So how much is a Scrum Master worth?

So how much does a Scrum Master cost? Let’s chat about it, I think the answer might just surprise you.

Now I think this is an interesting question, we tend to think of this in terms of how much an organisation will have to pay to employ a Scrum Master or how much the Scrum Master thinks they're worth, but there's a different way of looking at this. The cost to the organisation and the team by employing the wrong person.

Employing the wrong person can be many times more expensive than just their salary

So why is that?

Well it's because the value in a Scrum Master is not facilitating Scrum events or quoting parrot fashion the Scrum Guide, if that's all you want then literally anyone can do that, after all it's just meetings and a 13 page document.

Now don't get me wrong, good facilitation is a skill, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about those people who just show up and run a meeting without really being present or adding any value.

I'm sure you've met a few of them!

The value in a Scrum Master is to help the team and organisation deliver tangible value and positive outcomes to clients and customers, they can do this by identifying issues and ways of working both at the team and organisational level, working with the right people to solve them.

Not by any mystic Yoda like psycho babble but through solid research presenting their findings in a logical way using the language that fits the audience, a language that the business will understand, profit or loss, increased or decreased value. They should be data led.

The value in a Scrum Master is to help the team be more predictable to be able to provide leadership with realistic forecasts for delivery, not to quote some silly outdated notion that it will be ‘done when it's done’ because we're agile.

I really can't believe that was ever acceptable and it certainly isn't in 2024, costs matter, budgets matter.

There are lots of ways a Scrum Master can do this, cycle time and Monte Carlo Simulation for starters.

A Scrum Master should be able to confidently work with their Product Owner helping them to shape the backlog, to be coherent with a purpose, through its vision, goals and roadmap. Which in turn helps the team to shape each Sprint with a specific goal helping the team deliver value and the organisation with positive outcomes to its clients and customers.

The Scrum Master should be able to work at all levels influencing and persuading the organisation to make improvements through actively listening to stakeholders with empathy and humility using foresight and stewardship.

The Scrum Master role should be quantifiable, measurable, ‘heresy!’, I hear you cry. No not at all, I can't think of many, or any, roles where you're not measured in any way. How can you show that you're valuable if you're not measurable?

KPI’s can give many in this game a short sharp shock but I'd suggest this is needed as a there are far too many Scrum Masters out there who just turn turn the wheel delivering no value and not doing our profession any favours.

So for example;

• The number of positive improvements made

• An increase in predictability

• An increase in customer satisfaction either through direct feedback or metrics like increased views, subscriptions or revenue

• Or increased psychological safety measured through engagement and collaboration, how open and honest are the conversations?

These are just a few ways you can measure.

If you want to get a Scrum Master on the cheap then you're going to get a sheep someone who just follows others unable to make a positive impact.

The Scrum Master role is a servant leadership position, now don't fall into the trap of reading servant and thinking they're there to carry out menial tasks this is a leadership position and you need someone with the the gravitas to implement change and help steer the organisation to business agility.

So think about that when setting the salary and put the effort in to recruit wisely.

But returning to the question how much does a Scrum Master cost?

If you don't hire the right Scrum Master it can cost an awful lot more than the salary paid through poor delivery, a lack of focus, slow change and the same set of dissatisfied stakeholders and customers. Not to mention the cost of removing them from the organisation when it all, inevitably, goes wrong.

So the old adage ‘you get what you pay for’ springs to mind. If you're going to pay peanuts you're going to get a monkey.

So organisations take the time to understand what the Scrum Master is there to do and how they can help you, if you don't then you're as culpable as Scrum Masters who just facilitate events, and and frankly, you deserve each other.