[iamthepieman]

I've had a really good scrum master. (Plenty of bad ones too). The really good one I could say something like

"I started work on this item and realized that I'm actually missing a lot of context and information in the requirements. I need your help clarifying them"

The scrum Master knew who to contact to get that information would set up a meeting, have the meeting without me if they thought they could do it or schedule it and include me so I could ask the questions I needed, Mark the ticket for me as blocked, fill out the info after the meeting and communicate the risk and reason for delay to stakeholders.

Basically I could say "There's a problem!" and the scrum Master would get it taken care of or find someone who could. Probably the most valuable person on that team.

[tdeck]

Sounds like a good TPM, I must admit I haven't worked at a company that had a "scrum master" title and didn't realize the role had grown in scope.

[Izkata]

I'm not sure it is a larger scope, I've always understood this to be their role - they lead scrum meetings, but outside meetings they were the one that helped get the team unblocked. Managing the board was just a side-effect of keeping an eye out for any team members who were stuck.

On top of that the one I worked with who was good at this also took on small cases because otherwise he'd regularly have nothing to do.