I haven’t looked recently, but we won’t have too much of an argument there. Our main argument would be with how this is practiced and with the emphasis the people have.
At least the. So, it’s really important for people that are implementing SAFe to emphasize the Scrum master choices. I think it would be great if all, safe Scrum masters actually get exposed to the content of the professional Scrum master and especially the professional Scrum master, advanced to, and, advance to, content, class, mindset.
Scrum masters in SAFe are exposed to advanced facilitation techniques and liberating structures, and that’s even part of the safe classes. I don’t think it’s as evil as, people portray to be, and I don’t think the gap is as big as people portray to be.
Ryan Ripley: What do you think is the biggest gap? Like, for, some of these horror stories about a safe Scrum master, they don’t come out of thin air, right?
And so there’s got to be some very direct language where you would say, yeah, this kind of makes sense for people to be a little upset, right?
Yuval Yeret: The focal point is one of the biggest gaps, that I see. So, in safe, the Scrum masters are the teams are represented for the Scrum of Scrum, for example.
They are the focal point in pi planning that when you make those choices, you put these people into a mode of leading the team and the team actually relinquishing some power to the Scrum master rather than being self-managed.
Ryan Ripley: Yeah.
Yuval Yeret: So, so that’s the biggest gap.
Ryan Ripley: Yeah. And I’ve seen that where the Scrum master acts as the proxy for the team and they become the bottleneck and then it almost subverts the whole idea of an autonomous team. So, let’s dive into that a little bit more.
What are some of the other key differences? Are there other ways that the safe Scrum master role differs from the professional Scrum master role?
Yuval Yeret: Yeah, I think the other thing is the emphasis on the art sync and the art the agile release train and the coordination with other teams.
So, in safe, the Scrum master is also expected to participate in the Scrum of Scrum and the art sync and to help coordinate and manage the dependencies between teams. Which in professional Scrum, we would hope that the team itself manages these dependencies directly with other teams, right?
Ryan Ripley: Yes.
Yuval Yeret: And in safe, because of the scale, because of the complexity, the Scrum master often becomes that coordination point between teams, which again, can lead to that bottleneck and can lead to less autonomy for the team.
Ryan Ripley: Absolutely. And I think that’s a really important distinction. That safe Scrum master is not just focused on the team, they’re also focused on the agile release train and the coordination across the train. And that can really pull them away from their primary responsibility, which is helping the team improve.
Yuval Yeret: Exactly. And that’s the challenge, right? It’s the balance between team-level coaching and facilitation and train-level coordination. And often, organizations pull them way too much towards the train-level coordination and forget about the team-level coaching.
Ryan Ripley: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that’s a great place to wrap up this discussion on the Scrum master in SAFe. Yuval, thank you so much for sharing your insights. This has been a really fascinating conversation.
Yuval Yeret: Thanks for having me, Ryan. Always a pleasure.