The First Thing To Do As Scrum Master With Your Team
What is the first thing to do when working as a Scrum Master with a new team? Whether the team is experienced in agile software development or not, it is important to create a basis that all future collaboration is build upon. This is the key to avoid misunderstandings based on assumptions or a lack of clarification which will affect all future collaboration and in worst case might damage trust. Therefore I believe a simple session or exercise should be the first step whenever start working with a team: Set expectation and boundaries! This post focuses on expectations as the basis for collaboration as Scrum Master with your team. Make use of your Scrum Master toolbox in order to keep the session interesting for all participants.
Why a full time Scrum Master? / What value does the Scrum Master bring to the team?
These questions are good starting points for a session that should take place at a very earl stage when engaging with a new team. Ask the team about their thoughts on that and what each team members expectations to a Scrum Master are.
From that input collection anything may arise, here are some examples:
- be a firewall to the team (protect the team)
- remove blockers / impediments
- help to understand and apply scrum
There will be more thoughts and expectations put on the table; collect them all on a board. Once this is done evaluate them against the Agile Manifesto and The Scrum Guide in order to so whether an expectations is valid or not. This will also improve awareness of the team regarding Scrum in general and roles & responsibilities in particular.
Teams experienced with Scrum
In case the team you work with has had a Scrum Master before you, these exercise could be started with an as is analysis. Ask the team members what the situation was with their previous scrum master, what the Scrum Master did for the team.
After that, collect the teams expectations as described above and see what the delta is. That will most certainly have a learning effect for both, the Scrum Master and the team.
Value of this exercise
I’ve often experience a gap between as is work of a Scrum Master and the Agile Manifesto or Scrum Guide itself. In some cases that wasn’t a problem in others it caused problems as basic agile principles weren’t respected.
With this little exercise in the beginning of your journey with a team will give you valuable inputs on what your priorities should be with the team. It will be even helpful for a better understanding of the context/the organization around the team and potential impediments to agile software development.
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