What is a ScrumMaster?

In a recent Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) course, a student new to Scrum was a bit confused by the repeated reference to the ScrumMaster as a “coach”.  “What do you mean coaching or when does this coaching happen?” was the question raised. Caught a bit off guard, or more importantly caught up in my own internal dialog of, “Well, doesn’t everyone who comes to a CSM already know this?” For a moment I was a bit dumbfounded. Then I realized that this is the very question that we need to spend more time answering.

Let’s just start with coaching. What do you think of when you think of coaching? Do you think of a sports team that has a coach? Do you think of losing weight and maybe hiring a personal trainer as a fitness coach? Do you think of accomplishing personal goals through engaging a life coach to help you stay focused? In any of these instances, the person that is in the coaching position does not do the work for the person being coached. The coach’s role is to:

·       Ask all kinds of questions – the obvious question, the dumb question, the hard question, etc

·       Make observations and play back what they are seeing, what they are hearing, what they are observing

·       Make recommendations, suggestions, provide alternative view points

·       Listen

·       Remind the coachee of the very goals that were set out to be accomplished and take stock of reality – is the goal being met or not with the actions the coachee is taking

Scrum is a different way to do work. It may sound simple to change to a new way of doing work, but many find the practice of Scrum difficult to accomplish. The official Scrum Guide is free to all and is available here.

The Scrum Guide is clear that a ScrumMaster does not only coach the team of people doing work or developing the product that will be used by customers, but they also have the responsibility of coaching the Product Owner and the Organization. The Product Owner gives direction about the product, and the greater Organization is comprised of other experts, users, customers and stakeholders about interacting with the Scrum Team.

That may sound like a big job, and it is!  This is why a ScrumMaster is a full-time job and not one that can be done effectively as part time. It’s not administrative at all. It’s about people. It’s about individuals and interactions. It’s about setting goals, accomplishing goals and more importantly, what needs to change if goals are not accomplished.

Think back to sports teams you may be a part of that had a coach. Or any sports teams that you watch. How many are successful without an effective coach? How many Olympic athletes achieve a medal without a coach? This idea is critical to a successful Scrum adoption. The ScrumMaster is the coach to the Development Team, the Product Owner and the Organization regarding making this change and when things get tough, not back-sliding into old habits or unsuccessful approaches that detract from the goal.

If you would like to learn more about Scrum or the ScrumMaster, refer to the free Scrum Guide. You can also join me for a Certified ScrumMaster course hosted by Hollstadt Consulting on Oct 2.

Author: Christian Antonie

The Secret to Being a Great ScrumMaster or Agile Coach: The People Chip

---

We are seeing a trend in our classes and coaching engagements.  We walk in “off the street” and immediately pinpoint the people problems.  Clients repeatedly ask “How do you know that?”  “Who is giving you this information?”   They are dumbfounded when we say “Nobody did.  We picked up on it right away.” “What is the secret to being a great ScrumMaster?”

How has Collaborative Leadership Team cultivated this “people chip”?  Is it because of Certification as Scrum Professionals or Trainers?  Are we psychics?  Hardly!

We simply pay attention. We aren’t “tuned out” looking at a device or taking notes.  We are actively employing the Scrum values of Focus and Respect – giving full attention to the conversation and interactions at hand.

This means we are present in the moment.  Our people chips have become calibrated because Scrum is the way we do work – not something we incorrectly view as a project methodology.

Whether we are teaching or coaching, we look people in the eye. We listen.  We observe body language, non-verbal cues such as reactions from people based on what is said.  And then we coach.  This includes asking questions, enabling conversation, paraphrasing, etc.

Want to begin calibrating your People Chip?  Try these two tips:

1. Stop being the Product Owner or Team’s Secretary: Do you feel like you have to be writing or typing in order to add value? Are you updating charts, tasks, typing into some sort of tool? Get your hands of the P.O. and the Team’s work! What are you missing because your Focus is elsewhere? You could have been asking a question to get things moving in the right direction, observed body language that let you know everyone was not in agreement on what Done looks like, or picking up on any number of things.

2. Stop being the Authority on the Product or Technology: As the ScrumMaster, or certainly as a Coach, you are neutral. This means that you do not assert an opinion on the Product or the Technology. If you do that you are enabling the wrong behavior. Hand someone a fish and they have food for today. Teach them to fish and they have food for a lifetime. Your job as the ScrumMaster is to cultivate and enable cooperation, collaboration and team work to lead the Product Owner and Team to consensus. You do this through planting seeds, asking questions and getting the right people together to work on the problem at hand – not by being the authority on any technology or product attribute.

Want to learn more? Click here to view our upcoming classes and register for our next CSM or CSPO course.

Author: Collaborative Leadership Team. Learn more about our coaches and offerings here. 

ScrumMaster Certification: Answering Crucial Questions – Isn't a ScrumMaster just a Project Manager by Another Name?

---

In prior posts in this series, we have examined a number of crucial questions regarding the Scrum Framework and the role that a ScrumMaster plays in addressing them.  We conclude this series with an overview of how the role of ScrumMaster differs from that of a traditional Project Manager.

Before highlighting these differences and answering the question,”Isn’t a ScrumMaster just a Project Manager by Another Name?”, it is important to note that Project Managers have value.  Most are good and decent people who are trying to add value wherever they can in the pursuit of a project objective.  With that said, the goals of a project manager differ remarkably from those of a ScrumMaster.

