How many teams should a ScrumMaster REALLY be working with at the same time? The Scrum Guide is ambiguous on the answer to this question, but the best answer I can give you is that a ScrumMaster should be working with as few teams as possible at any one time. Why?

The reason this is so important is because of what ScrumMasters are responsible for… the effectiveness of their Scrum Team! Their job is to help the team use Scrum correctly, leverage Agile and Scrum values correctly, find process errors, and just generally be able to step outside of the team to keep an eye out for ANYTHING that might be negatively affecting their Scrum Team’s productivity. The team has their heads in the work, making it harder for them to see things like process errors, waste, lost time, outside influences, and so on. The ScrumMaster’s role is essentially to improve how the team works and remove impediments, and this is a crucial role when done correctly.

Does that mean that a ScrumMaster CAN’T have more than one team? No, not necessarily – it depends on how good the ScrumMaster is at time management because they need to be able to really focus on one team at a time. For a ScrumMaster who is great at what they do, two teams would be fine and even three teams wouldn’t be impossible, but the reality is, the more teams a ScrumMaster has, the less effective that ScrumMaster becomes for all those teams. So just think about it and decide wisely!

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