What does the Scrum Master do all day?
Many people inside a company oftentimes
want to know what does Scrum Master
actually do all day. Not only the people
who interact with the Scrum Master, the
Scrum Master themselves also want to
know what they should do all day. I can
say that there isn't any structured
predictable list of work that the Scrum
Master should do all day. In fact I
personally think if there is a fixed job
description for a Scrum Master most
often it's going to limit their
creativity to make a change inside the
company. A lot of things that the Scrum
Masters do in a company requires common
sense. Because the Scrum Master
influences people to make change in the
company happen, what the Scrum Master
will do all day often times is
unpredictable. And I personally think
that is what makes being a Scrum Master
exciting. Because you wake up every
morning not knowing what human
interaction challenges that may arise
during the day.
Hey what's up everybody? My name is
Joshua Partogi. I'm a Professional Scrum
Trainer based in Brisbane, Australia. If
you're new to this channel, welcome on
board to the community of passionate
change makers. If you're not a stranger
to this channel welcome back to this
channel folks, hopefully your days are
well. In today's video, I will show you an
illustration that visualizes what the
Scrum Master does all day. If you're a
Scrum Master, I hope today's video can
give you some insights on how a Scrum
Master would work inside the company. If
you are someone who is interacting with
a Scrum Master, hopefully today's video
can give you new perspective and also
insights about what you can expect from
the Scrum Masters in your company. And if
there are more than 100 likes that I
will get for this video, I will make a
sequel to this video. So make sure you
click that like button down below after
you watch today's video. Well actually
you can just click that like button now
if you want.
Go on ...
hit that like button. Alright so let's
carry on with today's topic folks.
Throughout this video I want you to keep
in mind that what the Scrum Masters do
inside a company is driven by three
factors. The first factor is by their
accountability as a Scrum Master. Now as
we already know from reading the Scrum
Guide and also from watching the video
that I have already made, the Scrum
Master is accountable for two things, the
Scrum Master is accountable for ensuring
people inside the company have the right
understanding about Scrum so that Scrum
is not misused or
abused. And secondly the Scrum Master is
accountable with the Scrum team's
ability to deliver value to the
customers effectively. And as I have
mentioned in my other videos, effective
here does not mean ensuring the Scrum
team delivers on time, on scope, and on
budget.
No! Not that project management iron
triangle thing. But instead enabling the
Scrum team to deliver the right product,
for the right customer, at the right time
which at the end should generate value
not only to the customers but also to
the business. Besides accountabilities
what the Scrum Master does in the
company is also shaped by the eight hats
they wear. I have already made a video on
eight hats the Scrum Master wears. If you
haven't watched that video i suggest you
watch that video first by clicking the
link up here
before continuing watching today's video.
The third factor that drives the Scrum
Master's behavior is impact and value. I
often ask the Scrum Masters that i have
mentored, how can you as the Scrum
Master make yourself valuable for the
company you work with so that the
company will retain you at any cost
because you have impacted the company in
a positive way. And quite often the Scrum
Masters can bring impact and make
themselves valuable by jumping out of
their comfort zone. That might include
learning something new that is different
to the Scrum Master's background. And
even learning something beyond what is
written on Scrum Guide. The Scrum Master
must be open to new opportunities and
also new possibilities. The Scrum Master
as we already know from my other videos
is not a job title. It's an
accountability. Now we will watch a story
about Jenny. She works at Hooli
corporation and her job title in the
company is Director of Engineering. She's
also a Scrum Master for three Scrum
teams in the company. Throughout this
video please keep in mind the three
driving factors that I have mentioned
earlier. In this video also keep your eye
on the top left corner of this video to
know what hat the Scrum Master wears in
each situation. Hey Jen. Raul here from
Ops. I would like to inform you that the
system was down after we deployed it to
production. So if Linda ever asked you,
just let her know that we're working
with the devs to fix it ASAP. Thanks for
letting me know Raul. I really appreciate
it. I'll be in the office in 10 more
minutes. Thanks Jen. Hey Jen
the system is down and our users have
gone on a rage.
Hey Linda. Oh yeah, so Raul from Ops have
told me that they're working with the
devs to get the system back up and
running again. I'll be in the office in a
few more minutes.
Hey Jenny. Oh hi Ashish. Are you
available for 45 minutes mentoring
session today. There is something that I
would like to talk about with you that
has been disturbing my mind. I think
around 2pm I'm free for a mentoring
session.
Let's do it in my office.
Okay then see you at 2pm today. Thanks
Jenny. So team. I suppose you're
currently doing the blameless postmortem?
Oh hey Jen. Yeah we're currently doing
the blameless postmortem.
We just patched the system. So everything
is all well right now.
yYah and we're currently discussing how
this issue went through the crack.
What have we discovered so far? There was a
piece of code that was not covered by
our unit test.
We could not figure out how to write the
test for it. So we just rely on manual
tests. What are we going to do to prevent
it from happening again? So we're
currently exploring how to mock the
class for the unit test.
This is something that we need to
elaborate further during this Sprint
retrospectives. And we're probably going
to do some research on it this Sprint. All
right then.
Thanks team. Let me know if you need
anything for me.
Hey Jen. What's with that face? You had a
tough morning?
Oh yeah the system was down this morning
and some of the customers cannot access
the system.
But I'm sure your team has got it all
worked out right?
Yeah all is good they've done an awesome
job.
By the way you're going to be at the
strategic planning to facilitate it
right?
Regarding that Evidence-based Management
metrics that you taught us last week,
we're still struggling to define the
immediate tactical goal.
