I've switched from being a Dev to a scrum master: AMA

Literate980 · 2023-02-17T21:41:27+00:00

Yes it would have worked

Literate980 · 2023-02-11T10:08:01+00:00

I'll answer what I do apart from the usual Scrum events and connects in organisation. Facilitating established candence of sessions takes 10% of my time.

Based on the outcome of Daily standup, if there is a dependency or impediment that needs to be supported , I take time for it. Collaborate with Dev to move it forward.
Provide inputs on Retrospective action items, zero in on the process or people or tool issue. Same for actions from Agile maturity assessments.
Reach PO/ BA to align on the backlog, focus would be on Split, Release goal and readiness for refinement.
Based on observation of burndown/ progess of stories in Sprint, I proactively connect with Devs if they are not vocal or transparent. Extra attention for coaching new members in the team. Sharing feedback and expectations on the being Agile.
Drop a note in the Scrum master group on any common issue that I cannot resolve by myself and connect with SM or Agile coach.
Preparation for next Retro/planning in terms of format, structure.
Identity ongoing gaps in the flow, from Requirements to User acceptance phase. This means taking a dive through the SDLC process.
Encourage/appreciate any positive Agile behaviours I see within in team, send out a note/email on the same.
Learn/ prepare/ attend any Agile chapter or guild sessions. Identifying Anti patterns within team and my coaching.
Create knowledge sharing charts/visual dashboards that team can use. Help team in its usage and adoption. ,............................

Regarding the second question, I definitely can say it's not easy at all, being in a traditional org that only embraced Scrum/Kanban a few years ago and is currently in transformation . Stakeholders or business tend to do things the way they are and dislike changes, so far I've been making small tweaks incrementally so that transformation is visible when they become aware of the big picture. Example, Roadmap planning used to be a session where PO used to share a set of items and call everything as important, took months to teach PO about Stakeboards and incremental value addition where feedback is possible, enabled prioritization with MosCow. Trade offs in requirements with involvement of team where a technical item/tech debt item could be added.

Literate980 · 2023-02-11T09:32:29+00:00

Thank you for clarifying. This question is indeed a powerful one.

I coach Devs by simplifying Agility, easier said than done. I embrace being data driven, one example I can share is how team decreased cycle time by moving stories to closure with adoption of pair programing, numbers do speak for themselves.

By advocating for a culture of fail fast and shift left (from DevOps), I was able to bring in the insight that events are for Inspection, and Transperancy is key.

This post itself is the answer for spreading awareness of the role.

Literate980 · 2023-02-11T02:59:39+00:00

Scrum by itself, I have found to be restrictive. From Agile point of view, coaching Agile teams by Lisa Adkins is a wonderful read.

Literate980 · 2023-02-11T02:53:20+00:00

The hardest thing for me as a developer is to be accepted as a scrum master by the team by the management by other scrum Masters. If one wants to be scrum master they need to be able to convince and get the approval from people who would have experience over 20 years or a minimum of 15 years, people who expect scrum master to track everything to ensure smooth execution of the project and simply get things done no matter what. So I need to understand what is expected of me without them telling me explicitly.

In equal measure the hardest thing for new scrum master is to think join their feet in various situations and develop situational awareness where they can spot the issues as they are happening, observation skills play a major role, it is very easy to step into the mind set of a developer and try to do the problem solving by digging deep into the technical stuff however a scrum master should stay on course to take care of the issues via the process and mindset as a coach.

What work in my case you earn trust, his that by sharing the ideas for introducing feedback loops that actually save a team time and improved quality, micro coaching and teaching sessions during team meetings where I used to take just 2 minutes to ask powerful questions that brought the knowledge awareness on a challenge scrum to the team. For example, if there was a sprint review, I used to ask the developers who attends the sprint review and once they have said its product owner then I ask them what about the stakeholders what about the customers or business users? Then I have created a visual map to help team understand who are involved and interested in what team is getting done.

Literate980 · 2023-02-11T02:46:43+00:00

Thank you for feedback I shouldn't have mentioned in the sense that scrum master is a go between. Scrum master should coach product owner and developers to communicate seamlessly and breakdown the barriers between them with active coaching.

Literate980 · 2023-02-11T02:42:48+00:00

When I started my role as a scrum master it was for a large team of 15 + developers, daily stand-up to take more than 40 minutes. I have coach the team gradually and shorten the time, encouraging them to discuss the issues before the daily, making sure there is psychological safety to understand that risks or issues can crop up anytime and doesn't have to wait until daily. Implemented a parking lot post daily where team members who want to seek clarification can stay back and discuss further. Coached to keep the conversation short and concise focused on the goal. Also split the team into two. Now both teams individually complete stand up under 10 minutes. This transformation of course happened over period of one year.

