Jan 31, 2020
This week, Sam Falco is hosting
the podcast once again! He’s invited on his colleague and friend,
Adam Ulery, who is a Senior Agile Coach at AgileThought. Adam is a
perpetually curious, continuous learner who is always willing to
encourage others to try new things (as he very often does himself).
He is very focused on helping organizations clarify and meet their
business outcomes, and loves to help companies become resilient and
rediscover their curiosity.
Today, they’re sharing their
best tips for new Scrum Masters. When Sam and Adam were new Scrum
Masters they found that there were not a lot of experienced Scrum
Masters that were accessible to them. In fact, they didn’t even
have access to many of the common resources that exist today! So
today they want to share all that they’ve learned over the course
of their careers and lend a hand to all of the new Scrum Masters
out there!
Key Takeaways
- Tips
for the new Scrum Master:
-
- Seek
to understand where the team is in terms of their Scrum maturity
level
- Observe the team without immediately trying to
make changes to the way the team does things to inform yourself
about where they are
- Ask
yourself: ‘How well is what they’re doing working for them? Are
they working well together as a team?’ If these things look good
in-person even though they could look incorrect on-paper you may
not want to change these things
- Do
some sort of an assessment with the team to establish a baseline
for where they are and how they’re executing Scrum (then
periodically reassess down the line)
- Have
the team self-assess
- Create a shared team vision
- Regardless of your experience level, educate
yourself on the craft
- Get
involved with a community group to improve your area of practice
(and if there isn’t one where you are, start one)
- Indulge in books around your craft — they’re a
great resource for taking you to the next level
- Go to
conferences, big or small
- Tips
for the new Scrum Master who is assigned to a pre-existing
team:
-
- Start
by working with them on the areas that need improvement (based off
of an assessment) by getting the team’s input and having the team
decide what they’d like to work on (assuming they’re mature enough
to want to do that)
- Receive constant feedback by creating an open
channel with the team to communicate
- Have
transparency with what you’re doing there and what you want for
them
- How
to become a more effective Scrum Master:
-
- Find
a mentor
- Be a
mentor — just because you’re new doesn’t mean you have nothing to
offer
- Become a speaker — you’ll discover you know
more than you thought you did
Mentioned in this Episode:
The Scrum Guide
The 7 Habits of Highly
Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal
Change,
by Stephen R. Covey
Tampa Bay ScrumMasters Guild
Ken Schwaber
Agile Project Management with
Scrum, by Ken
Schwaber
Software Estimation Without
Guessing: Effective Planning in an Imperfect
World,
by George Dinwiddie
The Water
Dancer, by Ta-Nehisi
Coates
Adam Ulery’s Book Picks:
Antifragile: Things That Gain
from Disorder, by
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Killing Sacred Cows: Overcoming
the Financial Myths That Are Destroying Your
Prosperity,
by Garrett B. Gunderson and Stephen
Palmer
The Purpose Driven Life: What
on Earth Am I Here For? by Rick Warren
The DevOps Handbook: How to
Create World-Class Agility, Reliability, and Security in Technology
Organizations, by Gene
Kim, Patrick Debois, John Willis, and Jez Humble
Want to Learn More or Get in Touch?
Visit the website and catch up
with all the episodes on AgileThought.com!
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suggestions to Podcast@AgileThought.com
or Tweet @AgileThought using
#AgileThoughtPodcast!