Scrum Masters

According to Stepstone, the average annual salary of a Scrum Master is around €55,000 per year. The minimum salary is around 45,000€. The hourly rate for freelance Scrum Masters is on average 100€ (as of 2019), which is about 800€ per day for a full-time job. What may sound like a lot at first, can be easily explained and broken down. Since costs such as vacation, material, insurance, and many more are omitted, freelance Scrum Masters are often even a more cost-effective alternative than permanent employees. Companies therefore often rely on the experience of Scrum Masters from different projects for cost reasons or to reliably put temporary projects into action.

Nevertheless, the salary also depends on various factors. These include:

– The degree
– The size of the company
– The industry
– The state

The degree
The starting salary for Scrum Masters with a Bachelor’s degree averages almost 46,000€. For graduates with a Master’s degree, the starting salary rises to over 50,000€. Those who even have a doctorate can expect a starting salary of around 60,000€.

Company size
On average, the starting salary for Scrum Masters in start-ups is the lowest at around 47,000€, but start-ups usually offer the best opportunity to develop freely and implement their own ideas and concepts.

In medium-sized companies, on the other hand, the starting salary is average at around €50,000. Only in larger companies is the salary above average, at around 57,000€.

Industry
The highest starting salary is in the automotive industry, but here the workload is also the highest and high demands are already made at the beginning. The IT sector is in the midfield in terms of salary, while trade and transport and logistics are the final sectors.

The federal state
In terms of starting salary, Hesse pays the most. Baden-Württemberg also pays good salaries here. Further behind are just eastern states, such as Thuringia or Saxony.

In Scrum, there are three different roles. The product owner, the scrum master, and the members of the development team.

Product Owner
The product owner takes care of the development of the strategy. He determines which features and functions are to be created and in which order.
He communicates to all team members what the goal is and what should be achieved.
The Product Owner is therefore responsible for the development and the implementation.

Scrum Master
The Scrum Master acts as a coach and teaches the team members how Scrum works. He develops the Scrum strategy for the company to precisely implement the requirements and needs. In addition, he acts as a communicator but has no authority to issue directives, which is why a Scrum Master cannot be compared to a traditional project manager.

Development Team
The development team consists of all essential roles that are necessary for the creation or development of a software. This includes, for example, software architects, designers, programmers, and testers.

Usually, the development team organizes itself to achieve the goal, which was set by the product owner. Ideally, the development team consists of three to nine people.

The Scrum process itself consists of five activities that are regularly repeated and executed.

Sprint
Sprints are the core of the Scrum process. In these, ideas are implemented, and content is created. A sprint has a maximum duration of two weeks so that the overview of the tasks to be performed is not lost. Included in the sprint are the other processes of the Scrum procedure.

Sprint Planning
In the Sprint Planning, the framework conditions for the current Sprint are clarified. The following key questions are answered here:

Why is this Sprint important?
What can be achieved in this Sprint?
How will the selected work be done?

Usually, the Product Owner has the say and sets the appropriate conditions.

Daily Scrum
The Daily Scrum is repeated daily and lasts a maximum of 15 minutes. Thereby, each team member briefly shares…
… what he/she has done since the last Scrum
… what he/she wants to accomplish until the next Scrum
… what problems are

Major problems or obstacles are not discussed in the Daily Scrum. For this purpose, there is usually an extra meeting with the Product Owner or the Scrum Master.

Sprint Review
In the Sprint Review, the entire Scrum team presents the current results to the participants, i.e., the stakeholders. This often results in new tasks and further work steps to complete the software. In addition, the Sprint Review is important to determine whether the desired goal can be achieved.

Sprint Retrospective
Here, the entire Scrum team looks back on the collaboration and considers how it could be improved. Open criticism and feedback are fundamental and important for further collaboration.

The product owner usually creates them to describe the intended product or software from the user’s point of view.
The basic question is, “What does the user want the software to look like?”
While user stories are not an official working technique in Scrum, this method is popularly used to achieve a clearer picture of the intended goal.

Often, the “user” performs a specific action for which the software is intended. A distinction is made between different levels:

– Epic
– Story
– Task

Epic
This stage is too abstract to be achieved in one sprint. The product owner, therefore, creates several small user stories from this stage.

Story
The story is used to estimate the requirements for the realization. A story contains the requirements in different small texts.

Task
The story can be broken down into individual “tasks”. Each task should be completed within a certain period. When all tasks of a story are completed, the story is also complete.

A Scrum project consists of several steps:

1. Product backlog
   From the defined requirements of the stakeholders and the product owner, the product backlog is created. These are features and functions that the software or product should have. Tasks and work packages are also formulated in the Product Backlog. In addition, priorities are set for individual tasks.

2. Sprint Backlog
   In the already explained Sprint the tasks for the selected Sprint period are specified. For this purpose, it must be defined what is to be achieved in the current sprint and how the corresponding tasks are to be completed. Individual tasks are called tickets. Each team member then takes on a ticket.

3. Discuss work progress
   As explained earlier, a daily scrum is held in which all team members briefly present their work progress and explain what they want to tackle.

4. Review results
   In addition, each sprint is concluded with an evaluation by the stakeholders. This is the process of the Sprint Review. With these results, the Product Backlog is filled again to avoid too much deviation of the desired features.

5. Discuss the collaboration
   In the last step, the collaboration is discussed, and open feedback is given to all team members involved. The knowledge gained from this should be used for future Scrum projects, which is why good and detailed documentation is crucial.

Scrum Masters design the framework to enable good communication between team members. The focus is always on optimizing work processes and removing obstacles.

In a personal meeting, we first determine your needs and the skills your perfect Scrum Master should have. In the second step, we find a customized solution. From a pre-selection of experts, you decide on the best candidate. Then you can get started. ElevateX supports you throughout the entire project to guarantee long-term success.

Depending on your technical requirements and availability, you can start working with the Scrum Master as soon as 48 hours.