My job has a "scrum master". She's nice, I guess, but as far as I can tell her entire job is sharing her screen so we can look at tickets. Then people tell her what to click on and what text to change. It's excruciating because it would just be faster for the person talking to change it, instead of being like "remove the second bullet point. No, not that one"

On top of that they have all these tasks for "unit testing" but they don't actually do unit testing. Someone just said, in the distant past, we should do testing so it's there.

[–] PodPerson@lemmy.zip 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

This is just like PMs where I work. They are generic PMs with no background in the work we do, so they end up being spreadsheet updaters and meeting schedulers (which literally everyone can easily do themselves).

[–] VonReposti@feddit.dk -1 points 15 hours ago

which literally everyone can easily do themselves

Key word here is 'can'. People can update it themselves, but unless kept accountable for missing something bad, they don't do it unless a PM drags it out of them. In a perfect world we'd all show enough accountability to share the info that could affect a project in a democratic and orderly way, but even when ignoring a lack of PM experience, people usually feel it's bureaucratic and takes precious time away from their specialisation.

A PM with a good background will definitely have a chance to be better than a PM without, but being able to contact the right specialists at the right time and keeping the project flowing is what truly matters.

[–] GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 13 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I loved being the scrum master but the responsibilities should be more than presenter.

I had to deliver project status notes to product shareholders, let them know of any directional changes we had to take due to blockages, drive the team to deliver on time for product launch, manage the backlog workflow to ensure the dod was accomplished, manage the backlog and attribute 15% of it to housecleaning/bug fixes.

[–] AliasVortex@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

This. A scrum master's job should be first and foremost making sure that the dev team has what it needs to get real actual work done. Ideally, the scrum master should be face tanking status/ update meeting, coordinating with outside entities, and ensuring that as few distractions make it to the team as possible.

[–] foo@feddit.uk 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Exactly. A good scrum master shields the team from the bureaucracy, facilitates the meetings while keeping them targeted and on-topic, and keeps everything running instead of slowing it down. They also coach the team in self-organisation.

There are far too many people that call themselves scrum masters that are actually just pressurising ticket managers.

[–] klay1@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I'd rather say an SM does not shield the team from bureaucracy, but makes them face it and empowers them to take it down.

The SM coaches the team on targeting the right topics themselves. Making them realize what to focus on. Ideally, don't to the work for them, that they should be able to do themselves. That would make them ignore these topics, because the SM takes care of it for them.