Servant leadership and the Scrum team’s effectiveness

Purpose Scrum is a development methodology that has been rapidly gaining popularity over the last decade particularly for software development teams. The Scrum master is sometimes viewed as a servant leader of the Scrum team. The purpose of this paper is to investigate to what extent Scrum masters actually make use of servant leadership and how this impacts on the team’s effectiveness via mediating processes. Design/methodology/approach The research followed a quantitative approach. An online questionnaire was prepared and completed by 71 Scrum team members (excluding Scrum masters) and 22 Scrum masters in more than ten organizations based in Western Cape, South Africa. Findings Scrum masters in this sample extensively used the servant leadership approach, but those who are also appointed as formal team leaders are seen to be considerably better servant leaders by team members. There is a moderately strong correlation between servant leadership of the Scrum master and team effectiveness. It was found that high levels of psychological safety do not necessarily translate into team performance. Research limitations/implications Research was only performed at the unit level of analysis and not the team or organizational level. This was a cross-sectional study and variations over time were not considered. Practical implications The results confirm the importance of servant leadership skills when identifying and developing Scrum masters, appointing the formal team leader role in Scrum teams and implementing Scrum practices effectively. Originality/value As could be established, this is the first time that the role of servant leadership in Scrum teams was formally investigated.