Turning into a Scrum Secretary

The Scrum Master acting as a Scrum secretary can take many forms. Sometimes it’s by taking notes: writing down statuses and team activities during every Scrum event. They write down the entire sprint plan, the daily scrum outcome, refinement discussions, and retrospective comments.

Other times, it can take the form of bringing the team coffee in the morning and sliding a pizza under the door at night. There’s nothing wrong with getting coffee for your team members every once in a while; that’s nice. But if your main purpose is to feed the team and keep them caffeinated, you’re neglecting the responsibilities of a Scrum master.

Planning all the Scrum events and keeping calendars up to date is another way you can turn into a Scrum secretary. Honestly, these are things that the team can manage, and that they should be managing as a self-organizing team. If their capacity is going to change based on someone being out of the office, that’s something they should consider at sprint planning. It’s not the Scrum master’s role.

Move these tasks back to the development team and get back to the difficult work of serving the Scrum team and the organization.