Scrum Masters who are new to the role often wonder how a Scrum Master is supposed to spend their time.
The problem gets compounded when you are transitioning from a Developer Role. As a Developer, you have a list of items (Sprint Backlog or Product Backlog) from which you can pick and start working. On the other for a Scrum Master, you must constantly explore and figure out what you can do to make the team more effective.
Let us go through what activities a Scrum Master will perform during the day.
This Blog post will help you plan your day.
Please let us know in the comments if we need to include any activity.
Daily activities of a Scrum Master
As a Scrum Master, you serve the Scrum Team, the Product Owner, and the Organisation.
Therefore your activities must touch all three. A good reflection exercise is to check what activity you did for each of these during the day. For example, if you couldn’t find an activity for a Product Owner, a good question is, “Am I neglecting to serve the Product Owner?”.
- Your morning will start with casual conversations with team members. The conversations typically involve greeting and checking with team members about what’s happening in their lives and family. Overall this is how you get to know your team members better.
- Post the above conversations; you get to attend the Daily Scrum.
- Based on your observations and impediments shared by the Developers, you prepare a plan on which team members you wish to engage during the day and for how long. The planning will also involve scheduling problem-solving sessions.
- You might have blocked some time to prepare for forthcoming training, which you would have planned for the teams based on your team’s training needs.
- A good tip is to ensure that your training covers different aspects of Scrum, Lean Thinking, Flow Practices, etc.
- You should also prepare the Facilitation plan for the upcoming Scrum events.
- Your day will also include scheduled one-on-one Coaching Conversations with a Developer or a Product Owner.
- Your day could also include a one-on-one conversation with leaders. Remember, as a Scrum Master, you also serve the organisation.
- Depending upon the stage where your team is in their Agile Journey, you might have to facilitate many Scrum Events to ensure that the developer and product owner are learning from you.
- Many times a Scrum Master is asked to support another team which has just started adopting Scrum. In this situation, your calendar will have you facilitating many of this team’s Scrum events to ensure that things are running smoothly. The idea is that the new Scrum Team can drive these events themselves after a month or so.
- Your day also includes facilitating meetings across different teams to discuss dependency management or lessons learned.
- Don’t forget to include some time for reflection where you are jotting down your observations on different individuals, their behaviours, taking notes on the system’s voice, etc.
- Depending upon the culture and structure of your organisation, you might have to prepare reports to present team progress, impediments faced by the team, and request for help from the team at various executive forums.
- If your organisation has adopted an Agile Maturity assessment tool, then you have to plan for activities related to assessing the Scrum Team’s and organisation’s maturity. Once again, the idea is to coach the Scrum Team towards higher maturity levels.
- You will also have to work with businesses to coach them on Scrum and Agile ways of working. The work will involve spending time with the product owner and their colleagues from the business side.
- Scrum Team is also responsible for experimentation. As a Scrum Master, you might have to spend time mentoring them on experimentation. For example, are the teams doing any experiments, do their experiments have a clear hypothesis, etc.?
The above list is by no means exhaustive.
A Scrum Master day is very dynamic. As a Scrum Master, you must ensure that your day is guided by making the team effective and serving all three – Scrum Team, Product Owner, and Organisation.
An excellent reference that talks about the list of thing that a Scrum Master must focus on is The Scrum Master checklist (https://scrummasterchecklist.org/
). We intend to cover the above in a separate blog.
Do let us know what activities you do as a Scrum Master in the comment section.
Scrum Masters who are new to the role often wonder how a Scrum Master is supposed to spend their time.
The problem gets compounded when you are transitioning from a Developer Role. As a Developer, you have a list of items (Sprint Backlog or Product Backlog) from which you can pick and start working. On the other for a Scrum Master, you must constantly explore and figure out what you can do to make the team more effective.
Let us go through what activities a Scrum Master will perform during the day.
This Blog post will help you plan your day.
Please let us know in the comments if we need to include any activity.
Daily activities of a Scrum Master
As a Scrum Master, you serve the Scrum Team, the Product Owner, and the Organisation.
Therefore your activities must touch all three. A good reflection exercise is to check what activity you did for each of these during the day. For example, if you couldn’t find an activity for a Product Owner, a good question is, “Am I neglecting to serve the Product Owner?”.
- Your morning will start with casual conversations with team members. The conversations typically involve greeting and checking with team members about what’s happening in their lives and family. Overall this is how you get to know your team members better.
- Post the above conversations; you get to attend the Daily Scrum.
- Based on your observations and impediments shared by the Developers, you prepare a plan on which team members you wish to engage during the day and for how long. The planning will also involve scheduling problem-solving sessions.
- You might have blocked some time to prepare for forthcoming training, which you would have planned for the teams based on your team’s training needs.
- A good tip is to ensure that your training covers different aspects of Scrum, Lean Thinking, Flow Practices, etc.
- You should also prepare the Facilitation plan for the upcoming Scrum events.
- Your day will also include scheduled one-on-one Coaching Conversations with a Developer or a Product Owner.
- Your day could also include a one-on-one conversation with leaders. Remember, as a Scrum Master, you also serve the organisation.
- Depending upon the stage where your team is in their Agile Journey, you might have to facilitate many Scrum Events to ensure that the developer and product owner are learning from you.
- Many times a Scrum Master is asked to support another team which has just started adopting Scrum. In this situation, your calendar will have you facilitating many of this team’s Scrum events to ensure that things are running smoothly. The idea is that the new Scrum Team can drive these events themselves after a month or so.
- Your day also includes facilitating meetings across different teams to discuss dependency management or lessons learned.
- Don’t forget to include some time for reflection where you are jotting down your observations on different individuals, their behaviours, taking notes on the system’s voice, etc.
- Depending upon the culture and structure of your organisation, you might have to prepare reports to present team progress, impediments faced by the team, and request for help from the team at various executive forums.
- If your organisation has adopted an Agile Maturity assessment tool, then you have to plan for activities related to assessing the Scrum Team’s and organisation’s maturity. Once again, the idea is to coach the Scrum Team towards higher maturity levels.
- You will also have to work with businesses to coach them on Scrum and Agile ways of working. The work will involve spending time with the product owner and their colleagues from the business side.
- Scrum Team is also responsible for experimentation. As a Scrum Master, you might have to spend time mentoring them on experimentation. For example, are the teams doing any experiments, do their experiments have a clear hypothesis, etc.?
The above list is by no means exhaustive.
A Scrum Master day is very dynamic. As a Scrum Master, you must ensure that your day is guided by making the team effective and serving all three – Scrum Team, Product Owner, and Organisation.
An excellent reference that talks about the list of thing that a Scrum Master must focus on is The Scrum Master checklist (https://scrummasterchecklist.org/
). We intend to cover the above in a separate blog.
Do let us know what activities you do as a Scrum Master in the comment section.
