A Survival Guide For Every Scrum Master Rookie
Being a Scrum Master rookie is not an admirable position to be in. Let’s face it, we know nothing except the theory at that stage!
Where can a Scrum Master beginner find how to react in different situations if he or she didn’t experience any of them, EVER?
There is no step by step guide on how to become an effective servant leader/facilitator or how to build productive teams instantly. But be patient young padawan!
Books are always great way to start with. Take this book for instance, it helped me tremendously.
Scrum Mastery — From Good To Great Servant-Leadership, by Jeoff Watts is meant to equip Scrum Masters, or any other agile coach with ready-to-use solutions and examples on how to ensure the team’s unity, devotion, transparency, and support. Still, any HR, manager or a team lead can use it as well.
The book offers many disruptive approaches, communication techniques and facilitating methods, and real-life stories! Useful for any Scrum master rookie.
I wanted to give you just a sneak preview of the takeaways that I found inspiring so I have listed 5 of them. The rest I leave up to you to enjoy finding in the book.
#1 Turn on the learning mode
Watts says that the agile team has to go through coaching so that one day they don’t need to be coached at all.
How? The author used a famous ‘Karate Kid’ movie scene — The ‘Shu-Ha-Ri’ to describe it.
The Shu-Ha-Ri scene was where Mr. Miyagi asks Daniel to clean his car by repeatedly producing two different moves ‘wax on, wax off’. So, Daniel is in the state of ‘Shu’ and he is learning.
The point of this repetition is to produce the new muscle memory without thinking. So, once attacked, Daniel could defend himself by intuition.
After he realized the meaning of Mr. Miyagi’s exercise he transferred to the ‘Ha’ stage of learning. In this state, the teacher encourages you to safely break the rules. In the end, the ‘Ri’ state refers that you don’t longer need to be a student.
The similar approach can be applied to your agile team.
They also need to have trust in each other, the courage to embrace challenges and knowledge on how to react and solve problems. Only in this way will the team truly benefit from this methodology.
To sum up
A Scrum Master represents Mr. Miyagi.
The Karate kid is your team.
A Scrum Master has a crucial role to guide the team through such a process, but only to the point when he or she is no longer necessary to provide the guidance.
Guided by the Scrum Master, the team should always strive to be persistent, aware of the team’s needs and flaws, sympathetic, brave and confident.
#2 To set a model of good behavior — first, show one
I had a bit of luck with my team. We created a safe environment where each of the members felt free to express their opinion.
We talked, suggested improvements and criticized. For me, as a Scrum Master, there was no need to take extra measures and to push boundaries. We were mature as a team with proper scrum values.
However, one day, I could be the SM to another team that is new to Scrum. What would I do then?
How could I facilitate the team and the individuals that are not ready to be exposed?
Why is safe environment important for the Scrum team?
The majority of the people don’t feel comfortable and ready to be in the spotlight in front of their colleagues. That is a process that takes time.
Watts has covered this situation as well. In the chapter where he talks about the importance of creating a safe environment, he also offers several solutions and the outcome of a few most common scenarios.
One of his tips is to exercise openness by sharing something shameful. That could be any kind of life situation, innocent and funny, meant to encourage others to share their funny stories as well.
The example must start from the facilitator, in this case, from the Scrum Master. A great Scrum Master must be able to safely remove any sort of impediments without actually doing anything.
Step by step the exercise of the openness will grow into trust and support that every team member needs from its colleagues.
To sum up
A SM has a truly unique position in the team according to Watts. He argues that SM needs to be suggestive but not intrusive, equal with others and with exemplary behavior. Therefore, strive to create a safe environment where each team member feels free to express their opinion.
#3 Give them field — guides for the open communication
Being passive is not a rare situation for the members of the team, but being passive affects productivity. One way to solve this issue is by using good, old verbal communication. And even though verbal communication that tends to solve the team’s inertness can be challenging, it can also have many entertaining, useful solutions.
To get the team member’s creative juices flowing, the author suggests a ‘Buzzin’ bullshit’ method.
