The role of a scrum master is simple – to assist the scrum team and lead them toward victory. While it’s an incredibly rewarding role, it doesn’t come without its pressures and challenges. After all, the success of the scrum and the welfare of the group falls on the scrum master’s shoulders.
Scrum masters are in charge of organising daily meetings, enhancing team interactions, and boosting productivity by eradicating roadblocks. Whether you’ve just stepped into the position or you’re looking at ways to improve your performance, here are some actions to take to help you become a better scrum master.
Get to Know Your Team
As we’ve mentioned, the primary role of a scrum master is to guide your team toward success. Therefore, you’ll need to know each member of the group’s strengths and weaknesses. There are certain questions to ask yourself. These include how well the team works together, who brings out the best in one another, and who doesn’t gel.
Learning more about each team member is key to delivering the right help and support. To build rapport with your group and ensure everyone is working to the best of their ability, it’s your duty to check in with everyone, ask how they’re doing, and find common ground. Make sure to develop a good relationship with the product owner too. While you will be in charge of leading the agile development team, the product owner is held accountable for maximising the value of the final product created by the Scrum team. When you come together, it’s far easier for both parties to have their say and be more effective in their positions.
Use OKRs
Scrum masters who use OKRs (objectives and key results) in their role can benefit enormously. Some of these include aligning and connecting employees to corporate goals, giving clear directions to every individual on the team, and increasing productivity through focus on goals. Other benefits include tracking regular progress towards goals and making more informed and effective decisions.
Check out 1ovmany who go into detail on how scrum masters can use OKRs to better serve their team. Their OKR for scrum master guide explores how OKRs can be used for the development team, the product owner, and the organisation as a whole.
Cultivate a Culture of Continuous Feedback
The agile methodology centres around continuous improvement. If you don’t provide continuous feedback, how can you expect team members to improve? The same goes for your own way of working. If you don’t ask for and accept feedback, how can you possibly improve your work performance?
Feedback goes both ways, and it only works if it’s continuous and constructive. Never wait until you’ve got something negative to say. It’s vital to prove positive and negative feedback. Also, you’ll need to learn how to handle constructive criticism. Doing this regularly helps you and your group become accustomed to receiving feedback.
Elevate How You Communicate
Just because you’re in charge of proceedings does not mean you’re always the spokesperson. As a leader, you need to be an excellent communicator. A large part of this falls down to listening to your team and taking what they say on board. Keeping your ears open for any problems within the group is a must.
If the development team has any concerns, it’s your job to listen and make changes where necessary. Also, consider how each team member likes to communicate. You’ll find some people prefer to-the-point interactions, whereas others require more time to ease into conversations. Communicating effectively is a key characteristic all scrum masters must learn and retain.
Make the Most of Every Retrospective
The retrospective is the last event of a scrum. They’re an incredibly crucial component of the scrum process, meaning they shouldn’t be rushed, overlooked, or underutilised. Scrum masters are responsible for ensuring retrospectives are effective and occur after every scrum. With that said, you need to have a plan in place to get the most out of every retro meeting.
We’re not saying you have to be in charge of everything. Instead, it’s a good idea to let your group run the odd retrospective. Anyone involved in the process should be able to contribute their own thoughts and opinions for elevating the meeting. Make sure to collect feedback from team members about how they believe your retrospective is performing. You may end up finding they have ideas and advice that can help you improve.
To put it simply, scrum masters are there to help the group enhance and streamline processes to achieve their goals. They wear many hats. In fact, during a typical day, a scrum master can serve as a coach, teacher, facilitator, and leader. For that reason, it’s important to do all the above to help perform your role flawlessly and ultimately, drive your team toward success.
