👲🏾 🍵 🕢 Who are these people? Why do they need me? and other scrum master problems 〽️ 💆🏼 🈸

What does a scrum master feel that he knows about scrum only from a guide? How is he trying to help the team not break up and improve existing processes? An article about the difficulties that I encountered at the beginning of my journey as a samurai.

The team I came to as a QA engineer was already formed: standard processes were built, the atmosphere in the team was friendly and calm. After a year of my work, the question arose of who will replace the Scrum-master, who moved to another team. I wanted to try it. There was no experience in managing and building processes, but the soil for the start is benevolent. Why not?

Difficulties

After a week of euphoria (eee, new achivka!) A thousand and one problems fell on my head (mom, help!). Most of them are personal, banal or are decided by passing a couple of trainings. I want to share four basic difficulties that a beginner scrum master may encounter.

Lack of authority

Despite the fact that I worked in the team for a year, the role of the scrum master was new to me. To build new processes, credibility is one of the important components. When you try to change your usual practices, based only on theoretical knowledge, it is difficult to avoid skepticism on the part of the team. Even the introduction of one of the most common practices - scrum poker - was problematic for me.

The shadow of a former master

There is no escape from comparisons. If before my arrival, something worked badly, and nothing has changed after my arrival, there were requests: “We have too complicated planning, let's do something with it already!” In the case when something was convenient for the team, for example, a physical board on the daily, and after I appeared and said: “I’m uncomfortable, let's change!”, The team did not understand why this was necessary.

Another difficulty is related to communication. The previous scrum master quite acutely took feedback about his work, and it was important for me to receive feedback. As a result, the first useful feedback was only possible in a couple of months - persistence and face-to-face conversations helped. At personal meetings, some guys said that it was uncomfortable for them to criticize my work: previous experience said that hurt the feelings of the scrum master is easy, and the feedback is perceived as an insult.

Team communication

An ideal scrum master observes the mood in the team, analyzes how the processes work, and understands how the team reacts to changes. How not to confuse the indifference to the process on the part of the team with what is already working well? How to assemble an adequate feedback? Here, I clearly lacked practice. These issues were especially worried in retrospect, when at a general meeting minor issues were brought up for discussion or not raised at all. This happens if the team had a good sprint or if the problems are silent.

Volunteer syndrome

At the beginning of the journey, I want to give my best, so that the team immediately realizes how cool I am and how much I can. Why should I do less if I can do more?

Solutions

There can be no universal solution to all difficulties. Below I list the patterns of behavior that once helped me get used to a new role.

Solve problems in stages

I combined the role of a scrum master with the position of QA engineer and physically could not afford to deal only with improving the processes in the team. I tried to find a balance and, as a result, avoided serious problems from changing everything and everything in the team. The phased solution helped not only not to dig in the changes for the sake of changes, but also to monitor how a particular innovation affected the problem that was being solved initially.

I wanted to change a few things in the team. One of them was a physical board for the daily. I was too lazy to engage in its design from sprint to sprint. The situation was complicated by the fact that this problem did not affect the whole team. Another problem with the board is the reactive updating of task statuses. Since the team was in the same office, it was easy enough to find out the progress on the task - ask a colleague or look at the board. It did not cause any difficulties at that moment, but it could break the processes in case of prolonged remote work of one of the colleagues or the appearance of a remote employee.

The solution to the first problem was delegating the design of the board or switching to some electronic tool. The second is the development of a culture of maintaining order. By the way, the argument “someday this may help us” does not sufficiently motivate the team to change.

I decided to kill the physical board by replacing it with tables in Wrike, where the basic information about the task is presented quite conveniently. After some time, the statuses of tasks began to be updated every day, because the source of truth was not a board, but the tasks themselves! I did not even have to solve the second problem.

Argument for any change

No need to rush into the quarry with a cry: “Now everything will be!”. At the very beginning of the path of scrum mastery, there is a chance to make up processes for the sake of processes, this can worsen karma. First you need to understand why, and then broadcast the idea to the team.

In the situation with the rejection of the physical board, I told the team that it was difficult for me to make out, and if there was no alternative for the board, I would ask the team to share with me the responsibilities of cutting and hanging stickers.

To study the behavior of authority

You see that someone in the team successfully talks about their ideas? Do you listen to the opinion of the leader? You can observe how this person delivers information, most likely, he and the team are on the same wavelength. It is also important to tune in to this wave.

The soul of our team was a product manager. The importance and necessity of the features on which he proposed to work, the team shared. And the point is not only that these were obviously necessary and important changes. The manager argued for the proposal, highlighted the advantages, clarified - this helped to realize and accept the new task.

Find like-minded people

One head is good, and have a hundred friends. A collective mind is fine, but not all issues can be brought up for team discussion. You can find one / two caring colleagues and consult with them. But different team members have skills in different aspects of the work, so it’s better not to focus on a pair of advisers. Expand your social circle.

For new ideas regarding processes, I turned to the product manager. Sharp angles and problems helped me find a testing engineer. The result was a pleasant and proven solution.

The necessary experience for the scrum master will help you get books, trainings and practice. But the number of tips goes through the roof, and even prioritizing tips in order of necessity causes difficulties. Awareness of complexities is a step in the right direction towards maintaining and building processes.

What's next?

Now that the chaos is streamlined, you can think about working on specific skills and tasks.

Scrum

Know the scrum methodology (principles, values, roles, artifacts)
Help in the formation of backlog
Organize the work of the scrum team (iterative and incremental process, team events)
Help the team reflect on and work on improving processes (for example, using retrospectives)
Be able to facilitate meetings

Management

Help with team planning
Organize team work according to sprint goals
Assist in prioritizing tasks, ensure transparency of priorities
Identify team work issues
Responsible for scrum artifacts and team tools: backlog, meetings, discussions

Personality skills

Recognize and control your own emotions
Be responsible for the result.
To be proactive and independent in the organization of work

There can be more directions of development, I have identified only those that I had to pay attention to right after the work got into the usual way. My list of problems that scrum masters overtake in the early stages is far from complete. It would be interesting to know what problems you had to solve.

Who are these people? Why do they need me? and other scrum master problems