I as a Scrum Master

As a Scrum Master, I assume administrative, coaching, and leadership roles to make Lean, Agile and Scrum successful. I help the team understand and embrace Lean Agile Scrum values and principles to develop into self-organizing teams and to produce valuable outcomes at a sustainable pace.  I assess the team’s knowledge of Lean, Agile, & scrum, and fill in the skills gap through training and coaching.  I serve as keeper of scrum framework, “holding space” for the team. I explore Agile and scrum tools and share my learnings with the team. I encourage teams to share their lessons learned and learn from others using various tools and techniques; e.g. Lean Coffee, Open Space, Tech Talks, etc. I help develop and maintain communities of practice to foster learnings and skill development.  I encourage teams to explore and embrace automation to boost productivity.

As a Scrum Master, I shield teams from interruptions to optimize the outcome. I mediate the general conflict of goals between devTeams (high quality) and Product Owner (more features).  I protect teams from external disturbances during sprints to keep them focused on deploying incremental value to our end customers. I help teams balance proactive activities with immediate goals. I ask open questions to foster communications and exploration of Why and What. I help teams become transparent in communications, practices, and behavior to foster trust. I encourage teams to bring out hidden problems and conflicts and then help to resolve them in benefit of increased trust and transparency.

As a Scrum Master, I facilitate effective Scrum ceremonies. I ensure all team members participate in daily stand-ups to share their respective work and decide how they can help each other with removing impediments. I help the Product Owners and Scrum team with refining the Feature/Product Backlog on a continuous basis to prioritize the Team Backlog Items for Sprint Planning Meetings.  During Sprint Planning Meetings, I ensure teams make commitments based on their capacity. I facilitate Sprint Review Meetings to collect feedback from the wider audience to continuously improve. I encourage teams to remain honest and positive during Retrospectives and to respect to gain trust the proceedings among team members only. I ensure that purpose of Retrospective is learning and improvement, not finger pointing and performance review. I help teams demonstrate the outcome of Sprints to the wider audience to spread the positive word about the team. 

As Scrum Master, I help Product Owners develop a positive rapport with their team and accept him/her as a part of the family. I encourage collaboration between devTeams and Product Owners.  I help the Product Owner interact with stakeholders to develop a collaborative relationship that produces valuable outcomes. I help the Product Owner explore different tools and techniques to discover the Business value of Feature/Product Backlog Items. I encourage Product Owners to interact with stakeholders on a continuous basis to refine and prioritize the Feature/Product Backlog.   I assist the product owner with prioritizing the Feature/Product backlog items.  I help the PO and devTeam develop and evolve Definition of Ready, Definition of Done, and Acceptance Criteria. I help the Product owner develop Sprint Goals and help the Scrum team achieve the same during sprint planning. I provide feedback to the Scrum teams on how to improve. I also ensure that improvement areas identified during retrospectives are captured and tracked in future sprints.

As a Scrum Master, I know when to step back and let the team learn from its own experience – successes and mistakes. I am available to the team for expert advice around scrum, and agile. I work as an advocate for the team in the organization. I certainly do not work as scrum police.  I do Gemba walk and encourage stakeholders to do the same.

As a Scrum Master, I continuously educate myself and share my learnings with Lean, Agile, and Scrum communities. I organize and participate in Agile and scrum oriented community events.