Unlocking the Leadership Potential of Scrum Masters: Empowering Teams to Make Decisions

Scrum Master is a leadership role, but the team decides.

According to the traditional understanding of leadership, this statement is a contradiction because the manager decides. But this contradiction is what makes the role of the Scrum Master so forward-looking. Companies are striving for more agility. The Scrum Master embodies agility. Agility means reacting to changes. Reacting means deciding. In order for decisions to be implemented quickly, they must be made by the team.

Putting decisions in the hands of the team makes the Scrum Master a modern leader.

In this type of leadership, Scrum Masters not only take on great responsibility, but also provide great value for the company.

This value can be expressed in numbers:

Let’s assume that a team member costs the company around 100 euros per hour. If the team consists of ten members, then every hour that the team spends in a meeting costs 1,000 euros.

Well, if planning a two-week sprint takes eight hours instead of the planned four, then it costs the company an additional 4,000 euros. If the result of the daily scrum is just another one-hour appointment to coordinate with the project management instead of the developers working together, then this costs the company an additional 1,000 euros. If the sprint review takes two hours instead of one because the discussions go in endless circles, then this costs the company another 1,000 euros.

The fact is: The company pays 1,000 euros for every hour of ineffective collaboration.

Collaboration is always considered ineffective if no decision is made that moves the team from talking to taking action. The epitome of an ineffective meeting is described by the saying: “Everything has already been said, but not by everyone.” An experienced Scrum Master would have shortened this considerably with a simple thumb vote.

What am I trying to get at with this?

If you save your team just four hours of ineffective meeting time per month, you will save your company €48,000 a year!

I can almost hear you thinking, why exactly four hours? From my many years of experience as a Scrum Master, four hours is a realistic and at the same time very conservative estimate. And four hours also corresponds to the statement of a “Business cases for Scrum Masters“, which was recently calculated by experienced Scrum experts.

what does that mean to you? If you want to save your company 48,000 euros, then help your team decide. This is the value of your work for your company. Of course, it’s not enough to just do thumb voting, you have to remove the obstacles that prevent teams from deciding.

You can now find out what these are and how to remove them:

Obstacle 1: Does a decision need to be made?

Not all meetings end with a decision.

Status updates, refinement meetings, discovery workshops or all-hands meetings do not require a decision to fulfill their purpose.

This shouldn’t be the case at meetings in Scrum! They end when a decision has been made.

Let’s go through the Scrum events one by one:

• Sprint Planning: Ends when the team has committed to a sprint goal.
• Daily Scrum: Ends when it has been decided what the developers will work on today to get one step closer to the sprint goal.
• Sprint Review: Ends when the Scrum Team and stakeholders have decided what has the highest priority going forward.
• Sprint Retrospective: Ends when the Scrum Team has decided on an improvement suggestion that it wants to pursue further in the next sprint.

Not knowing whether the appointment should end with a decision or not represents an obstacle. This obstacle costs a lot of unnecessary time. If you want to save your team time, clarify with them before the appointment what the purpose of the meeting is and whether a decision is necessary. This clarity helps your team focus on making a decision.

Additional practical tip: If you are unsure whether or not a decision needs to be made in a meeting, pay attention to whether participants use the word “I” or “we” when discussing the topics. Using the word “we” gives you an indication that this is a meeting that should culminate in a decision.

Obstacle 2: Who gets to make the decision?

Once it is clear whether the meeting should end with a decision, the uncertainty within the team about who is making the decision is an additional problem on the path to the decision.

You overcome this obstacle by explaining the four levels of a decision to your team (I use a simplified version of Management 3.0’s delegation levels).

• Level 1 – A directive decision: This is a decision made by senior management, the team leader or management. Team members have no say in this. You have to submit.
• Level 2 – A consultative decision: This is a decision where management makes a decision but first solicits the ideas and suggestions from team members.
• Level 3 – A participatory decision: A decision that requires team members to create recommendations and action plans, but still requires management approval for implementation.
• Level 4 – A delegated decision: This decision is made by team members without having to seek further approval.

Not knowing who has the authority to make a decision costs the team a lot of time in unnecessary discussions. You will save your team this time if you record with them who makes decisions in which situation.

Obstacle 3: How should the decision be made?

