“The Scrum Master is responsible for promoting and supporting Scrum as defined in the Scrum Guide”(1)
Overview
A Scrum Master…
- helps everyone understand Scrum
- is a servant-leader for the Scrum Team
- helps those outside the Scrum Team understand which of their interactions with the Scrum Team are helpful and which aren’t (1)
- The Scrum Master helps everyone change these interactions to maximise the value created by the Scrum Team (1)
Scrum Master service to the PO
Maximising Value
- Supports understanding product planning in an empirical environment (1)
- Ensures the Product Owner knows how to arrange the Product Backlog to maximize value (1)
- Coaching question:
- How is the product going? (2)
Product Backlog Management
- Finds techniques for effective Product Backlog management (1)
- Helps the Scrum Team understand the need for clear and concise Product Backlog items (1)
Development Team Interactions
- Ensures that goals, scope, and product domain are understood by everyone on the Scrum Team as well as possible (1)
- Coaching Questions (2)
- How is the team doing?
- How each of you is fulfilling your roles?
- How can you help one another?
Agility and Personal Development
- Supports understanding and practicing agility (1)
- Teaching Questions (2)
- What must you believe about the team and the organisation to be a good PO
- What parts of the role feel like a stretch for you?
- What parts of the role do you feel you have mastered?
- Which parts will you have to make yourself do?
- What should I, as the coach, watch for to keep these beliefs?
Product Owner Support Exercise (3)
- Brainstorm with the Product Owner all the duties that their role should perform (or both Scrum Master and Product Owner if one person is doing both roles)
- Talk through them and highlight the ones that they are not able to do because of time-constraint/ training/ empowerment/ conflict of interest between roles/ etc
- Present the outcome to the Product Owner’s manager/ ‘trace the money’ if the Product Owner isn’t the decision maker
Scrum Master service to the Devs
- Coaching in self-organisation and cross-functionality (1)
- Removing impediments to the Development Team’s progress (1)
- Facilitating Scrum events as requested or needed (1)
- Coaching the Development Team in organisational environments in which Scrum is not yet fully adopted and understood (1)
Scrum Master service to the organisation
- Leading and coaching the organisation in its Scrum adoption (1)
- Planning Scrum implementations within the organisation (1)
- Helping employees and stakeholders understand and enact Scrum and empirical product development (1)
- Causing change that increases the productivity of the Scrum Team (1)
- Working with other Scrum Masters to increase the effectiveness of the application of Scrum in the organisation (1)
Techniques
Scrum Master Qualities (4, pg 128)
- Leads by example
- Scrum values
- Trust in empiricism
- Positive mindset
- Adaptive approach
- Enables and empowers others
- Doesn’t solve people’s problems, but makes opportunities transparent
- Knows he/she doesn’t have the best answers
- Creates and environment of safety and is comfortable with failure
- Safety in conflict
- Trying new things
- Cares deeply for people and is also willing to challenge when they are capable of more
- Assumes positive intent and doesn’t judge people
- Meets people where they are and helps them find their next step
- Inspires to hold themselves to even higher standards
- Opertates with integrity and stays calm under pressure
- His/her leadership provides consistency and stability
- Shows low tolerance for organisational impediments
- Willing to challenge and speak the truth
- Advocate for the team
References
- The Scrum Guide
- Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins
- Fixing Your Scrum by Ryan Ripley and Todd Miller
- Mastering Professional Scrum by Stephanie Ockerman and Simon Reindl
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