Advice for New Scrum Master Joining in a New Team
The role of a Scrum Master is not as simple as you think. They have a lot of responsibilities when joining a new team as a new Scrum Master. A Scrum Master should contribute in all the possible ways to help the team achieve success. However, this article contains all the necessary facts of a Scrum Master that should focus on and what potential skills they should need or have to join a new team as a new Scrum Master. At the very end, you will find some interesting tips to become a fantastic Scrum Master of your Agile team. Let us check it out!
What Are the Crucial Responsibilities of the Scrum Master?
A Scrum Master is tasked with lots of essential roles and responsibilities, and some of them are as follows:
- Scrum Master facilitates Scrum Events.
- The Scrum Master is tasked to perceives procedures, Scrum values, practices, and guides the team while planning and implementing the product release incrementally.
- They ensure that the team has effective tools to deal with the product development.
- He/She eases communication between teams to bring transparency to the organization.
As Scrum is an important framework in Agile methodology, a Scrum Master plays a vital role for the entire team. and guiding the team on how to use the Scrum methodology in an appropriate manner. Their responsibility is to encourage the team to keep a continuous focus on the goal and help the team to make use of tools and apply methodology effectively to reach the organizational goal. Even though it somewhat looks like the role of a Project Manager, the position of a Scrum Master needs deep expertise and knowledge about Scrum framework, especially in the software development project.
Certain Areas to Focus as a New Scrum Master
1. Engagement with the Team
As a new Scrum Master, you should focus on giving suggestions and provide help to the team and have empathy towards the whole Scrum Team. In addition, you should attend ongoing Scrum Events and even join team meetings besides the Scrum Events so that you can have a better idea of the team dynamics. Also, it is your responsibility to notify the interactions of the people while working, check out the profiles of the team on social networks to learn their hobbies and other interests, and review the current metrics of the team, know about the agreements and conventions of the team to perceive their values, and many more. As you would be the Scrum Master, you should help the team with the Scrum Events and give attention to all the other needs of the team while working on the project.
2. Learn About Stakeholders
If you are going to be a new Scrum Master, you should also know about the main stakeholders of the company. You shouldn't let a single chance go to meet the main stakeholders and know their expectations so that you can contribute to it. Furthermore, you should pay attention to the stakeholders interactions with the team at various sessions and review the feedback received.
3. Learn About Enterprise
If you are joining as a new Scrum Master, you should learn about the vision, mission, values, strategy, goals, key structures, components, working style, and current processes of the enterprise. You should observe whether the enterprise is given the Scrum values and look for the solutions for the organization-wide issues related to Scrum. Moreover, you should attend organizational meetings, available practice meetings, go to the social media pages of an enterprise, and learn about their Agile adoption.
4. Learn About Essential Tools
If you have joined the team as a Scrum Master, you should learn about the development process, deployment process, and integration of the team. Also, you should know about the tools that are utilized by the team, their engineering practices, and their Definition of Done.
Top Tips for a New Scrum Master
- For a new Scrum Master, it is very important to be quiet rather than to involve in communications right away. It would be better to learn about certain organizational aspects before getting into discussions. As a new Scrum Master, it is not necessary for you to have all the answers as you would be in the phase of learning incrementally. If someone is talking or expressing a concern or an idea, you should have the patience to listen to them first.
- Scrum Masters should have the potential to check-in. Checking in is nothing but to make the team feel comfortable. This term is completely different from checking out as it is not only about inquiring about the progress with the team but also to help them to overcome the obstacles they are facing while developing a product. New Scrum Masters should avoid blaming the team members, and it would be great if you offer complete autonomy to resolve the issues.
- You should have the ability to solve the issues or conflicts among the team members and help the team to grow. For that, you would just need to observe the actual reason for the conflict and bring some ideas to solve it. Even though certain conflict among the team members is quite healthy, but it is your responsibility to separate the destructive conflict from the natural conflict and make the team realize the importance of the company goal. Whenever you find conflict on the team, you should take action as quickly as possible.
- A Scrum Master should take the responsibility of adopting Scrum practices among the team even though the success of the project is in the hands of a Product Owner and team. However, Scrum Master should provide the team with real-time leadership and guidance to create something new for the organization. All you have to do is to encourage the team in their project and help them to learn the Scrum strategy and make the team members expert in the best possible ways.
- It is the job of the Scrum Master to make their teams look good in all the sense. For that, they should get ready to do all essential things to make them reach their goal. A Scrum Master makes sure that every individual should be noticed after the success of the project, and they should celebrate their successes with food and drinks. When an organization achieves success, it is the success of everyone, including a Scrum Master and the team, with no doubt, and this fact should be understood and respected by the team.
- The very last tip for the Scrum Master is to clear the problems of each day. But, it does not mean that you must solve every issue by the end of the day, as some might require a certain time to remove from the path. It should be taken care that there should be progress every day by making the path of the team easier to work and accomplish the goals on time. A Scrum Master should contribute in a better way to help the team meet their organizational objectives.
Bottom Lines
Of course, getting the position of a Scrum Master is a valuable career field. However, an individual should have certain skills to join the team as a new Scrum Master. A Scrum Master has a special role while dealing with the Agile team for product development as (s)he has to meet the team and make sure everyone is actively engaged in the development process. Moreover, Scrum Master acts as a facilitator of the team and the role should not be confused with the Project Manager role. It is the role of the Scrum Master to ensure that the development process is progressing effectively and the team has learned all the strategies to work together. It should also be ensured that the team is serious and strict about the operation of Sprints. This article contains all the necessary skills that should be there in a new Scrum Master so that one can join the Agile team without hesitation. If you think you have all the skills mentioned above, you can become a good Scrum Master with no doubt.
References:
- http://www.triumphstrategicconsulting.com/2018/11/05/scrum-master-toolkit/
- https://resources.scrumalliance.org/Article/advice-new-scrum-masters
