I’ve had the privilege of working as a scrum master as well as working with many experienced scrum masters over the years. And during I’ve noticed that managing your team while coaching them on Agile best practices can be difficult and challenging. Now as an Agile Coach, the common question that I hear is “How can I become an awesome scrum master?” I want to provide some insight on this based off my previous experiences.

 

 An Awesome Scrum Master is a Servant Leader

Being a scrum master isn’t just about facilitation of ceremonies, managing progress, and reporting Agile metrics. A great scum master is interested and invested in the teams personal and professional success as well. They will put the team first while empowering them to innovate and improve relentlessly everywhere.

 

An Awesome Scrum Master is more influential than directive

 Every practice has a process, however how you enforce them will be the differentiator between being an Agile Coach versus the Agile Police. Be sure to gain the team’s alignment on the value behind the agile concepts before trying to implement them. You don’t want to end up like this guy.

An Awesome Scrum Master understands the ART of Creativity

It’s well known for those who operate in an agile environment that its important for the Scrum Master to facilitate. However, a problem that can arise for this when you look at how constant reoccurring ceremonies tend to become repetitive and boring.  Therefore, the Scrum Masters must be familiar with techniques to make these more interesting and fun. Gamification is a great technique as it uses the concepts of game thinking and game mechanics to engage the people in planning, Sizing, retrospectives, and problem solving.  Below are some links to some great Gamification ideas:

 

Retrospective Gamification

Planning Poker (Online)

White Elephant Sizing