The ‘Buzzing’ method is a game where each team member can ‘buzz’ the person who starts to speak vaguely on the Scrum meetings. The goal is to maintain the team’s attention, creativity, and mutual respect.
The Scrum Master is there to pay attention that buzzin’ doesn’t turn into provocative or unpleasant criticizing so the Scrum Master can define what behavior is vague or when to buzz people.
The team members can also ‘buzz’ the Scrum master if he or she starts to speak something irrelevant to the team.
This method enables the team members to be more open-minded and be open and honest with each other.
At the same time, the ’buzzing’ method emphasizes how effective communication creates a more cohesive and inclusive environment in the team.
To sum up
Scrum masters find this method useful for Scrum daily meetings. It helps them determine the model of the behavior of each team member.
Open communication is what truly contributes to the team cohesiveness and empowers mutual understanding, therefore helps the team achieve high performance.
The end result is to use this technique to create a work environment where everyone in the team is on the same wavelength and thus feel comfortable to speak and work with each other.
#4 Spice up your Scrum
Scrum events and meetings ARE important. They are your tools to facilitate the team.
“A great Scrum Master ensures a daily scrum is an energizing event that teams look forward to”.
The author encourages Scrum Masters to always look out for interesting ways to engage people and he shares many interesting recipes on how to spark each meeting to avoid boredom and lack of interest. The ‘buzzing’ method is one of the techniques, but there are many more.
The value of retrospective meetings
The importance of having a Retrospective meeting was clear to me from the very beginning.
After facilitating the first one, I could see the great impact such meetings had on the team.
The team always gladly participated. They eagerly discussed, commented and gave feedback to each other. But I always had to motivate myself to be more creative because I did not want to fall into a trap of repetition.
Sometimes it was hard to stay creative, which is another reason why I found Watts book enlightening. It gave me the outline for each retrospective I had in mind.
The power of the ADAPTIVE method
The ADAPTIVE method was useful for our retrospectives. The method works as a guideline on how to make the most out of these meetings with the team. The word ADAPTIVE is formed from a set of words (described below) that you could use as the agenda for your meeting.
- Act — Use retrospectives to spark the team to always have action plans
- Diverge — Make the team comfortable with diverse thinking and making the right decisions
- Probe — Avoid giving answers and always ask the right questions
- Try — Use different interesting methods to spark engagement
- Involve — Include everyone in the team
- Visualize — Think about all the data so nobody could ignore the existing problems
- Expose — the elephants. Expose the problems that the team is ignoring
What are other ways to spark your retrospectives and meetings to engage people?
- Change the time of (Scrum) meetings. People tend to speak more after they drank their coffee or ate lunch.
- Change the meeting location occasionally. Visiting different surroundings adds spark and dynamic to repetitive things as meetings can be.
- Introduce a short time sidebar. This is a period of time where the team can talk about things they found interesting that day. Use it to map their current mood, whether they are stressed or they have other kinds of problems.
To sum up
To quote, Esther Derby, the co-author of Agile Retrospectives,
Every team is alike in some ways and different in others.
In other words, some teams need more technical practices while others need solid coaching to become a functioning and productive team. Plan your (Scrum) meetings carefully.
Wrapping Up
When I fast forward to the time when I was a Scrum master rookie, this book was the one that gave me a dose of self-confidence, and assured me that a beginner sometimes can also rely on their intuition and common human values.
This book specifically, helped me understand how to minimize my soft spots, it gave me the tips that I could implement at once and a piece of valuable knowledge for future projects.
Are you interested in becoming a Scrum Master?
If you have just signed up to facilitate the team, below are a few great resources that could help.
- Have a Scrum guide by your side — scrum.org is your main source of information
- Listen to podcasts whenever you can: www.scrum-master-toolbox.org
- Always have interesting retrospective materials: www.funretrospectives.com/
- More interesting ideas for scrum events: https://retromat.or
- Read, and read again: Scrum Mastery: From Good to Great Servant-Leadership by Geoff Watts
- Use audiobooks also: Agile Project Management: Scrum Master
Share the article with someone who wants to become a Scrum master! :)
