Demystifying Scrum Master

As a Scrum Master, I try to capture my vision and role as described by the Scrum Guide and using the Agile Values and Principles to successfully execute my duties. It's part of the "about me" page on my personal website. As rightfully mentioned in the Scrum Guide, I want to emphasize offering services to the Development Team, Product Owner, and Organization.

I help to aspire Agile & DevSecOps practitioners in the field and those willing to jumpstart their careers as Scrum Master, Products Owner, DevOp Engineers, Business Analysis as a career coach.

I believe in servant leadership at all levels of an organization in and focus should be on creating successful individual and teams around you with a strong understanding of what agile and agility is. The Product Owner is my partner and I ensure there is visual progress in the Product Backlog, maximizing the value of the product and transparent for everyone to see. To the organizations, I believe the Way of Working and adaptation of Agile and Agility has to be embraced in making Scrum successful. I do this by supporting individuals, teams, and management in fully understanding the Agile values and Principles. I also believe that agile is more important than any methodology 

Scrum Master.

• Be responsible to the people in your charge and create a safe environment by being a leader you wish you had.

• Ensures that everyone supports the chosen process (Kanban, Scrum, TDD, etc.)

• Manages the impediments that exceed the self-organizing capabilities of the team and it prevents them from achieving the Sprint Goal.

• Recognizes healthy team conflict and promotes constructive disagreement.

• Be ready for disruption and prepare to enforce change within your team & organization.

• Understands the power of self-organization.

• Understands the value of a steady sprint rhythm and do everything to create and maintain it.

• Improve or be a good listener, be comfortable with silence, and be the last to speak.

• Understands your strength of coaching and learn to ask powerful questions by heart.

• Teach/Collaborate with the Product Owner on how to maximize ROI and meet objectives.

• Understand and competent with Design thinking, XP, TDD, BDD, Kanban, and Lean.

• Know what Being Agile is and Doing Agile when executing your duties

"A Day in My Life of a Scrum Master"

But before I start, I like to say the First thing you should keep in mind is to always prevent a fully booked schedule. Always have a lot of free space on your agenda. The more the better.

As a daily ritual in my preparation, I usually start by considering a few questions like:

• How is my Product Owner doing?

  • Is the Product Backlog in shape?

  • How is he/she managing the stakeholders?

  • What about delivering business value and return-on-investment?

  • Does he/she need my help? 

  • What can I do to help improve their day to day?

• How is the Development Team doing?

  • Are they working together?

  • Is there conflict in the team, did they resolve that?

  • Is the team making decisions using agile principles and values?

  • How can I make their day better today?

  • How is their interaction with the rest of the organization? 

• How are our engineering practices doing?

  • Is the team constantly looking to make improvements?

  • How is test automation & what can be automated?

  • Is the team reviewing and expanding their Definition of Done?

• How is my organization doing?

  • Are they applying agility and agility in decision making?

  • Is there inter-team coordination?

  • What can I do to improve their interaction with the team?

  • What organizational impediments are in the way?

  • What about other department practices?

Read the Agile manifesto for you will find the definition of Agile. Note that it makes clear that Agile is not a methodology (a system of methods used in a particular area of study or activity) as you will find people keep referring to it as one. It isn’t a specific way of doing software development either and definitely not a framework or a process. 

Agile is a set of values and principles.

I keep this with me as I execute my daily task as a scrum master and throughout my day. I also carry a journal with a good pen with me for when I ask questions and get feedback that needs documenting to be used later. Remember that Agile is more important than any framework or process. 

Scrum Master:

• Start the day with an open and curious mind (and in my case some good Tea or green smoothie)

• A good first question to consider is "How can I improve the lives of the Scrum Team by facilitating creativity and empowerment?"

• Remember: your agenda is as good as empty! Except for the Daily Scrum and maybe some other Scrum events

• Check the Scrum Board, burn down chart, and scan email subject lines

• Ensure I have my journal with me and no cell phone or pager that will distract me or the team

• Attend the Daily Scrum as an observer. Ensure the Scrum board is visible, to the team, listen to what is and is not being said.

