Takeaways from the 2019 Scrum Master Trends report

Scrum.org and Age of Product have released their 2019 version of the Scrum Master Trends report – a new iteration of their previously released 2017 Scrum Master Salary Report. With over 2100 participants, the report is sure to give some interesting insights in the world of the current-day scrum master. You can download the full report on the Scrum.org website, but for those with a tight schedule, we’ve summarized the key takeaways below. Enjoy!

  • Most survey participants are employees within a corporation. About 72% of all participants were corporate employees, 18% worked for consultancy companies and 10% worked as independent consultants. Following this, a majority of participating scrum masters work for larger companies. 26% of respondents worked for companies larger than 10 000 employees. 18% worked for companies between 5 000 and 10 000 employees.
  • Agile transitions are a hot topic, with over half of participants (58%) having participated in a transition. About half of participants (51%) reported using a framework for scaling agile, with SAFe (23%) having quite a lead on other frameworks applied such as Nexus (10%) and Less (9%).
  • The role of scrum master is still an emergent field, with 35% of participants reporting having less than 2 years of experience, and 33% reporting having more than 2 and less than five years of experience. Half of respondents (50%) reported having worked on more than 10 projects.
  • Agile is still mainly IT or engineering driven, with 63% of respondents stating that these departments are responsible for agile. 14% pointed towards the project management office as the responsible party for agile within their company.
  • As for complementary practices, agile and kanban go hand in hand  with 81% of respondents using kanban as a complementary practice. Other practices worth mentioning are DevOps (55%), test-driven development (TDD) (34%) and Xtreme Programming (XP) (27%).
  • Training is popular for scrum masters, with over 83% of respondents reporting to having completed scrum training. Noteworthy certifications held are PSM I (53%) and CSM (33%).