According to the latest data from Indeed.com, the annual salary of a ScrumMaster now surpasses that of a Project Manager.
Even more surprising, is just how quickly the ScrumMaster salaries have increased in such a short amount of time. As you may remember, I performed similar job research in Oct 2009 when the ScrumMaster role pulled in around $88,000 a year.
ScrumMasters now make on average $95,000 a year, which is a $7,000 increase.
On the other hand, Project Manager salaries seem to have become stagnant, showing no visible signs of improvement. Even the ambiguous Agile Project Manager salary seems to have hit a glass ceiling.
I cannot say that I’m completely surprised by this trend as I’ve witnessed first hand the influx of Certified ScrumMasters over these past 6 months. While I don’t have official numbers, I can tell you that I’m bombarded every day by requests for the LinkedIn Certified ScrumMaster Group. This is a group moderated by myself and a few others that requires an active CSM before approval. We even recently made a request to LinkedIn to increase the maximum group size as we’d hit their member limit.
With the ScrumMaster in such high demand, can we expect these salaries to sustain this sort of growth in an economy that may be dipping into yet another recession?
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#1 by najati on June 12, 2010 - 1:20 am
Hrmmm. Maybe I'm just jaded, but:
I dunno it's really fair to get all excited about this. I suspect large parts of this data is coming from places where Scrum Masters do all sorts of un-Scrum-Master-y sort of stuff and the role is more akin to a Project Management role anyway.
While it's nice to imagine the industry collectively “gets it” enough to draw the conclusion from the increased salaries that we're collectively starting to see the light, I'm no more inclined to believe that than I am to believe that it's just buzzword hype leading to salary inflation. I mean, for large parts of the industry “programmers” still “graduate” into “architects”.
So, I guess I just think we need to make sure our perceptions of how the industry sees Scrum Masters are self-consistent. We can't bandy about how most places hiring Scrum Masters don't know what they're looking for and how most Scrum Masters are really Project Managers and this and that and then in the same breath be like, “Oh look, the industry is paying Scrum Masters more, they finally understand and value us!” … and then he was all like “Oh no you di'n't!”
However, I'll gladly be proven wrong.
#2 by David J Bland on June 12, 2010 - 11:00 pm
Najati,
You are correct in that it is difficult to tell solely from this salary data just how ScrumMasters are being utilized. I still believe it's a watershed event in the sense that they are now in demand more than ever before.
I think very few companies adopt Ken Schwaber style scrum, but this could indicate that more companies are at least trying it.
I'm also wondering if these salaries are being inflated because of Agile Coach / ScrumMaster positions. The role in itself does lead to Agile Coaching careers, as it is your responsibility to know & protect the Scrum process more than anyone else.
Can't say I can prove you wrong on this, but I'm not entirely sure I can prove you right either
#3 by David J Bland on June 13, 2010 - 3:00 am
Najati,
You are correct in that it is difficult to tell solely from this salary data just how ScrumMasters are being utilized. I still believe it's a watershed event in the sense that they are now in demand more than ever before.
I think very few companies adopt Ken Schwaber style scrum, but this could indicate that more companies are at least trying it.
I'm also wondering if these salaries are being inflated because of Agile Coach / ScrumMaster positions. The role in itself does lead to Agile Coaching careers, as it is your responsibility to know & protect the Scrum process more than anyone else.
Can't say I can prove you wrong on this, but I'm not entirely sure I can prove you right either