A project manager is charged with ensuring the project goal is achieved within the scope, schedule, cost and quality parameters set by the project sponsor or project steering committee.  While they may discuss customer value or the team in pursuit of this goal, both of these topics are secondary to it.  The team is often seen as a means to end, a method of accomplishing the project.

In contrast, a ScrumMaster views the team as a source of creative, innovative energy that, when set loose in a self-organizing environment and served by an educated Product Owner and ScrumMaster, can achieve amazing results.  While this may sound a little new age, it is a crucial distinction between the two roles.  While a Project Manager is concerned with plans, controlling change and reporting the status of the effort to the various project stakeholders, the ScrumMaster trusts the Team and the Product Owner to work through the framework to address planning, changes and the reporting of status to stakeholders.  While these items look different in Scrum, they achieve the same objective: freeing the ScrumMaster to focus on things like Team dynamics, event facilitation, and impediment removal.

A ScrumMaster is also concerned with the technical practices of the Team.  While items such as the Team’s automation approach to continuous product integration are of minimal interest to most Project Managers, they fall clearly within the purview of the ScrumMaster.  A ScrumMaster is a strong advocate for the Team adopting these practices and is continually educating the Team on their benefits and pushing them to continually search for, and stretch, the technical excellence of their product.  Project managers might inquire as to whether the project team is controlling their source code or is regularly testing the application, but rarely will a traditional project manager push beyond this cursory inquiry.

In short, a Project Manager exists to serve the project stakeholders by providing them with an idea of the project’s progress through indirect means – how much money has been spent, how time has expired in a flawed plan, etc.  A ScrumMaster instead does anything that will help the Team be a better version of itself, to, in the words of Jeff McKenna, the coach of the first Scrum Team ever, “help the Team be awesome”.

Click here to view our upcoming classes and register for our next CSM or CSPO course.

Author: Collaborative Leadership Team. Learn more about our coaches and offerings here. 

ScrumMaster as Facilitators: More than Standing at the Front of the Room

---

One of the most common questions we, Collaborative Leadership Team, receive when coaching clients on Scrum is, “How can I best facilitate a Team during one of the Scrum Events?”  While this question is being raised in a Scrum context, the ideas outlined in this blog are really applicable to successfully facilitating any meeting.

Do Your Homework:  The first step in facilitating any successful Scrum ceremony is to prepare the session that you are about to facilitate.  For example, if you are preparing to facilitate a Sprint Planning session, check-in with the Product Owner and ensure that he or she has updated the Product Backlog.  This includes ordering items as appropriate and defining what “Done” is for Product Backlog Items that will be brought into the Sprint. Important Note:  this doesn’t mean that you, as a ScrumMaster, need to do the work. It means that you need to coach the Product Owner to complete the work that the Scrum Framework requires of him or her.

As part of preparing for the ceremony, you might want to create a “Facilitator’s Agenda”.  This agenda shows how you will be facilitating the ceremony, which activities you will use to help the Team achieve the goal of the ceremony, as well as the timing of each one.

Gain Consent on the Goal:  Once the session begins, it’s important to not only set a goal but to also ask for consent from the participants immediately.  While this recommendation may seem trite, Teams, particularly early in their adoption, can forget the goal of each event.   As the ScrumMaster you are not only the facilitator, but the internal coach.  You can engage the Team by reminding them of the goal, offering them an overview of the activities that you have planned to help them achieve that goal, and ask them what ground rules they would like you to enforce as the facilitator of the event.

Notice that you are offering the Team possible activities and that you are asking them which ground rules they would like you to enforce.  The Team retains the right to accept or reject the activities that you are proposing as well as the right to articulate the ground rules that they would like to operate under.  This freedom means that as a facilitator, you need to prepare multiple tools and have them ready in case the Team that you serve rejects your first offering.

Guide the Product Owner, Team and any other Participants:  Once agreement has been reached on ground rules for the particular event, work begins on the first activity.  Your job as a facilitator shifts to guiding.  Ensure the following:

• Is everyone participating? – If more extroverted participants are dominating the session, don’t be afraid to interrupt and engage the more introverted members. Sometimes changing your physical position in the room – walking around and moving closer to or farther away from anyone can either decrease or increase someone’s contribution.

• Is everyone working towards its goal? – Sometimes participants will be actively discussing a topic that is related to the goal of the session, but is not necessary to achieve it. As a facilitator, you need to gently guide the discussion back toward its goal. Asking open-ended questions, summarizing points made and using them to tie back to the goal of the session are techniques that you can use to help re-center participants on the goal of the session if things gets off track.

Closing the Session:  As the event concludes, your role as a Facilitator shifts to ensuring that everyone understands the outcome that has been reached as well as any related follow-up/action items.  Closing the session allows everyone to review what has been achieved, gain clarity on next steps as well as who owns the completion of those next steps.

Taking each of these actions described in this post will improve your facilitation skills and help your Team continue to evolve, delivering working product that people want to use.

Want to learn more?

Click here to view our upcoming classes and register for our next CSM or CSPO course

Author: Collaborative Leadership Team. Learn more about our coaches and offerings here.