Once it is clear who makes the decisions, the question remains: “How do we decide?”

Everyone in the team should be aware at the beginning of the meeting how the decision will be made. There are four rules for making decisions:

• Individual decision: One person in the team decides for everyone.
• Consensus decision: If all members of the team agree, the decision is made.
• Majority decision: If the majority agrees to the proposal, the decision is made.
• Consensus decision: The decision is made when there are no longer any objections to the proposal.

You can find out more about the four rules here find. If you want to implement the decision rule, there are a number of techniques: coin toss, novel voting, fist-of-five and gradient of approval. If you haven’t given much thought to decisions and decision-making techniques, I’ll give you my “Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills“-Training to the heart. This is the introductory course in moderating Scrum events – especially for Scrum Masters.

Efficient use of decision rules and decision-making techniques saves your team a lot of time.

Obstacle 4: Does a conflict hinder the decision?

Imagine:

The team comes together for the sprint retrospective. As a Scrum Master, you introduce the topic of the retrospective. After you’re done, one member of the team comes forward with their solution and tells the whole group that they have the right solution and begins to describe it with passion. This causes another team member to make an opposite suggestion, which he then tries to sell to the team. The two people are completely absorbed in promoting their ideas and no longer notice anything around them. The other members of the team are forced to take a position or side. Then the statements become more emotional and the retrospective degenerates into a competition about who is right and who is wrong.

This situation is intended to illustrate to you that the path from a group decision to a conflict is often only a short one. I’m sure you’ll agree that team conflict is the epitome of an ineffective meeting.

And once accusations and bad words are thrown at you, it is almost inevitable that the team will fall apart. To prevent this from happening, invest some time in educating your team about the different stages of a conflict. This will save you time in the long run. The better your team understands the conflict, the higher the likelihood that team members will recognize that they are moving towards a conflict and can de-escalate it.

A simplified version of Friedrich Glasl’s “nine steps into the abyss of conflict” model is:

• Level 1: A “win-win” solution is still possible for both parties.
• Stage 2: Only a “win-lose” solution is possible.
• Stage 3: Only a “lose-lose” solution is possible for both parties.

According to Marc Kaufmann, my assistant coach in the “Professional Scrum Master II“-training, the transitions between these levels each represent a loss. After the transition from level 1 to 2, mutual appreciation is lost. Then it is no longer possible to make a decision in a meeting that everyone in the team really supports.

If you ever find yourself in this situation, the only advice I can give you is to do everything in your power to separate the conflicting parties as quickly as possible and then get support from the HR department.

Obstacle 5: Will the decision be blocked?

Consensus decisions are sometimes blocked.

You recognize it in situations like:

• There is a problem with the proposed solution.
• The proposal doesn’t appeal to everyone.
• A team member deliberately holds back, only to raise his objections at the last minute.

The fact that a proposed solution is blocked by team members is initially a good thing. Because it saves the team time in the long term. Nothing costs more time than spending hours developing a proposal that is then not implemented because team members’ objections were not taken into account.

To save your team time in the long term, you should help them make objections to a suggestion visible early on.

Sam Kaner’s “Gradient of Approval” method can help you here:

Ask team members to rate their agreement with this proposal on this scale:

1. I am completely against the proposal and have major problems with the solution.
2. I have several serious reservations about the proposed solution.
3. I have one or two reservations about the proposed solution.
4. I can live with the suggestion.
5. I completely agree with the suggestion.

After each team member has cast their vote, ask your team:

• Why did you choose that way?
• What do you need so that you would give the suggestion a four? (From four onwards we speak of a consensus.)

The answers to the second question help the team improve the proposal so that everyone can agree. A suggestion that everyone agrees on will save your team time in the long run.

Now you know the five obstacles that cost Scrum Teams a lot of time and lead to ineffective collaboration.

I take three steps to remove these obstacles:

• Step 1: If I observe one of the obstacles in a meeting, I do a short facilitator time-out. In this I explain the situation to the team and we work out possible options for action. The content of this article will provide you with the information you need.
• Step 2: I then support the team in deciding on an option for action.
• Step 3: If this situation occurs frequently, then it is helpful to record the future procedure in the working agreements. You can find out more about working agreements here read. If there is no time for this in the meeting, then use the sprint retrospective.