I just wanna dance in the basement.

Chris,

**Who leads the Scrum Team?**

I had this discussion a lot over the years on who's in charge of a given Scrum Team, who's the leader. I came out as biased, but there is just one role description that contains the word leader in it. The Scrum Master is the servant leader of the team. Most people hear servant, and that's about it. 

I was on rowing teams off and on for around twenty years. Most of that time I was in a position known as a coxswain. A name that will make you giggle like a twelve-year-old and confuse you as to what they contribute. They are dead weight in the boat. They have a steering device that leads to a rudder the size of a credit card to turn a boat that's about sixty feet long. They yell at the rowers, and it seems like someone else in the boat could handle the little bit of steering needed for these races. Some boats have tried.

There is more to the job than it seems. They're the person in the boat who's facing forward, whose job it is to look ahead, not at the task at hand (Pull Oar for the rest of the boat). They set a cadence that's enforced by the boat's front seat. It's a good coxswain's voice cadence that helps keep everyone in time. They also update the rowers to keep their curiosity at bay—"We're this close to the next boat," "We have a turn coming up," things like that. They take care of the boat and rowers throughout the race and, hopefully, add more than their weight drags the boat down. 

If the team wins, there is a tradition of throwing the coxswain into the river. Eight people take the smallest person on the team and gleefully chuck them into the water they just rowed in. A drenched coxswain comes out and then gets their medal for winning the race.

I used this analogy to being a scrum master in my initial interview. I saw it being very similar. I still do. 

Engineering managers, team leads, and traditional management positions have a lot more going for them than servant leaders. There is validation that you did bring the project across the line. "Without your leadership, the team would have floundered." Doing the things without that recognition, without the respect that comes with positions of hierarchy—that's the world of being the one sitting forward and getting thrown into the water.

Servant leaders foster growth in the team, pushing the ability to take charge to the right person and showing that the team believes in them. It's not the job of a servant leader to be in front; they lead from behind, allowing others to take the glory and improve themselves. One of the most crucial points of being a Scrum Master is understanding the toll of being a servant leader.

"Everybody wants to get famous
but you just want to dance in a basement
You don't care if anyone is watching
Just as long as you stay in motion"

-Menzingers (After the Party)

That's what a good servant leader looks like. But the Agile industry didn't select for that. The Agile industry cashed in on people trying to get into tech. 

Becoming a Scrum Master was the easiest way to get into the position—it's management, but not, it's on the team, without having to know the tech, and you still get a good salary. Certifications exploded with everyone offering them; the grassroots ideology was now the biggest swinging door for people to get a good job. It polluted the pool of good applicants.

I've used the term before, but it fits super well: Hot Topic Scrum Masters. They know the book but not how to be a servant leader, nor the cost of doing the job well. It shows when you see how badly they do the job. 

Stand-ups become status checks; information radiation comes only from the Scrum Master; and all impediments must be solved by that person. There is no growth on the team, just atrophy in what they can do for themselves. The Agile and Scrum Master Certification explosion ushered in a wave of people who don't understand the job and are actively hurting their teams. This shows in the way the team is no longer servant-led but led by someone who has taken control. 

These Agile Fashionistas are the main reason for most of the problems I've heard bitched about online—how Agile doesn't work. The Scrum Masters are so obsessed with showing their value they sap it from the team, and the retros start becoming about how other teams are blocking them and not about what they can do to improve despite that. The Scrum Master stops being a coxswain and is just dead weight on the boat. 

How do you tell, though? Most people don't understand the job or what it entails outside the book. What does a good Scrum Master or Coxswain look like? You don't see their work, you just see results obfuscated by others taking credit.

Given that the only described leader of the team, you'd think there would be more focus on finding and training the right one. The job though is full of Scrum Masters who've read the book but never been dumped in a river, left shivering and ignored after the medal was placed around their neck. I've never been asked in an interview "what's the best thing you did that you can't take credit for?" That to me is the essence of being a good manager in general, no less a servant leader. 

I hope that helps.