Scrum Masters: Building a Role for a Growing Company
Lee la versión en español aquí.
Around 6 months ago, as Wolox continued to grow, adding new members almost every week, our Team Managers were taking on more responsibilities. Ultimately, it was occasionally difficult for them to keep track of the day to day activities of their development teams as client meetings, sprint plannings, and other tasks ate too much of their time.
A decision was made to delegate some of the daily scrum activities to Scrum Masters, a brand new role for Wolox that had to be created from scratch. All of us who were elected are developers; thus, we knew the pros and cons of doing scrum well (and not so well). We continued with our development roles, and also added these new responsibilities.
However, the challenge was not only that none of us were experienced Scrum Masters, but that the role and process of a Scrum Master, inside Wolox, was yet to be defined. Furthermore, we had to decide how to implement such a new role within Wolox, to help our teams become more agile.
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We started to put this role into action with biweekly meetings, trying to shape what tasks and activities we thought were important and necessary, drafting the foundation of a Scrum Master’s role. We discussed, collaborated and worked efficiently to determine what we needed to do. This was a very challenging exercise at times: we would come up with some ideas, then put them into practice only to discover they didn’t work as expected. Nevertheless, over time, we started to see the positive results.
First we tackled two very important scrum activities: Daily and retrospective meetings.
The daily meeting is one of the main bases of the Scrum Framework. It facilitates communication within the team and is the best way to know exactly, in that moment, what everyone is working on. However, the standard Scrum definition, of the daily meeting, could not be applied entirely to Wolox. As a result of our flexible working hours, not every team member is present first thing in the morning, when these meetings are supposed to start. The solution was easy, we waited until all team members were accounted for, given they arrive at a reasonable time. We began to see attendance rise, and finally, we were able to hold them daily, as they are designed to be. The positive outcomes were felt throughout the team: Communication and team cooperation improved drastically, and the projects development saw better results. Most importantly, the developers were happy, as they witnessed the benefits and stopped thinking of daily meetings as unimportant or time-wasting.
Retrospective meetings also suffered some changes in the way they were conducted. We attempted to define what a good meeting was. We agreed on the importance of setting goals for ourselves, having metrics to track our progress and to receive feedback from the development team to further improve the process and ultimately, make everyone happier.
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It is important, for us, that our developers understand that our main goal is to improve their work-life, not just procedures. This process is still evolving and we need their constructive criticism to improve it as we’re not Scrum Master experts. Some of the best ideas that we implement came from devs in these daily meetings.
With this new role, we have become more productive and agile, although, we still have challenges to tackle, as we are forever improving and adapting the Scrum Master role to suit Wolox. Given the strength and talent of our teams, we are positive that we will stay on track and continue to grow as a company.
Posted by Federico López Cañás, iOS Developer and Scrum Master, (federico.lopez@wolox.com.ar)