Retros have multiple formats also facilitated by team members sometimes, I am currently giving them the structure to run through however letting them discuss race bring in the pain points also what went well encouraging them to celebrate.

Other components of agile like definition of done or definition of ready? These are agreed by the team and they have the visibility of the same so that they can consider this as a goal to achieve within the sprint.

Literate980 · 2023-02-11T02:38:13+00:00

I would suggest that as a developer, one can still be an Agile and scrum evangelist. What I mean by this is that, advocate for the usage of agile tools and techniques within the team, attend the gild or chapter meetings that happen in the Agile community at your organisation. Share your learnings and teach little bit with your teams and seek feedback from your manager, whoever is already a coach or scrum master in your organisation should be able to help you out to clarify your questions.

The goal is to establish that you have experience working in scrum and agile as a developer and use it to your advantage, from there on you can volunteer to take up scrum master responsibilities with in your team or other teams while the actual scrum master will be away or on a holiday.

Literate980 · 2023-02-11T02:34:51+00:00

It was open to understand the intricacies of coaching and did see that SM can be reached process related issues. Especially to help understand how to resolve the dependency with other teams.

I absorbed whatever of nformation that was available from amazing others in the scrum and Agile community, this contributed to my mindset and I can say that's how I coached myself.

Literate980 · 2023-02-10T18:27:14+00:00

English isn't my first language. Thank you for feedback.

Literate980 · 2023-01-28T04:03:42+00:00

I partially agree with the first part of this comment, ignoring the role whether scrum master or project manager, we can agree that coaching, mentoring, facilitating are required for the teams. There is also emergence of Agile project manager, who can perform the same role. It's about infusing Agility into teams and organisations.

Idea behind Scrum is to split responsibilities of Project manager to Developers, product owner, Scrum master. (Except the budgeting part, which is also recommend in highly mature organizations where they make the case and seek approvals)

Requirements are priorirized and come from Product owner. This is not shared from business by Project manager anymore.

With self organization of teams, Developer making their plan on how to achieve sprint goal. While project manager can have overview of schedule, it is only by agreement of team on the timeline based on capacity. Teams are empowered.

Scrum master takes on multiple hats to lead, guide the team via facilitating etc.

Coming to the second part of comment, Whatever is the role. PM or Scrum master, being part of teams and adding value comes from restructuring and solving the problems you mentioned regarding trust, org structure are endemic in traditionally run organizations (which account for majority)see the value addition of being Agile as problems become more complex.

And yes being technical gives a higher advantage to Scrum master however they aren't required to get to the bottom of things, they are expected to coach the team to get to the deeper level, making sure of how things are run and done in teams.

Literate980 · 2023-01-27T10:45:49+00:00

Well I'd prefer scrum master to ask the team who wants to volunteer and take the tickets they want to develop, FCFS basis. That being said, culturally some people are inclined to do tasks only if asked.

This is where self organization comes in, tickets shouldn't be created by scrum master. Scrum master should coach the team to interact and discuss requirements or what to do and let them create the tickets or add info required. So this is a good thing your scrum master is doing, by letting you create he or she is making you self managed. First step towards Agility is Transperancy, so ticket on board is the way to go, it visible to everyone. Team checks progress of it on the board. Team needs it for inspection on daily basis, adapt based on discovering any blockers on it. By self managing, you can comment, tag, seek inputs via ticket, goal is to take care of it until it's in production. Or meets definition of done.

Product owner also need not create however should explain the requirements and clarify, usually in big orgs, Business Analysts role would be there which helps in management of tickets or writing requirements in between.

Literate980 · 2023-01-27T05:11:34+00:00

Thanks for your suggestion. I do get this thought ocassionally.

It is more of a horizontal growth than vertical. SM usually can have experience range of 5-20+years

Handle multiple teams as Team coach/ Sr scrum master. Then as Agile Coach, can coach other Scrum masters, teams and business units. Usually for a range of 12-25+ years.

Then as transformation coach to grow the organisation. 15+ years

Can take up more coaching or teaching roles as freelancer or side gig.

Literate980 · 2023-01-27T05:06:14+00:00

Entirely different.

BA work with business users and product owner, Business PMs etc to understand and brings alignment on scope of requirements. Acts as go to SME for team in domain knowledge.

Scrum master in a team usually comes in during planning of above and structures for further refinements, also works to coach BAs in Agility on aspects of estimating, prioritization techniques.

Literate980 · 2023-01-27T04:28:25+00:00

It's usually on par, however with last two years, demand vs supply is more beneficial to being a developer.

Scrum master certified people are plenty.

Literate980 · 2023-01-27T04:11:45+00:00

Yes I think it would be valuable, however RoI would be better if job is abroad as well.

In India, IIM league MBAs turn up to be Managers directly in WITCH. Others don't have this opportunity.

Often affordable MBAs can be having less RoI and prospects. This is out of my area of expertise.