• Consider some of the questions mentioned earlier.

• Based on your observations, determine your next steps. This might be coaching, consulting, teaching, facilitating, mentoring, managing, problem-solving, conflict navigating, or... just sitting with the team, listening, and watching the team.

• Doing "nothing" is a perfect activity for a Scrum Master! The biggest pitfall for a Scrum Master is being too busy and not noticing what is really going on.

• Facilitate the meeting after, for the team to resolve any open pending issues

After 12 Noon

• Lunch - usually 30-1 hr. 

• Might be facilitating a backlog refinement event leading up to Sprint

• Planning or Facilitating Sprint review/demo or Sprint Retrospective

• Meet with Dev, Designers, PO, Test Automation or DevSecOps Team

• Leadership meeting providing an update or an SME on a discussion 

• I do final check-ins with the team and then answer final emails

• Update the Team on any information from leadership or cross impediments 

• Complete the day

Mentor

The Scrum Master mentors the Team as to what Scrum is and how to use it. Help Team Members improve their technical abilities in whatever way he or she can. Or find someone who can provide the mentoring if a given needed skill is outside your range.

Referee

The Scrum Master acts as a referee in escalated internal disputes and external disputes that heavily impact the Team. The ability of the team to have good argumentative dialog and build robust ideas is critical for complex work.

Conscience

The Scrum Master acts as the conscience of the Team, especially when it comes to the Team Values. When a Team Member (or the Team as a whole) is not living the Values, how is this fact made visible so that the behavior can be modulated?

Impediment Manager

One of the Scrum Master’s primary responsibilities is to manage the impediments or constraints that are getting in the way of the Scrum Framework or keeping the Team from reaching their full potential of producing a quality product. Empower and encourage the Team to manage its own impediments and constraints. For externally based impediments, work with the Product Owner, Business Owner, or others in the organization to help resolve them. Some constraints are environmentally imposed such as regulatory constraints, in this case, help the team recognize the difference and mitigate the effects.

Team Facilitator:

The Team Member who facilitates the Team Members’ self-organization (on a daily basis) to help them

• Do their work,

• Remove their Impediments to progress, and

• Achieve their Team’s Kaizen

Every Team must have a Team Facilitator, who is often a technical contributor, as 

Agile Coach (AC):

A person who works with the Scrum Team to help them improve their skills. The skills might be technical or non-technical, and improvements are typically achieved through training and/or mentoring.

The Agile Coach often works with the Team Facilitator to

• Help the Team Members understand, implement, and improve their use of Scrum and Agility; and

• Help the Team identify its Kaizen every Sprint. 

Every Team must have access to an Agile Coach as needed; this usually requires one Agile Coach for every 2-10 Teams, with 5 being the ‘sweet spot.’

Change Agent (CA):

A person who helps the Organization adopt, implement, and sustain Scrum and understand how best to support and work with Scrum Teams, including organizational design. There needs to be at least one Change Agent per Organization. The Change Agent is usually also an Agile Coach (with expertise in organizational behavior) and is considered the ‘senior Scrum Master’ in the Organization.

Closing

Not all Scrum Teams practice Scrum, and pushing for change requires courage, coaching, and a really good grasp of the Scrum Guide and that is Agile values and principles are more important than any methodologies or practice. Product Owners are happy to change so long as they can see the value. This is why coaching becomes so important. If you can’t explain and demonstrate why a Scrum Event has value, why would you expect your Scrum Team to buy into it?

Scrum is a framework, but how it is used differs greatly. 

The Pillars of Scrum: Transparency, Inspection, and Adaptation will be helpful to you in your journey. The feeling of making a great impact on any of my team members in becoming a better version of themself or moving close to their goal is a great feeling. I wake up every day wanting to do it again.

Please do not judge me by my skill but by the quality of scrum masters, teams, and leaders I have coached in my career as an agile coach.

Always remember to have fun!