Unpopular opinion: Most Scrum Masters are project managers in disguise
I'll probably get heat for this, but hear me out.
I've worked with dozens of Scrum Masters across multiple organizations, and the pattern I see is:
- They manage the Jira board instead of coaching the team
- They report status to management instead of protecting the team
- They assign work instead of letting the team self-organize
- They run ceremonies as checkbox exercises
True Scrum Mastery is about servant leadership, coaching, and organizational change. How many of us are actually doing that vs. being glorified project managers?
I'm not trying to gatekeep — I'm trying to start a conversation about how we elevate the role.
5 Comments
Hard agree. The job market doesn't help — most SM job descriptions read like PM job descriptions. Companies hire SMs but expect PMs.
I think the issue is organizational maturity. In mature agile orgs, the SM role looks very different from immature ones. We need to stop blaming individuals and look at the system.
@priya_scale Totally agree about the system. I'd add: most SM training programs don't teach actual coaching skills. They teach Scrum mechanics.
As a PO, I can tell the difference immediately. The SMs who coach make my life better. The SMs who manage make my life harder.
Former PM here who became an SM. The hardest thing was unlearning control. It took me a full year to stop asking 'when will this be done?' and start asking 'what's in your way?'