This reminds me also of my most productive days. Funny how enough people create their own middle management jobs, and jobs like "scrum master", that literally seek to destroy developer time.
If your Scrum Master is destroying developer time, then s/he is "doing it wrong".
The main function of the Scrum Master is to shield the developers from all the non-development crap. I've worked with one guy who was so good at it he would play interference and defend us from outside interruptions almost literally (actually blocking people from coming to our desks, making sure we could focus, holding meetings only if someone on the team expressed some kind of blocking issue that he couldn't solve by himself, etc)
Sure, probably this was more about him being a good manager than the "process" behind it. But no matter the process, if a manager is destroying productive time from the developers the fault is in the individual, not the environment or process adopted.
> But no matter the process, if a manager is destroying productive time from the developers the fault is in the individual, not the environment or process adopted.
Why can't it be both? Bad managers can be empowered by a process, just as good managers could be hampered – no?
Agile provides so many tools for bad managers to micro manage, so that even if the process itself is well intended it still could lead to hell – no?
> Sure, probably this was more about him being a good manager than the "process" behind it.
Of course also that, but you're completely right that that is the exact job of the Scrum Master. To "remove impediments". No matter if the impediment is some process or a manager, it's the Scrum Master's job to remove it.
This actually aligns pretty well with the ideas in Agile Manifesto. And that's why I'm so sad when "scrum master" nowadays mostly seems to mean someone who counts the minutes devs spend on each Jira ticket, and haunt the team when velocity seems to be dropping 10% for the second day in a row.
jobs like "scrum master", that literally seek to destroy developer time.
We can’t really ever hope to make progress with improving productivity or work environments if people contribute to be this reductive.
A “scrum master” role does obviously not “literally seek to destroy developer time” - it’s a patently ludicrous assumption. But if you are in a situation where this is happening - rather, where a “scrum master” role is getting in the way of work - then it does point to something else going wrong in your organisation.
So, I didn't mean to offend anyone, only speaking from my experience.
I feel most jobs, at some companies in some situations, are absolutely justified. The problem is that then every company thinks they need to follow suit, and it ends up being a giant time sink. I'd wager most scrum masters are viewed by their team as a net negative (my opinion). But of course no person whose job acts as a hindrance will admit as much.
