During the Black Lives Matter movement, the “tech community” debated whether the “master” branch (in terms of source control) should be renamed to “main” or similar. This was then adopted by GitHub as the new default.
Recently, I wondered if the same debate was had for “Scrum Master” in terms of Agile Development. The “Scrum Master” is a responsibility to organise the Agile meetings such as the Daily Scrum aka Daily Standup. The scrum nomenclature was adapted from Rugby.
I found a thread on scrum.org which argued for and against, but the community definitely settled on keeping the name. The difference between a “master” code branch, and a Scrum “master” is that the Scrum Master is about mastery, and not a master/slave relationship. So it’s the same word but different meaning and origin.
Thank you for your input and we will pass it forward to Ken and Jeff. Please remember as Ken and Jeff have always said, the role of Scrum Master is one of Scrum mastery and not in any way related to being the owner of the team as the team is self-organizing and self managed. Scrum Master a role and not a job title taken from the ideas of the master carpenter which dates back thousands of years. GitHub on the other hand literally used Master and Slave meaning that one controlled the other.
That said, a lot of things are always being discussed and considered and your courage to bring this forward is greatly appreciated.
Eric Naiburg
I’m sometimes embarrassed to tell people what I do because of how arrogant or self-important I think my job title and role make me sound. Whether one agrees the name should be changed or not, public opinion on the word “Master” exacerbates this problem.
Simon Mayer
Piotr Górajek calls people out for virtue signalling.
I will put here a little different perspective. IMHO this is ridiculous to push for change words only for the sake of pushing for it. How do you come to an idea that one word, put out of its’ context, should be changed because of “racism connotations”? Each word have a lot of meanings
Piotr Górajek
The word master is clearly a person that masters the framework, a coach, a person that has a mastery or “expertise” on something. With this line of thinking why we do not rename the Master degrees from Universities? MSc titles should be renamed as well?
Alexander Leanza Bøhnsdalen
There’s a good amount of sense in what Alan Eustace says
I wanted to observe a couple of things.
It seems like most, if not all of us, engaging in this conversation, are white. On what basis can we evaluate the impact of the terms we’re discussing?
Changing terms/language alone will not eradicate systemic and institutional racism. And yet language and symbols are powerful.
Language changes over time to accommodate shifts in cultural sensibilities. There are plenty of examples of this.
Personally, as I mentioned above, even before recent world events, I have disliked the term “Scrum Master” for some time. I have not found it helpful, and continually have had to explain what is, and what is not, intended by the word “master”.
Alan Eustace
“Organizations choosing not to respond to #BLM in a productive way will cause negative perceptions ranging from being perceived as tone-deaf (best case); indifferent to institutional bias; or racist (worst case).”
Phil Bryant
I’m not sure on Phil Bryant’s view. It defintiely seems like virtue signalling, and I’d say it’s quite tone-deaf changing things that don’t need to be changed and drawing attention away from the real issues. People are protesting against police brutality and we are trying to rename Scrum Master into Scrum Facilitator or something.
Now consider a team with a white Scrum Master. Every day, the members will hear their leader referred to as their Scrum “Master” – unless we make a change. As Agile practitioners, “We value responding to change over following a plan.”
Phil Bryant
Now consider a team with a non-white Scrum master. WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO ABOUT THAT PHIL!?
The problem with choosing another word is that many other words can also have some kind of offence if you really study them. Sean Hoegaarden says
Scrum Wizard will be a problem for the same reason as Master (KKK), Scrum Captain too (slave trade ships), Scrum Samurai is obviously cultural appropriation, the Scrum Alchemist has antisemitic reminiscences… I hope we will not end up with something like an Agile Clown…
Sean Hoegaarden
Can I suggest we go to the home of where the terminology “Scrum” came from – i.e. Rugby.
The key role in a Rugby Scrum is the “Scrum-Half” for example.
Mohamed Hesham Jurangpathy
Sorry, but if someone starts calling me a Scrum Hooker instead of a Scrum Master I’m not only going to be offended, but probably initiate some fisticuffs!
René Gysenbergs
In conclusion, if the name is deemed inappropriate or irrelevant by the community (and we need non-white people to be part of the decision, rather than white folk just virtue-signalling), then the Scrum community can look to change it. However, deciding on a new name that doesn’t involve cultural appropriation or cause any other offence – seems harder than first thought.
Stranger Coding Tings 