During a Sprint Planning session, a frustrated developer whispered under his breath: “Our Scrum Master just slows us down. Why do we even need them?”
The room went quiet, but heads nodded. For that team, the Scrum Master had become associated with more meetings, more checklists, and more friction.
What they saw wasn’t a coach helping them improve; it was someone enforcing rules that felt disconnected from the reality of delivering software. The criticism stung, but it was also a wake-up call.
What.
This kind of skepticism isn’t new, and it isn’t always wrong.
Across social media, Scrum Masters are often caricatured as “process police” or “meeting schedulers.” That perception comes from poor implementations of Scrum where ceremonies are run mechanically, metrics are wielded as weapons, and the role feels more like a bureaucratic overseer than a servant-leader.
As Jeff Sutherland (Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work) points out, Scrum was never intended to be a rigid checklist. At its heart, it’s a lightweight framework for learning and delivering value in complexity. When the role of Scrum Master is reduced to dogmatic enforcement, skepticism is the natural response.
Minimum Viable Process, Minimum Viable Bureaucracy!
So What.
The risk is that this misuse of the role promotes a broader idea that Scrum Masters don’t provide value. Critics focus solely on the costs, such as extra meetings and strict enforcement, overlooking the potential benefits of the role when practiced effectively. This misunderstanding causes some organizations to completely remove Scrum Masters, often leading to negative outcomes: lost focus, scattered collaboration, and diminished psychological safety.
By mixing up poor Scrum with Scrum itself, teams risk losing not just the role but also the principles that support agility. The Scrum Master is meant to remove obstacles, coach teams on self-management, and protect the framework’s integrity, not become a bottleneck.
Now What.
So how do we address this skepticism constructively? By shifting the conversation from rituals to outcomes, Scrum Masters must:
- Demonstrate how their work improves flow, not just compliance.
- Facilitate ceremonies as learning opportunities, not obligations.
- Focus coaching on delivering value predictably and sustainably, not defending process for process’s sake.
The best Scrum Masters make their value tangible by connecting daily practices to outcomes the business cares about: faster feedback loops, fewer quality issues, and healthier collaboration.
When leaders and teams see results, skepticism fades.
Let's Do This!
The criticism of Scrum Masters often stems from a core truth: when reduced to process enforcers, they can seem like obstacles.
But that isn’t the role they were meant to play. The best Scrum Masters are pragmatists, focused on guiding teams toward meaningful outcomes, not defending rigid dogma. Instead of asking, “Do we need a Scrum Master?” a better question is, “Do we need someone to help us continuously improve?” The answer to that is almost always yes.