Scrum Master Challenges in Organizations New to Scrum

Top Scrum Master Challenges in Organizations New to Scrum

Adopting Scrum can be an exciting step for any organization—but it’s not without its challenges. One of the most common Scrum Master challenges is understanding what stands in the way when a company begins this journey.

A question we often hear is:

“What are the most common obstacles that Scrum Masters might face in an organization that switches to Scrum?”

It’s a great question because the reality is, switching to Scrum is often less about tools and more about confronting long-standing organizational habits. Let’s explore some of the most common Scrum Master challenges and why they can be so hard to overcome.

Organizational Structure and the Scrum Master Challenges It Creates

One of the biggest blockers to successful Scrum adoption is a legacy organizational structure that doesn’t support cross-functional teams.

For example: a company with engineers reporting to a Chief Engineering Officer and QA professionals reporting separately to a Chief Quality Manager often forms Scrum teams with only engineers—excluding QA, designers, and product thinkers. The outcome is a setup where teams remain dependent on handoffs and staged work. It looks like Scrum on the surface, but in practice, it’s waterfall with new labels.

Scrum depends on cross-functional collaboration. Without realigning teams to include all necessary skill sets, Scrum’s benefits are reduced. In such cases, Scrum can feel like an added burden with extra meetings, rather than a path to agility.

Old Mindsets: A Major Scrum Master Challenge

Another frequent Scrum Master challenge is dealing with persistent traditional thinking. Even when an organization claims to be Agile, the mindset often remains fixed in sequential development.

If the approach is still to do all the analysis, then design, then development, and finally testing and release, Scrum’s incremental model feels foreign. The shift to delivering small, usable product pieces in a short Sprint is a difficult one.

Scrum Masters must help teams—and sometimes leadership—adjust to this way of thinking. Using small examples from the team’s own work is often the best way to show the value of this approach.

Time-Centered Culture as a Scrum Master Challenge

Perhaps the most common Scrum Master challenge is navigating an organization that focuses more on deadlines than outcomes. From top-level executives to team leads, many companies operate on strict timeframes: annual budgets, quarterly targets, and delivery schedules.

When an organization says, “You’re doing Scrum now,” but continues to push rigid timelines, it creates a contradiction. Scrum emphasizes flexibility, learning, and delivering what matters most—not what fits into a deadline.

This puts teams in a tough spot—expected to follow Scrum while still working in a system that values delivery speed over meaningful progress. It’s a setup where Scrum often breaks down.

Overcoming Scrum Master Challenges

If you’re facing these roadblocks as a Scrum Master, consider the following:

• Start small: Use real examples of incremental delivery to show quick results.
• Educate and influence: Explain the purpose behind Scrum’s practices to both teams and stakeholders.
• Challenge assumptions: Ask what problems the team is solving and how success is measured beyond delivery dates.

Changing structures and habits takes time, but Scrum Master challenges can be overcome. Your ability to help others understand and adopt new ways of working is where true progress begins.