How did you get your start as a Scrum Master? What helped you get your early experience and practice? Let us know in the comment. You can also leave us a question. Who know, it could end up getting answered on a future episode.
This is great advice for all Scrum Masters, regardless of how experienced we may or may not be. If we break through the saloon doors with guns blazing, we're going to alienate people and destroy and sense of connection and credibility we may have started with. Steven Covey promoted the idea of seeking first to understand, then to be understood, and this approach seems to stand up to rigour. I've found that collecting my observations and questions, and letting them stew for a while before sharing has worked well. That way there's something to show if we're called upon, and they can be discreetly die quietly if our increasing understanding renders them invalid, or answered. Those that remain give a great foundation for 1:1 catch ups with team members and stakeholders, and really help to "add threads to the tapestry" so to speak. We can see where there is alignment, and also misalignment, across team members, and also where there are consistent themes and/or perspectives that apply to specific people as well.
When I started as SM, having the mind set that this is about people, no processes or tools etc.. helped me a lot to be focus to understand real impediments, tough on issues, soft on people was key for me. I hope it helps!!
Thank you. From a dev at a new job that follows a lot of anti-Patterns esteemed by other Scrum Masters, this is helpful. And, no, IDK how long I will stay here.
This is soo helpful. “Observe” is what I would do to. Question- how do you introduce yourself as a ScrumMaster to someone? I faced this when someone introduced me as a ScrumMaster to a third person by saying “this is Anuj and he is like a project manager in agile”. :(
Thanks Todd and Ryan for this episode! As a newly certified Scrum Master, I’ve been lucky to have plenty of opportunities to play the Scrum Master role, by facilitating many team building workshops for newly formed teams in our organization and get in some great practice. I would like to ask you guys - what is one of the most effective team exercises to do to establish psychological safety? I’ve already conducted the “Stinky Fish” exercise with a team and it was very well received and now I’m looking for another one to “up the game”. I did not find anything as impressive and refreshing as the “stinky fish” after extensive googling and would love to hear from you :) thanks in advance for your time!
Hi Lynne! Glad you enjoyed this episode. We highly recommend checking out Liberating Structures (www.liberatingstructures.com/). They work great alone but become very powerful when strung together.
Hey Guys thank you for sharing your knowledge, it's helping me to crack the interviews. I have a question which is been asked frequently... What is your daily activity as a Scrum Master? Can you please let me know your thoughts
Hi Saurabh! Thank you for watching and thank you for the excellent question. We have added it to our backlog. Stay tuned to see it in an up and coming episode.
