The Scrum Master is accountable for the effectiveness of the Scrum Team, for ensuring that the team follows Scrum, for removing impediments, and for making sure the events are held and productive. Despite the leadership the role demands, the Scrum Master is not a project manager; Scrum has no project manager role. Many Scrum Masters also act as agile coaches, but the role fundamentally combines facilitating, serving, and leading within the organization. The underlying leadership philosophy is servant leadership, in which the leader's primary goal is to serve others by focusing on the team's needs. A core Scrum Master skill is facilitation: guiding meetings and processes without exercising authority over content, which keeps decision-making in the hands of the team.
The Scrum Master serves the three accountabilities in distinct ways. With the Product Owner, the Scrum Master helps find techniques for effective Product Backlog management, facilitates collaboration with stakeholders, and supports empirical planning. With the Developers, the Scrum Master coaches self-management and cross-functionality, removes impediments, ensures that events are productive, and protects the team from external interference. With the organization, the Scrum Master leads, trains, and coaches adoption, plans implementations, and helps employees understand empiricism. Removing impediments is a primary responsibility, although the entire team should help surface and address them; an impediment is anything that prevents the team from making progress toward the Sprint Goal. Distinguishing a risk, which is a potential future problem, from an issue, which is a current problem, helps the Scrum Master prioritize where to focus effort.