A Scrum Master is like a coach for an Agile development team. As well explaining things like the Agile Manifesto and processes like User Stories and the product backlog, your role as the Scrum Master is to evoke a mindset change in the team to Agile behavior.

That’s why mentoring and coaching are two of your most important tasks.

Now as a leader, what is the best way to inspire this mindset shift?

Your teammates will pick up things from you, whether it’s the way you guide a meeting or praise your team members for a job well done. It has frequently been said in educational settings that children often emulate rarely demonstrating superior behavior, but even that process has the key to consistency. Doing it rarely means it becomes random behavior instead of something the children learn from. Reference: “Why do you want to be a Scrum Master?“

It is the same in your role.

So if you are set on a path as a leader to coach a team, you have to take on yourself the mindset of the people you want them to be. You may be already doing so.

For example, as a scrum master, you are responsible for holding the Daily Scrum and that is the preeminent team activity in the Scrum framework.

Show up to your Daily Scrums on time, avoid long discussions and keep things on “question time”?

If not, the team will start to take more time on the points each member brings up and you can tell yourself as much as you like how important things are and it will be in vain.

Conversely, catching yourself becoming impatient when somebody speaks for too long is a great opportunity to open a dialog about expectations for the Daily Scrum. Reference: “Reasons for using the Scrum framework for the organization’s projects“, https://customer-service-us.com/

Or for an easier case, what about asking for help?

Both delegating the responsibility to someone else and telling them how much you appreciate their assistance when you receive it are very important things to model for a team evolving into more of an Agile mindset. Encouraging your teammates to step outside of their roles, responsibilities, and comfort zones can yield great results.

If your team sees your willingness to ask for assistance, accept it, and listen to its advice, they will visit you more frequently and in return, you will be rewarded with a higher level of innovation, participation in the effective maintenance of their backlog stories, and finally, team unity.

For a larger point, look at all the items in the “Key Scrum Master Responsibilities” list. While all of these will be covered in more detail in future posts, please review them and let me know which items you feel are part of your job requirements. More on the topic: “Scrum and Kanban: Differences and Similarities“, https://www.powerhp.net/

Coaching your team is essential for them to move to a more Agile mindset because this goal requires behavioral changes as well as a learning of specific skills. This is also crucial to achieving alignment from the team toward your vision and direction, and toward this shared goal of a finished product.

The point is to maximize satisfaction from their career and work.

Now, think about that in terms of how the Agile Certification for Scrum Managers has set each training point. They are all directly related to maximizing that satisfaction and focusing on a team behavior change through proper instruction and practice.

Your attitude and your skills are the main instruments to coach your team. You’re on a very good path. The Agile Certification for
Scrum Masters course provides optional tools, techniques, and methods to describe measure, and improve your coaching skills.
Leadership: how to find the best possible leadership style
Team building: how to develop a good-performing team and how to deal with harsh conflicts
Communication: how to enhance communication processes inside and outside your team
Facilitation: engagement of your team to work during the Sprint
Team motivation and inclusiveness: how to create an environment to perform, and look for optimal team size and cohesiveness.
Interpersonal skills: understanding your structure and flexibility to respond, discuss and share your different ideas
Situation awareness: gather information, make it visible and use your feedback
Servant leaders: understanding your group roles and responsibilities during the sprint
Innovation: practicing the environmental and operational procedures that may influence your team, and finding alternatives for agile principles

Team members may be resistant to the idea of Scrum and the change this requires. Some blockers and issues can “get in the way” of the change in direction.

As stated in your certification description, you will also become a subject matter expert for Agile practices, including Scrum, and the coach for individuals and teams on process adoption. This course inevitably covers how to deal with resistance. It will be important to support your team and communicate the need for the change and its impact on the enterprise.

The Scrum Master plays a singular role in any scrum team. Part leadership consultant, part referee, as well as part teacher, the scrum master is responsible for ensuring that the scrum team continues to grow in sophistication and skill.

Management

The most important duty the scrum master performs is the facilitation of the scrum meeting.

Gather

The Scrum Master needs to obtain user stories for the team to work on and make sure the team understands what they are to deliver. This means either assigning team members to be product experts, or doing the research herself. The goal is to update the product backlog with at least 5 developmental stories.

Commit

Commitment — the most common thing that’s missing in a scrum environment. When Agile was first absorbed into the IT workforce, many managers didn’t get… well… agile. That is to say, they didn’t catch on to the idea that a team could agree to a certain number of stories one week, only to pull that back the next, might constitute an emergency in the business, and that some things might be so important that teams need to learn to change direction. And, as we saw in Chapter 1, No time for managers, some things just need to wait. Therefore, the scrum master must ensure that the scrum sprint’s priorities match the product owner’s priorities. Agreements made on these points during a sprint should be binding.

What to say during a job interview for Scrum Master?

I was one of the key members of a 3 member-team.

Scrum Master plays a facilitating role across the organization and clients. She should always be ready to deliver the team’s progress report to any interested party, including the 4 most important key stakeholders external to the project team who are end-users (s) of the project. She should also ensure the readiness of sprints.

I have assisted what the Scrum Master(SM) defined as her schedule next week that contains every member of the team. . I also helped SM improve the way to record and evaluate the progress in the sprint. She assigned me the tasks to do and to improve when she thought it was a good enough task to pick up. It was easy to work and review as each of us was in connection with each other and it also ensure the correctness and accuracy of our contributions to the group.

I have listened to the interviewee at the end of our first session.
It is what she wants us to pick and include in our project:
to add a function that enables the users to not only find the distance in a random pattern but also make him\her tell us the location of the children in each swim, and hopefully even to find out where should the children group be told before general judgment.
We did all these because we thought they made sense, worked achievable, and were outstanding given the project.

CHALLENGE:

The limiting factor is that each child will be protected by their parents, who do not want their precious child to be harmed. They can be very helpful if they support, but they may not if they are uncooperative. We could ask children to pretend an accident to check if a swimmer can be far away enough to see his/her child. But we know how sensitive and twitchy the parents of the child can be.
The challenge that I see is not only their cooperation with them but get them to support us quietly.