In my previous company, I’ve been a SCRUM master (in addition to my main job: project manager) for more than 2 years and as you know, we always learn from our own errors and success. That’s why I started to list of few thoughts and things that I’d like to avoid in similar situation/role:
- Setup tools as soon as possible early in the project in order to automatize a lot of development process. The more you do before starting, the better it will be.
- Force your team to have some pause during your sprint in order to cool down on stuff that are important to team eyes (update continuous environment, upgrade a library, research, etc.).
- Team must justify the need of this time and not only in front of SCRUM master but also to product owner and even beyond to stakeholders.
- When working with a deported team, meet as soon as possible the team in order to give them a perfect vision of the project and share PO & SCRUM Master charisma.
- Give visibility with transparency to stakeholders on a sprint or release basis by giving:
- Budget status
- Global vision of the project (no features! Otherwise it’s taken as granted) usually give business value
- Milestone /sprints
- Backlog priorities
- Risks
- Challenge stories without bringing your knowledge but by confronting the stories from previous sprints
- Get a commitment from the team
- Resolve impediments as soon as possible
- Anticipate backup plans (ex: someone working on another story) at the same time
- Give as much as possible visibility to all the team on the upcoming sprints
- Give time to SCRUM team for reading/studying PO stories
- If building an online application, have at least 1 x UI/UX designer in the team
- Don’t rush on cutting edge technology or if it’s required, team needs training on those new technologies or simply change the whole team
So far this is what I’ve encountered along my experience and personal suggestion. I can possibly update the list in the future.
If you’d like me to develop a specific topic enunciated above, please shoot a comment and I will do my best to have a post on it.
For a new ScrumMaster these are some great suggestions so they can avoid some errors and issues that come with being new to any field. This information will greatly help in improving ScrumMaster’s skills and also the team itself.