So for the scrum master to be a success , they need to not only run the standard ritual and walk through the processes, they need to share time with the team where open unofficial conversations take place, where team members feel free to share concerns that may not be so easy to do formally. Most scrum masters will quickly start to pickup themes and trends in issues and be abl
e to either address or escalate them before they are are problem. Typically prevention, cost and delay, disruption and management overhead is at least 75% cheaper than cure. So have your scrum master on site, get them searching and removing issues before they trigger, save that time, remove that wastes effort on fixing preventable issues.
This is a big part of a good Scrum Masters job I call SMBWA (Scrum Mastering by Walking Around) like GEMBA in Lean or others call it “go see for yourself”. The difference here is in lean its about looking atthe problem, going in seeing it in SMBWA its about hunting down isses and killing them before they catch fire. An issue once it catches first severely reduces effectiveness of the team and often damages the product and the team moral. It better have some one looking for and resolving issues before they get expensive, that’s the role of the scrum master.
This is why the Scrum Master needs to be with the team, to walk the floor as they do there normal role, listing to background conversations, talking to people in coffee areas, taking the temperature. Many problem that can delay or derail project and programs exist in those grey areas for days or even weeks before they ignite and raise to the leadership level. Yes if they are doing their job well you will save very significant amounts of time and money as the prevent incidents from ever happening and make sure they get resolved quickly.