- Posted by dan on June 18, 2011
Has your team ever been in a situation where your scrum master wasn't there, even scrum masters need a holiday it seems. Now I know that teams that have reached agile nirvana might not even need a scrum master, but we're still on the path.
So recently when faced with scrum master absence we improvised with the Sock Puppet scrum master (Cyril), though he's not actually evil. We actually had a gutted Garfield toy to which I have to say people preferred. It seems only the brave wanted to adorn the old sock (though we were assured it'd been washed at some point).
A Change of Perspective
Cyril and Garfield's basic premise, though was to force the team into the scrum master thinking patterns. The team tend to be optmistic about making our commitment, but by putting on the Scrum master sock, you have to be a bit more shall we say realistic, which can help fill that little gap when team members inevitably are ill or go on holiday.
Can you replace your Scrum Master with a Sock?
No not in the long term, but maybe in the short term whilst your scrum masters on holiday or off ill. We even got a far as putting scrum master tasks on the board so we didn't neglect them.