Scrum master activities: process tailoring in large enterprise projects.

Bass, Julian M.

Abstract

This paper explores practitioner descriptions of agile method tailoring in large-scale offshore or outsourced enterprise projects. Specifically, tailoring of the scrum master role is investigated. The scrum master acts as a facilitator for software development teams, nurturing adherence to agile practices and removing impediments for team members. But in large projects, scrum masters often work together in geographically distributed teams. Scrum masters use sprint planning to avoid development tasks that overlap team boundaries, coordinate status and effort across teams, and integrate code bases. The study comprises 8 international companies in London, Bangalore and Delhi. Interviews with 46 practitioners were conducted between February 2010 and May 2012. A grounded theory research method was used to identify that the scrum master role comprises six activities: process anchor, stand-up facilitator, impediment remover, sprint planner, scrum of scrums facilitator, and integration anchor. This systematic description of activities in scrum master teams extends our understanding of practitioner perspectives on agile process tailoring in large enterprises. Understanding these activities will help coaches guide large scale agile teams.

Citation

BASS, J.M. 2014. Scrum master activities: process tailoring in large enterprise projects. In Proceedings of the 9th IEEE international conference on global software engineering (ICGSE 2014), 18-21 August 2014, Shanghai, China. Los Alamitos: IEEE Computer Society [online], article number 6915249, pages 6-15. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1109/ICGSE.2014.24

• Conference Name: 9th IEEE international conference on global software engineering (ICGSE 2014)
• Conference Location: Shanghai, China
• Start Date: Aug 18, 2014
• End Date: Aug 21, 2014
• Acceptance Date: Apr 29, 2014
• Online Publication Date: Aug 21, 2014
• Publication Date: Oct 2, 2014
• Deposit Date: Oct 8, 2014
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 8, 2014
• Publisher: IEEE Computer Society
• Article Number: 6915249
• Pages: 6-15
• Series Title: Proceedings of the international conference on global software engineering
• ISBN: 9781479943609
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/ICGSE.2014.24
• Keywords: Companies; Software; Interviews; Scrum (software development), software engineering; programming
• Public URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10059/1055