My understanding of the duties of the scrum master are as follows:
- Enforce the process
- Remove impediments (that the developers cannot remove themselves)
- Prevent interruption from outside
- Facilitate scrum meetings (stand up, retrospective, etc.)
If the developers on the team are disciplined, they will follow the process without someone coaching them. They will also have no problem holding retrospective and other scrum meetings. If the rest of the organization understands the sprint boundaries, outside interruptions and impediments that would require a scrum master are already minimized.
As a team becomes high performing and an organization understands the sprint boundaries, it seems as though the needs for a scrum master reduce. Is it possible for a team to eventually get to the point where a scrum master is no longer needed?