Scrum Masters Do Development Too
Organizations often have a misunderstanding that Scrum Master is a full time job. It was actually designed to be a half time job.
For context it was meant to start as a half time job. An indicator of an effective Scrum team is maturity. As the team matures the responsibility of a Scrum Master progressively reduces. The job could be considered transient; temporarily needed.
An effective Scrum team mostly runs on automatic, being able to resolve its own impediments, facilitate its own events, and the business understands the expectations of Scrum.
The person accountable as a Scrum Master continues to work full time, just not on Scrum. As the amount of time a Scrum Master focuses on Scrum decreases the amount of work a Scrum Master focuses on development increases.
At some point a Scrum Master essentially becomes a developer. Scrum Masters will be seen spending 80% of the the time doing development, maybe more as the Scrum team matures.
Scrum Masters are not absolved of the responsibility of working on sprint items. As Scrum says, “The entire Scrum Team is accountable for creating a valuable, useful Increment every Sprint.” This is a common misunderstanding with Scrum Masters who have a project management background which traditionally avoided contributing to development. In Scrum nobody on the team is prohibited from contributing to development.
That is why Scrum Master should do development. It is not just an indicator of a team successfully using Scrum to deliver value, but is also an indicator of being a great Scrum Master.
