How Scrum Masters Prove Their Worth

The team had started to wonder aloud: “Do we really even need a Scrum Master anymore?” Their standups ran smoothly, retrospectives felt familiar, and the board was updated. From their perspective, the Scrum Master wasn’t doing much beyond sitting in on meetings. Some even joked that she was more of an observer than a contributor. 

It happens to great Scrum Masters (or agile coaches) all of the time. We often state that they work ON the organization, not IN it. It’s hard to see what they do each day. 

What the team didn’t see was the work happening just outside the team’s line of sight. While they were focused on stories for the current Sprint, the Scrum Master had been working with product leaders on how to plan beyond the next iteration. She was helping them refine the roadmap, break down epics into better-sized chunks, and expose dependencies earlier. Quietly, she was building an on-ramp, giving the team visibility into work a bit further upstream so Sprint Planning could be smoother and less reactive. 

Two months later, the difference was clear. Instead of spending time during Planning to decode half-baked backlog items, the team entered with better-prepared work, clearer Sprint Goals, and fewer surprises. Predictability improved, commitments stuck, and frustration with “last-minute scope changes” dropped significantly. 

What looked like inactivity was, in fact, a shift in focus, enabling the team to plan more effectively by coaching leaders and aligning the bigger picture.

What.

This story captures the challenge of the Scrum Master role. Its value is often indirect. Scrum Masters don’t produce features themselves; they create the environment where features can flow. They remove impediments, coach collaboration, and guard against enabling constraints that let teams work at their best. 

The difficulty is that these contributions don’t always leave evident fingerprints. A healthy team, a smooth Sprint, or a predictable release can feel like “business as usual”, until you remember how chaotic things were before. Or if your team is focused on their tactical day-to-day work, that often seems like it's going great. However, hidden dependencies and blockages are occurring upstream, and one day they will be affected. The more we scale, the more we will feel these problems. By the way, if you can't do Scrum very well in one team, how can we expect to do well with 20 teams?

So What? 

The risk is that leaders undervalue the Scrum Master role because they’re not shown the connection between coaching and results. A Scrum Master who quietly removes blockers, fosters psychological safety, and reduces waste might seem invisible if success is measured only by visible activity. In fact, we often coach Scrum Masters; they must be ok with team success, not their own. 

But the true markers of their impact, improved predictability, higher engagement, and better throughput, are deeply tied to leadership’s goals. When those outcomes are overlooked, organizations risk cutting the role and losing the very improvements they depend on. 

When Scrum Masters learn to be present in all levels and aspects of delivery and goal setting, people will see their value. Frequently meeting with leaders one-on-one can help as well. 

Now What.

Scrum Masters must make their value visible by pairing metrics with stories:

• Predictability: Show trends in commitments met vs. missed before and after interventions.
• Engagement: Share results from team health surveys or feedback loops.
• Throughput: Highlight cycle time or lead time improvements following blocker removals.
• Stories: Pair the numbers with narratives that bring them to life (e.g., “By reshaping roadmap discussions, we reduced Planning thrash and improved predictability by 20%”).

This combination helps leaders see that the Scrum Master’s work isn’t about running meetings, it’s about creating tangible business results.

Let’s Do This!

Scrum Masters prove their worth not by counting the ceremonies they facilitate, but by connecting their coaching to outcomes that matter: predictability, engagement, and flow. Their best work may be invisible in the moment, but it becomes undeniable when teams deliver consistently and sustainably. 

Work yourself out of a job at the team level, yes! But there is infinite work in the organization that truly wants to be agile. Continuous improvement never ceases; professionals always want to find ways to get better.

In the end, the role is not about activity, it’s about impact.