Oh yeah.
I can understand why it can be hard.
Evidence-Based Management is new to all
of us anyway.
Sure. I will facilitate it. Make sure you
bring the latest current value metrics
okay?
Yep i've got it prepared already. I will
bring it to the strategic planning.
I might not be able to bring the
unrealized value metrics though. Is that
something we can elaborate in this
planning?
Thanks Cecil. Yeah we can elaborate the
unrealized value metrics too. See you at
3 pm today.
Thanks Jen.
Oh I gotta get back to my team Sprint
planning.
So that is Cecil.
She is our Vice President of Product and
a Product Owner. She just got promoted
after being a product manager for five
years.
Hey Jen.
Is the plan for the migration to cloud
native ready? I would like to brush it up
and bring into this afternoon's
strategic planning. I think we can
forecast how moving to cloud native
impacts our unrealized value metrics.
Oh yeah!
That's a good point Linda! I didn't think
of that.
Cecil was also wondering about the
unrealized value metrics when I met her
at the pantry.
All right so just give me a few more
minutes okay. I need to put on some
numbers and
it will be in your inbox by the time you
arrive in your office.
All right.
Thanks. See you at 3pm today. I'm really
excited on our move to start using
Evidence-Based management metric in our
strategic planning. Ta.
See you this afternoon Linda. And oh ...
send my gratitude to the team for getting
the system up and running that quick.
Hopefully we can get to the elite level
in the state of DevOps next year.
So that is Linda. She is our Chief
Information Officer. And I report to
Linda.
Hey Jen! Have you got a few minutes?
We kind of need your help right now.
Hey Tasha. What's happening? How can I
help? So team Panther are currently doing
Sprint planning. And we're already stuck
with defining the Sprint goal. We're
having an intense discussion with Cecil.
Oh
I see.
How did you all come to this situation?
Well we have so many unrelated product
backlog items that Cecil wanted to be
completed this Sprint.
All right then.
I will come over and see.
Hey team. What have we got here? We're
struggling to define our Sprint goal the
product backlog items we need to
complete have no common theme. Okay
so let's see it from a different
perspective now.
By the end of this Sprint, how do we know
the increment we will deliver to the
customers deliver value?
What value metrics we can use to measure
that? Well if all of these five product
backlog items are complete I think we
will deliver value to our customers. That
is output Cecil. Focus on the outcome.
You should know more about outcome over
output as a Product Owner.
Well the customers have been raging and
our customer usage index has decreased
in the past three months.
Customer complaints have also increased.
The downtime this morning just made our
customers even angrier.
I think we should just focus on
improving these two metrics this Sprint
and that would be really great.
If we can improve the stability the
performance and the user experience on
the front end this Sprint I think we can
satisfy our customers.
Brilliant Tasha! Let's make that our
Sprint goal.
Let's select any Product Backlog items
that can improve those two metrics.
Alright. So I will leave you all to carry
on with the Sprint planning. I still need
to prepare for this afternoon's
strategic planning.
So Cecil what is it about Nexus that you
want to talk about?
So I'm wondering about my role as a
Product Owner in Nexus.
Last week you mentioned there is only
one Product Owner in Nexus
but we currently have three teams so who
will detail all of the product backlog
items for the developers?
I wouldn't have enough time to do it for
them.
Cecil as a Product Owner you're
accountable for the value of the product.
But you can delegate these tactical
tasks,
like detailing the product backlog items.
So
who would be able to do that?
You can delegate it to the product
managers.
They manage but you still own the
product.
Oh
Okay
I've got it now. Thanks Jen.
And also thanks for helping us with
defining the Sprint goal today.
How is your food by the way? Wow
this Souvlaki tastes great. I think I'm
loving greek food now.
How is yours by the way? Yeah this is
yummy. I think I'm going to go here again
one day.
Hi Jen. Are you currently in the middle
of something?
Can we have the mentoring session now? Aah
yes Ashish.
How was your lunch? Uh as usual. My wife
prepared me nice indian meal. So what is
it that you want to talk about? Well I
want to get your advice about my career
here as a software engineer. Sure
I can share with you my personal
experience. Thanks for your time Jenny. I
really appreciate it. I can see the
career path now.
That was very helpful. You're welcome. I can
send you some books. You should read
about agile software engineering.
You definitely need to read Michael
Feathers and Kent Beck's book. All right.
I need to rush to our company's
strategic planning now.
So Evidence-based management is defining
goals empirically using evidence. In
other words, we're not using
assumptions or gut feeling
Is the goals in EBM the same as product
goal and Sprint goal in Scrum? It's quite
different Linda.
We can use EBM together with Scrum
though.
In EBM there are three goals,
Strategic goal, intermediate goal and also
immediate tactical goal.
Aaah okay. Thanks for explaining that Jen.
Aah
that was quite intense.
I'm glad the company is starting to use
EBM metrics in their strategy planning
now. Aaah
I think i'm going to check on the team. I
think they're doing the Nexus cross-team
refinement at the moment. Let's see how
it goes.
Oh what a day.
I really love my job. Alright. That is all
from me today folks. Thank you for
watching today's video. If you think this
kind of video helps you visualize what
the Scrum Master does all day, don't
forget to give this video a like, smash
that like button right now. And also
leave a comment on what other scenarios
that you would like to see that have not
been covered in this video. If there are
lots of responses in the comment section
and 100 likes I will make a sequel video
to this one. If you are an aspiring Scrum
Master, don't forget to follow my podcast
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next video folks. Until then, stay safe
and also don't forget to stay awesome.