research-article

Teaching the Scrum master role using professional Agile coaches and communities of practice

Author:

Maria PaasivaaraAuthors Info & Claims

ICSE-JSEET '21: Proceedings of the 43rd International Conference on Software Engineering: Joint Track on Software Engineering Education and Training

Pages 30 - 39

https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSE-SEET52601.2021.00012

Published: 17 December 2021 Publication History

Abstract

As Scrum seems to be the most popular Agile method at the moment, most universities teaching software development teach it. A Scrum Team consists of a Scrum Master, a Product Owner, and developers. The Scrum Master role is vital in the team. However, looking at the industry, companies have difficulties both in hiring good Scrum Masters and convincing their developers or other personnel to take that role. Agile trainers do offer short Scrum Master training courses. However, we lacking information on how to train Scrum Masters in university education.

In this paper, we report how we arranged a one-semester long Scrum Master training course. During the course, students worked as team Scrum Masters under the guidance of professional agile coaches and collaborated in a Scrum Master Community of Practice.

We collected data by performing 13 post-course semi-structured interviews with Scrum Masters and by analyzing the learning diaries of 37 students from three course instances.

Team-specific Agile coaches supported their Scrum Master first by example, then by observing the Scrum Masters in action and providing feedback and ideas, and finally by helping students to reflect. Students found the coaches extremely useful and wished they had utilized their coach more. Scrum Master community of practice worked best when students self-organized, shared practices and tools and provided peer support when facing problems. Finally, students with a non-technical background, as well as female students performed better as Scrum Masters than computer science and male students.

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Cited By

Parthasarathy PJoshi SRoychoudhury APaiva AAbreu RStorey MGama KSiegmund J(2024)Teaching Digital Accessibility to Industry Professionals using the Community of Practice framework: An Experience ReportProceedings of the 46th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering Education and Training10.1145/3639474.3640083(191-200)Online publication date: 14-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3639474.3640083
Pirelli SRoychoudhury APaiva AAbreu RStorey MGama KSiegmund J(2024)Scalable Teaching of Software Engineering Theory and Practice: An Experience ReportProceedings of the 46th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering Education and Training10.1145/3639474.3640053(286-296)Online publication date: 14-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3639474.3640053

Index Terms

Teaching the Scrum master role using professional Agile coaches and communities of practice
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computing education programs
        Computer science education
    2. Management of computing and information systems
      1. Project and people management
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Collaboration in software development
      1. Programming teams

Index terms have been assigned to the content through auto-classification.

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cover image ACM Conferences

ICSE-JSEET '21: Proceedings of the 43rd International Conference on Software Engineering: Joint Track on Software Engineering Education and Training

May 2021

317 pages

ISBN:9780738133201

Conference Chairs:
Hakan Erdogmus
Carnegie Mellon University
,
Ana M. Moreno
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid

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SIGSOFT: ACM Special Interest Group on Software Engineering

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IEEE CS

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IEEE Press

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Published: 17 December 2021

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ICSE '21

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ICSE '21: 43rd International Conference on Software Engineering

May 25 - 28, 2021

Virtual Event, Spain

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ICSE 2025

2025 IEEE/ACM 46th International Conference on Software Engineering

April 26 - May 3, 2025

Ottawa , ON , Canada

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Cited By

Parthasarathy PJoshi SRoychoudhury APaiva AAbreu RStorey MGama KSiegmund J(2024)Teaching Digital Accessibility to Industry Professionals using the Community of Practice framework: An Experience ReportProceedings of the 46th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering Education and Training10.1145/3639474.3640083(191-200)Online publication date: 14-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3639474.3640083
Pirelli SRoychoudhury APaiva AAbreu RStorey MGama KSiegmund J(2024)Scalable Teaching of Software Engineering Theory and Practice: An Experience ReportProceedings of the 46th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering Education and Training10.1145/3639474.3640053(286-296)Online publication date: 14-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3639474.3640053

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