SAFe Role Framework
Scrum Master / Team Coach
The SM/TC is a servant leader who facilitates team events, removes impediments, coaches the team in Agile and SAFe practices, optimizes flow, and contributes to ART-level coordination and improvement.
Team Event Facilitation
The SM/TC facilitates all team-level Agile events — Iteration Planning, Daily Stand-up, Iteration Review, and Iteration Retrospective — ensuring each produces actionable outcomes within its timebox.
Impediment Removal
A core responsibility is identifying, tracking, and removing impediments — whether team-level blockers, cross-team dependencies, or organizational friction that slows delivery.
Agile Coaching
The SM/TC coaches the team in SAFe, Scrum, Kanban, and Built-in Quality practices — building self-management capability and fostering a culture of continuous improvement.
Flow & Delivery
The SM/TC optimizes team-level flow — helping the team visualize work, limit WIP, reduce cycle time, and deliver high-quality increments every iteration.
ART-Level Engagement
The SM/TC actively participates in ART-level events — PI Planning, Coach Sync, and Inspect & Adapt — representing the team’s perspective and bringing back cross-team context.
Continuous Improvement
The SM/TC drives relentless improvement — using retrospectives, metrics, and experimentation to help the team evolve their practices and increase effectiveness every iteration.
In SAFe 6.0, this role can be called Scrum Master or Team Coach depending on organizational context. The expanded title reflects broader responsibilities for coaching, flow optimization, and organizational agility — while servant leadership remains the foundation.
SAFe Roles
Explore other roles in the SAFe framework
Release Train Engineer
The RTE is a servant leader and coach for the Agile Release Train — facilitating ART events and processes, optimizing flow, managing risks and dependencies, and supporting teams in delivering value at scale.
Product Manager
The Product Manager is responsible for defining and supporting the building of desirable, feasible, viable, and sustainable products — owning the ART Backlog, defining the product vision and roadmap, and serving as the voice of the market.
Product Owner
The SAFe Product Owner is the content authority for the Team Backlog — defining stories, prioritizing work, bridging Product Management and the Agile Team, and ensuring every iteration delivers validated value.