What Does a Scrum Master Do in a Typical Day

Scrum Master activities related to the daily Scrum meeting

• Ensures that external stakeholders that attend do not hijack the meeting, and neither does any team member that does not come prepared.
• Ensures that the meeting is conducted daily, with a specific timebox (At least when the team is new to Scrum).
• Ensures the product backlog is updated during/post-meeting.
• Ensures that each team member is focused on the sprint goal.
• Ensures that the sprint burn-down chart reflects the actual work progress.
• Ensures that the team is conducting the meeting without actively promoting a single authority.
• Ensures that team members do not use the meeting to resolve technical issues (those should be discussed separately).
• Ensures that there are no "reporting" symptoms to one authority.
• Ensures that there are follow-ups for any issues that were not fully resolved/handled during the meeting.
• Ensure that the team will answer all open issues from the previous day's meeting.
• Ensures that each team member provides complete and accurate information about their progress.

The current Scrum Guide, published in November 2020 and still the latest version, removed the three fixed questions from the Daily Scrum and left the structure to the Developers. A Scrum Master working to that guide checks the outcome instead of the format. The meeting has to show progress toward the Sprint Goal and end with an actionable plan for the next day of work. Anything that does not serve those two outcomes belongs in a separate conversation.

Key Takeaway: In the daily Scrum, a Scrum Master checks that the meeting stays inside its timebox, that the sprint burn-down chart reflects real progress, and that the discussion shows movement toward the Sprint Goal instead of following a fixed three-question format.

Scrum Master activities related to the planning meeting

• Works with the Product Owner to ensure that all candidate stories for the sprint contain the relevant information, including clear acceptance criteria, Definition of Done, and specific technical information.
• Ensures that all stories are explained by the Product Owner and understood by all team members before making their commitments.
• Works with the team to conduct a risk management process to reveal any significant risks affecting their commitments.
• Works with the development team and the Product Owner to establish a clear goal for the upcoming sprint.
• Ensures that the team has absolute confidence before making the final commitment.
• Uses their technical skills to help the team with any questions raised during the task breakdown.
• Ensures there is a balance in the team commitments to avoid situations of over/under-commitment.
• Works with the team during the process of task breakdown and task estimation (it is their job to ensure that the estimation process can predict the actual workload).

The 2020 guide also changed the vocabulary behind these lists. It replaced the word role with accountabilities, renamed the Development Team to Developers, and added the Product Goal as the long-term objective the Scrum Team plans against. A Scrum Master now carries two targets into a planning meeting, the Sprint Goal for the coming sprint and the Product Goal the sprint moves toward. The same guide makes the Scrum Master accountable for the effectiveness of the whole Scrum Team, which is why the checklists below cover the Product Owner as well as the development team.

Key Takeaway: In sprint planning, a Scrum Master makes sure every candidate story has clear acceptance criteria and a Definition of Done, that risks are surfaced before the team commits, and that the team plans against both the Sprint Goal and the Product Goal.

Scrum Master activities related to the review meeting

• Ensures that the team is ready to present the work they accomplished.
• Works with the Product Owner to update the backlog based on feedback generated by the participants.
• Ensures the team has the information (agile metrics, KPIs, impediments, etc.) that they can share to increase the transparency between the team and stakeholders.
• Ensures that the team has answers to any question related to uncompleted stories.

Scrum Master activities related to the retrospective meeting

• Ensures that team members feel safe to share their honest thoughts.
• Ensures that the meeting does not become a "blame" meeting.
• Ensures that every team member has the chance to speak.
• Ensures that all impediments in scrum are documented, prioritized, and have a mitigation plan led by a dedicated owner.
• Searches for new techniques to make reporting more effective.
• Suggests cases/events from the last sprint to contribute to the discussion.
• Ensures that any external stakeholder who can contribute to the meeting is invited.

Key Takeaway: In the sprint review and the retrospective, a Scrum Master makes sure the team can present its completed work with metrics and impediments, and that every member speaks in a safe session that never turns into a blame meeting.

How does a Scrum Master's day change when the team uses AI agents?

The events stay the same and the accountability stays human. A Scrum Master adds one job to each event, which is checking that work produced by AI is still reviewed and owned by a person. In January 2026 the Scrum Guide Expansion Pack published a companion section called AI and Scrum, written by Ralph Jocham and Jeff Sutherland. It proposes a team working agreement stating that AI tools and autonomous agents may generate or perform work such as code, tests, documentation, analysis, research, planning or recommendations, but humans remain accountable. The same agreement asks teams to monitor their AI agents, set clear boundaries on what the agents may do, and keep a fast manual stop or override in place.

That agreement turns into concrete work inside the events listed above. For Sprint Planning the guidance suggests discussing which tasks the AI will be used for and setting aside time to validate AI outputs, so the estimate covers review and not only generation. For the Sprint Retrospective it suggests the Scrum Master prompt the team to inspect how AI helped or hindered during the Sprint. The Definition of Done carries the same load, because the guidance states that AI outputs must be reviewed and tested, and that every piece of AI-generated code must be reviewed with the same rigor as if a teammate wrote it.

Two patterns are worth watching in the daily work. The first is uneven adoption, where one team member becomes the AI guru and the others disengage. The second is skill atrophy, which some teams counter by scheduling occasional coding exercises without AI. The Scrum Guide Expansion Pack also draws a line through the accountabilities. A Product Developer may be human or automated, and at least one Product Developer should be human, but the Scrum Master must be human. Facilitation, coaching and impediment removal stay a person's job.

Key Takeaway: When a team uses AI agents, a Scrum Master sets aside planning time to validate AI output, keeps AI-generated code reviewed as rigorously as a teammate's, and watches for uneven adoption and skill atrophy in the team.