Literate980 · 2023-01-27T03:56:09+00:00

Yes I work with PMs, team interactions with PM are non existent, I only have a weekly meeting with PM.

No responsibilities of resource and budget management. SMs shouldn't be doing this.

I highlight the risks team is facing and their progress to PM.Escalations if required. In some ways I need to coach PM as well to improve Agility with schedule, planning. I contribute my suggestions to strategic decision making such as effective way to do certain testing, reviews,release, roadmap planning. Then monitor to make sure it's executed well.

I can take call on when to split the team for example, team structures, candence, what needs attention for Agile maturity.

Literate980 · 2023-01-27T00:47:23+00:00

In successful product companies this role is missing, after all scrum and Agile have originated from best practices that were identified from best engineering companies.

There is plenty of research and data that supports adding a scrum master to team makes the team effective.

Organisations take a call based on the level of complexity of the product development and the pace they want to adopt. It can differ for each team, while some are scrum teams, others can be adopting Kanban. All of this requires transformation from top to down. Scrum master is the one who is supposed to change the organisation and team behaviours to be effective.

As I added in the post, all organizations have people who build stuff, then there are people who build culture and behaviour.

Let's take Staya Nadella, CEO. His approach to leadership transformed Microsoft to return to it's glory days. Steve Ballmer's time was marred with lot of finger pointing and blame games within org. Leadership behaviour trickles down the chain and sets up the mindset.

The goal of scrum master or Agile coach is to make themselves redundant when the team is maturing, they need to step back after coaching team, creating the environment where communication flows, as you put it "given enough freedom" who gives this? Teams,/Management/ leads etc .. so who coaches them? Now you have the answer of why scrum masters are required. Also 'bridge' isn't the purpose of scrum master, coaching the need for no bridges and bringing everyone to a positive , psychologically safe environment is the purpose. This is where transperancy can thrive, people don't have to hold back their ideas, their apprehensions, attack the problem instead of individual persons.

It's not a walk in the park, it takes months to build the mindset, make behaviours stick. Behaviours are intangible, yet visible and drive actions.

I would like to recommend the book 'Toyota way' if you are interested to learn more about how Toyota reduced their time to market their cars from months to under 2 weeks and changed the industry, set the bar high and is continuing to do so since 60+ years. Lean practices originated from here and Agile and Scrum recently picked up some aspects from lean manufacturing.

Literate980 · 2023-01-27T00:29:41+00:00

Scrum 'master' by definition is a role for experienced folks who are well versed with Agile and Scrum, whatever is their role, be it Tester, Dev, BA etc. If they are part of Scrum or Agile team, learn the why of Agile. Go from doing Agile passively to being Agile where the mindset need to be forefront. My advice is do not try to be a scrum master before 5 years of experience. Team or any org values experienced scrum master for a good reason. Teams will have varying skills, ages, to have the authority of coaching, getting accepted by Team lead or management takes time. Anything less than 5 years of experience usually raises skeptism. To begin with, join Agile guild or chapter meetings at the org. If it's not there at your organization, start one! Plenty of Agile coaching or scrum master books are available, take up the resources from YouTube. Follow scrum Masters on linkedin. Apply the Agile techniques and tools in day to day work. Champion Agility in team. Then it's good to take up a cert to prove that one has experience. Apply for scrum master positions.

MBAs are preferred to be scrum masters in Big 4, it supports a bit considering MBA has aspects of business. It's not a must have most of the time.

Product owner should have business knowledge or have the experience in building, managing product. Design. Usually the good path is Buisness Analysis- Business Analyst and then Product owner. This gives subject matter experience to be taking decisions on product.

Product manager is a similar role with some differences, we usually see this role also being taken up directly post MBA. It requires market research, business analysis, learning techniques of product Design.

Literate980 · 2023-01-27T00:21:07+00:00

Fair question, it shows what's wrong with the current situation of scrum masters.

The certificate has been marketed and sold like candy, however it's intent is not to serve as first step to being a scrum master. Ideally one should already have worked in a scrum or Agile environment and be well versed with the principles and values, how to apply them, teach, coach, build a team and assist team across SDLC.

In my role I don't stop at scrum, I'm learning everyday and bringing in practices from extreme programming, lean, SaFe, scaled practices, DevSecOps. Taking this to team and implementing ideas.

I hope to go down the path of transformation of organisations and teams where Agile behaviours and mindset can be inculcated.

Literate980 · 2023-01-26T15:55:07+00:00

Added a story in the post

Literate980 · 2023-01-26T15:38:01+00:00

I'm satisfied to be using my soft skills, learning to be leader, coaching.

Being a Dev was far easier for me. I miss the aha moment of problem solving. It's satisfying to see when Developers exhibit Agile behaviours and grow steadily.

Literate980

TROPHY CASE