Why Scrum Masters Need Technical Expertise to Guide Teams

Would you trust a coach who doesn’t understand your sport?

Then why do we think a Scrum Master can be effective without understanding the technical work of their team?

Technical mastery doesn’t mean Scrum Masters need to be coders, but they do have to have worked as developers. But it does mean they need to understand what “good” looks like.

For software teams, that means knowing:

• TDD and CI/CD
• Infrastructure as Code
• DevOps and cloud principles

For finance teams, it means understanding:

• Regulatory constraints
• Risk modelling
• Financial product design

Scrum Masters don’t do the work, but they need technical expertise in the work to help teams get better.

Where do we draw the line between enabling and doing?