My First 90 days as a Scrum Master in a Startup
I joined Fortum in November 2019 and was working in the Business Technology portfolio management in order to support all IT development projects. After three years, I wanted to switch to do something more tangible in the Fortum innovation and venturing startup portfolio, which is one of our fastest moving areas.
Soon I identified a possibility and I joined Hiven in the beginning of this year, January 1st as scrum master.
Hiven, part of Fortum’s Valkea startup portfolio, is a venture that focuses on defining the enablers to consume energy smarter, cheaper and in a greener way. Hiven customers are energy companies and manufacturers of smart charging and smart heating products.
In order to manage a job rotation to a totally new role it requires significant effort especially with people, including yourself.
Understanding the team
Hiven has a significant size development team that is located in several sites between Finland, Sweden and Poland. My first priority was to familiarize myself with the team. The development team has been working over a year together and has already implemented solid agile practices. I wanted to know the team members background, roles and responsibilities. In order to do this, I had a short meeting with everyone where I basically asked about the person background, how long she/he has been in the project and how her/his role has been evolving.
Additionally I asked what are the areas and ways of working that each person saw working well and what are the areas where we could improve. This was nice way to discuss team’s past history and identify successes and earlier challenges.
Understanding the ways of working
I had the luxury of working the first month in parallel with the previous scrum master. That helped me to monitor how things have been done and how things differ from what has been documented. I was shadowing him for the first one and half weeks after which I started to lead the working sessions and the previous scrum master was supporting me.
As a positive surprise, the previous sprint retrospective meetings were well-documented in a web application. Documentation was valuable, as I could review past retrospective meetings on my own time to see, what went well, what were the identified areas for improvement and what kind of actions were agreed to accomplish the agreed improvements.
If past retrospectives would have been done using sticky notes, those could be documented as photos, but in the application, there is no challenge to read different persons handwriting or see which stickers are grouped together and so on.
Similarly, I studied the project wiki for existing documentation and to understand the product architecture and technical documentation, to better comprehend, what the team is working on and how we have gotten here. Good documentation is essential for any newcomer, no matter what her/his role is.
As scrum master, I look specifically after the team effectiveness and even I had many ideas how to improve the collaboration, there is a risk to overburden the team with changes, as I identified multiple ways to improve certain agile practices and ways of working. Why this is essential, is that the Hiven development team is delivering high quality results and had no major issues to begin with.
Good way to support continuous improvement is to discuss one improvement idea at a time and focus few sprints to trial and adjust the new way of working.
Understanding the environment
Other priority for me as a new team member was to understand our product, markets, customers and product roadmap going forward.
Hiven has a motivating and sound product vision and mission that I find very appealing. I had an in-depth introduction from our CEO, Jani Leirimaa, who explained the plan, market and customers from a business perspective.
I also met with our Head of Product, Niraj Vatvani, to discuss the product status, features and roadmap in details. Niraj explained, how the features are selected to improve the customer value and fulfill the product mission. Niraj also had a preparation meeting with me prior the first sprint planning in order to ensure that I do not have to ask scoping questions in the joint meeting, that others already understood. This helped to keep the sprint planning meeting focused and efficient.
Based on my findings, I proposed an updated development plan to myself that we have discussed with my line manager. This development plan contains both technical topics as well as other topics that need strengthening in order to be successful in the scrum master role. The main technical area where I will invest my learning time is Amazon Web Services, as I have earlier mainly studied Microsoft Azure based cloud technologies. For the non-technical skills, one of my targets is to build a deeper understanding of the Hiven business and our customers.
A practical way to learn about our customers and product was to take part of customer problems, their journey and issues. As a newcomer, I could easily identify myself with a Hiven customer, that does not know all the system details. Troubleshooting is also a compelling way to see how the system operates at a detailed level. It is also valuable to understand if the issue is a bug or user error. Both cases need to be addressed in order to make the product better.
My Key Learnings
Energy business is new area for me. I have learned a lot and many new acronyms have become familiar like OCPP (Open Charger Point Protocol), TSO (Transmission System Operator) and V2H (Vehicle-to-Home) charging. Although there are a lot of acronyms, it is a familiar feeling because earlier in my career I was working in the telco industry, at Nokia, which has also a lot of acronyms! I have kept a list of new terms in my notes and reflect whenever I found myself unsure about the scope of the discussion.
Similarly, in the first sprint planning and backlog refinement meetings I wanted to be able to contribute more. However, as a newcomer and non-developer it is hard to understand the product, technologies and other details in such a deep level that can immediately support the team. To overcome that gap, I focused in documenting meetings and writing documentation in Confluence. This has helped me to understand the product better and ensure that I use the same terminology as rest of the team.
One useful way to ensure that I understand the expectations from the stakeholders is to keep asking “how can I help” and based on the answers reflect that my own expectations are set correctly. On the other hand, if the expectations are conflicting, it is always best to discuss the issues as soon as possible to achieve consensus. In my view that is key to succeed in the scrum master role.
Conclusion
When you are starting in a new position and new team, it is a combination of motivation, learning new things and frustration of things where you find that you could do better.
You will identify technical and non-technical topics that need additional studies or practicing. Some need short term actions, but some can take longer time and offer way to grow to the next level in your role as scum master.
These situations where you step outside of your comfort zone are crucial for professional growth and competence development. The typical Finnish way to onboard a new team member is to push the person to the swimming pool and ask them to start swimming. I think I have succeeded in keeping my nose above the water line and most importantly, I feel motivated and well energized when starting my working days.
About the Author:
Topi Virkki, Scrum Master at Fortum
