According to the Scrum Guide Scrum Masters are true leaders serving the Scrum Team and the organization. However the role of Scrum Masters is not always well defined. My experience shows that a lot of organizations have different definitions of what a Scrum Master should and could do. Quite often he/she is just seen as a secretary for the team (Scrum Secretary, Scrum Mom).
Over the past years I have been talking to colleagues, reading articles and discussing it in the agile community and I realized that it is not that easy to become a good Scrum Master and develop all the necessary skills. Therefore I am going to share a few insights that helped me develop my skills.
Over the past years I have been talking to colleagues, reading articles and discussing it in the agile community and I realized that it is not that easy to become a good Scrum Master and develop all the necessary skills. Therefore I am going to share a few insights that helped me develop my skills.
1. Patience and Confidence
“The more you know yourself, the more patience you have for what you see in others.” [Erik Eriksonl]
Patience and confidence are solution focused attitudes. As Scrum Masters are servant leaders and change agents using coaching techniques and interventions to support teams and organizations, Patience and Confidence is a strength that shouldn’t be disregarded. Especially in situations when working with a new team.
Let’s consider starting on a new project. The old project team already got to a certain degree of agility. However when working with a new team you have to bring a lot of patience. You can not just copy the way the old team used to work because the needed changes can not be applied overnight. Even though agile teams can not be compared to schoolchildren I still like the metaphor of a teacher who is helping and guiding the pupils for a while before starting with beginners again. Even in this situation a teacher needs a lot of patience and confidence to start with school children over and over again.
The comparison might not be the best. So let’s have a look at tip 2. Most of the time agile teams already have some sort of knowledge about agility and especially about the way they are working together. Therefore a Scrum Master needs to balance own needs and the team needs to develop the team but also improve the own skills.
2. Your needs vs. Team needs
“Problem talk creates problems. Solution talk creates solutions.” [Steve de Shazer]
Following tip 1 I would like to talk about balance between the needs of the team and the Scrum Master’s needs. I would like to show you a failure from my very own experience.
A while ago I was moving from one project to another. At this point of time I was just getting used to the role of Scrum Master and I was at the beginning of my Scrum Master career. I wanted to turn everything around and everything had to be the agile way I knew. I tried out a lot of different formats for retrospectives. By doing this I wanted to create my own little world. A world I have seen before in other projects. Additionally I was reading a lot of blog posts, following Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches on Twitter and I was just confused by all the different views and approaches. I just wanted to try out as much as I could. But in the end it did not work out. I forgot to focus on the team and therefore just put myself into the spotlight.
As Scrum Master and leader it is important to have a good balance and to be at peace with yourself. I believe only then you can help and support a team and an organization where they really have the need.
To get this balance you need to have the right attitude. In the agile world this is also called servant leadership.
One good tip I got a while ago is simply asking the team where you can help them as Scrum Master. This question is also an offer to the team and can be quite revealing because if the team is open for changes and they see their problems it shows you where you can support them.
Besides focusing on the team it’s also important to focus on your own development as Scrum Master.
3. Community
“You can only see things clearly with your heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye.” [Antoine De Saint-Exupery]
As Scrum Master it is important to stay on the ball. And the good news is that there is a big community for this topic, whether on Twitter, blog posts from well known Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches as well as conferences and meetups.
The community will offer you a perfect platform. You can get new insights and ideas, talk about your problems and challenges and reflect your own way of working with teams as Scrum Master. Simply said, it’s about learning and developing your skills. No-one is born as a Master. Lifelong learning is essential.
The advantage of a community is that they are always eager to help and support each other.
Personally I have learned a lot by attending meetups and conferences, and reading all the various blog posts.
I also got in touch with people from the Lean and Kanban community. Agile is not all about Scrum. There is a lot more to it.
During my career it was always important to me to extend my knowledge in different ways with various approaches to understand how it all works together and where it’s originally coming from.
So besides Scrum or even as alternatives to Scrum there are Frameworks like XP (Extreme Programming) and Kanban etc.
4. Scrum, XP, Kanban, Coaching etc.
“Efficiency, which is doing the things right, is irrelevant until you do the right things.” [Peter F. Drucker]
Even though you are a Scrum Master you shouldn’t limit yourself to the Scrum framework. It’s quite helpful to think outside the box and learn about other frameworks and methodologies. Scrum is just one of many approaches to tackle certain problems in certain situations. Be prepared to use the right tools for the right situation.
In this case I have learned a lot from XP (Extreme Programming). But also Kanban has changed my way of thinking.
Additionally to all agile methodologies and frameworks I got the most insights from coaching. When we see a Scrum Master as a servant leader in modern leadership then coaching is indispensable.
As Scrum Master we are working with people, teams and organizations in complex environments where cause and effect is not always clear. And we do not want to be a traditional leader micro-managing everything. It’s more about empowering people and supporting them to find their own ways.
It’s definitely not ideal believing to know everything the best. Therefore just go and ask the team what they need. Leading by questions!
4. Community
“Um klar zu sehen, genügt oft ein Wechsel der Blickrichtung.” [Antoine De Saint-Exupery]
Als Scrum Master ist es meiner Meinung nach wichtig, am Ball zu bleiben. Und die gute Nachricht ist – es gibt eine sehr große Community zu diesem Thema, sei es auf Twitter, Blogs von anerkannten Scrum Master und Trainern sowie Konferenzen und Meetups.
Die Community bietet eine tolle Plattform für die verschiedensten Anliegen eines Scrum Masters. So kann man sich neue Ideen holen, Probleme bzw. Herausforderungen reflektieren und besprechen und einfach dazulernen. Denn ein Meister ist noch nicht vom Himmel gefallen und auch als Scrum Master ist ein lebenslanges Lernen essentiell.
Das Schöne an einer Community ist auch, dass man hier immer ein offenes Ohr für seine Anliegen findet und auch wenn es im Projekt mal nicht so rund läuft, sich verstanden und aufgehoben fühlt. Das haben Communities mit vielen Agile Coaches und Scrum Master anscheinend irgendwie so an sich.
Mir persönlich haben die Meetups und Konferenzen sowie viele Blog Posts dabei geholfen, meine Perspektiven zu verändern und andere Blickwinkel einzunehmen. Denn in der agilen Welt gibt es nicht nur Scrum, sondern Scrum ist eines von vielen agilen Frameworks.
Für mich war es auf meinem Weg zum Scrum Master und Agile Coach immer wichtig, das Thema Agilität aus verschiedenen Perspektiven zu betrachten, um zu verstehen, wie alles zusammenhängt. Denn neben Scrum gibt es da auch noch XP (Extreme Programming), Kanban etc..
5. Self-reflection
“You can’t stop the waves but you can learn to surf. [Jon Kabat-Zinn]
In our daily business working with people, teams and organizations in complex environments we use a lot of coaching techniques and interventions. However, sometimes it is not clear what intervention really helped the team. It’s also not always clear what of our actions was helpful and what was misleading.
An agile team uses retrospectives to reflect and improve the way they work together. But what could a Scrum Master do to reflect his/her work and progress?
During my course to become a solutions focused coach with sinnvollFÜHREN (https://sinnvoll-fuehren.com) I created a journal for Scrum Masters to assist them with self-reflection and mindfulness.
The logbook for Scrum Master is a journal for Scrum Masters to reflect their way of working with agile Scrum teams and assists in developing their skills step by step respectively Sprint by Sprint.
You want your own Logbook for Scrum Masters? Download here: https://www.ebcont.com/logbuch-scrum-master