none of these things are actually part of this grandmaster role
hi my name is daria welcome to scrum mastered video series where i give you practical tips
on how to build awesome teams in today's video i wanted to talk about the role of the scrum master
more specifically what do they actually do all day this question often comes up for people just
starting in this role and people trying to get into the the role and explain to their management
what this role is all about there's not that many resources out there that really explain
it that well and when we look at the scrum guide it is pretty vague it doesn't actually tell us
what do you do what are the steps tasks and activities that you have to take during the sprint
or during every day as you work with your team so what usually happens when a new scrum master
starts they start doing things like like these check on progress status of everyone on the team
organize the product backlog and the scrum board make sure that everyone has something to work on
split the work between developers take notes in meetings and send the meeting minutes to everyone
connect with management and stakeholders on the status of the projects organize everything around
the team such as meetings work schedules and more sounds familiar well i'm sure it does because this
is something that a lot of people start doing when they get into the role of the scrum master
however none of these things are actually part of this grandmaster role they come from
a traditional project management and a traditional project manager role there is nothing wrong with
the role of course but if you're a scrum master these are not the things that you should be doing
so what do you do instead well if i were to summarize it in just short sentence i would say
it's analyzing the situation providing guidance and building relationships well
that still sounds pretty vague so let's get into more detail on each one of them
when you're establishing a whole new way of working you can just slap a process on
top of something that exists and hope that it's going to work every company every team
and every situation is different so before you really start implementing and establishing scrum
you need to understand what is happening in this team and in this organization
there are a lot of questions that you need to answer what is the history of this team
why they made decisions to follow certain processes overall how are decisions made who has
the final word on different parts of the work that the team does and why is it that way what do roles
actually mean within this organization and how are they being implemented maybe even
understand the different relationships that are happening between different teams or people
so that you can really understand what approach to take so here this is where we see skills like
listening and observation come into the picture so a lot of the time as a scrum master what you'll do
is actually observe what is happening you might need to attend meetings that you don't really
need to be in or you have nothing to contribute to but you need to be there to understand the overall
dynamics between teams and people or just to understand the product or the processes that
are happening and this also obviously helps you have a better understanding of overall
structure and hierarchy of the organization you might need to have one-on-ones or coffee talks
with different people trying to identify who you actually need to meet and how to
approach them in the right way overall your goal is to create a plan of action something that you
can follow through to help you really establish scrum in this team and the organization overall
so this plan might be a fancy presentation that you create and maybe even present
at an executive meeting or it might be just a note you jot it down on a post-it well it doesn't
really matter what it is but this is your way to combine the observations and listenings that you
did and create something tangible a way for you to measure your own progress but also be able to show
what did you actually do during all those months working with the team and what improvements
were you able to include and implement and the important thing is that this is
not a one-time thing that you just do once you join the team and that's it
companies evolve teams change people move and there are a lot of moving pieces in the organic
organization so you need to be able to figure out what is happening there are some changes that are
happening and make sure that you adapt your plan to follow through with those changes as well
as a scrum master your goal is to establish scrum so that is where the skills such as teaching
coaching and mentoring come into play this is where you are really trying to help everyone
understand what scrum is what their role is what rules are and how do we really implement it
in in this team and this organization it doesn't really mean that you will have to have a classroom
trainings or workshops all the time and that what will take all of your time during the day
no but you might need to do some of those teaching moments at different points
for example you might need to spend some time at the beginning of a sprint planning or a sprint
review to remind everyone why we're here what is the purpose right that might include some
preparation that you need to do based on the kind of people you have in the meeting or maybe
it is something that you do afterwards with some of your team members for example if you're working
with your product owner helping them organize the product backlog actually finding new techniques
and teaching them how to use those techniques and if you're not really sure about a particular topic
that you want to teach the team well you need to do some research and that might take a lot of time
hours maybe full days because when you come to the team and try to explain something or teach them
something well you need to understand it yourself because otherwise you might actually teach
something wrong or give the wrong message overall that is not going to be helpful for the team
then of course we're talking about coaching well coaching is about asking questions and asking the
right questions so that you can guide people towards their own solutions without actually
giving out the solution and it might mean that you need to attend an hour-long meeting
that you have nothing to say in order to just ask one question at the very end
one important question that will help drive the discussion in the right direction you only
ask one question but in the end you still need to be there so that you can observe and listen
before you can actually intervene and help the team on the organization understand what they
should be doing to improve guiding someone towards the right solution takes more time and effort than
just giving them the solution of course and that's where you might be spending a lot of your time
don't also forget the fact that teaching really comes in through repetition right
we teach one thing and then we need to teach it again maybe find a different approach to
teaching it and explaining it so that people over time can actually understand and implement it
and that might once again be something that you need to work on well of course as a scrum master
you might not have the authority to make some of those decisions or changes that can actually help
the organization and the team succeed so what do you do well you need to rely on other people in
the organization to help you so that means that you need to build strong relationships not only
with people on your team but with everyone else executives management as well as other teams or
decision makers that might impact the work of your team this might include things like maybe
get involved with different projects or talking to other teams and understanding their processes
and helping them so that they can see the value that you bring and in the end start promoting you
in the organization that is how you can spread your influence so building relationships is an
important part of your job and something that you need to work on every day that might need you to
really spread thing to work with other teams and other projects overall so you can gain
a bit more visibility in the organization that is an important part that might take time might
take a lot of planning and really figuring out how you can approach the right people in the right way
and how can you actually help them because this is the way you show your value and this is the
way that will help you get more influence and bring more change in the organic organization
if you want to learn more about the daily tasks of a scrum master and need a little bit more guidance
i have a few free resources that you can find on my website at scrummaster.com one of them
is the action plan it's a free downloadable that explains different different categories of things
that you can do on a daily basis that can help you bring change to the organization and the team but
also work on your own skills and actually personal develop development the other one is an email
course action week so this is where i'm sending you an email for a week with a clear action plan
for the day with a clear topic and some specific actions that you can take on a daily basis and
then repeating it again next day and really giving you a lot of guidance on how you can improve
on very important topics of scrum mastery i hope you learned something new today and if you did
give this video a thumbs up and subscribe to this youtube channel also check out my website at
there are a lot of other resources there blog posts and other free downloadables that can be
very helpful in your journey and that is it i hope to see you next time cheers and scrum on