Iteration 2 presented at the Melbourne Agile and Scrum User Group - July 23, 2018
In many organisations, ScrumMaster is seen as just a team facilitator and played part-time by an already busy team member. If there are full-time ScrumMasters, in many organisations they are rendered ineffective as change agents and capability builders. Their capacity is filled by a heavy load of co-ordination, stakeholder meetings, progress tracking and other project management tasks have been left to ScrumMasters in the absence of a project manager or the implementation of effective Scrum alternatives.
Many organisations continue to creating conflicts of interest by combining ScrumMaster and Project Manager into the one role. Or undermine the Development Team and Product Owner roles by attempting to blend ScrumMaster with a Delivery Manager role. Or they just get rid of ScrumMasters altogether have a sparse scattering of seagull “Agile Coaches”. Why? …well Spotify!
Are any of these wise moves?
At the heart of this appears to be a fundamental misunderstanding of what the ScrumMaster role is all about. Also a failure for ScrumMasters to explain their role in the context of the new mindset and demonstrate its worth to teams, Product Owners, management and other stakeholders.
In this interactive session, we explore what the ScrumMaster role really encompasses. We look at ways in which it is a lot more substantive and potentially impactful that many people realise. Ways in which a good ScrumMaster acts as a human mirror, shortens feedback loops, brings reality to bare, catalyses change, models behaviour, teaches people skills, cultivates culture, manages conflict, builds team performance, leads product thinking, builds product ownership capability, teaches other managers Lean, Agile and Systems Thinking plus “higher consciousness” leadership skills, provides mentoring to individuals, helps reveal the organisation’s dynamics to itself, advocates for impediment removal and helps all around them to better solve their own problems. All of this from a post-heroic and situationally appropriate leadership stance, being committed to the value creation gemba, to long term capability growth and optimising the whole. Just a meeting facilitator or a progress tracking secretary they are not!
When you think of all that, it’s not surprising that we’re not able to demonstrate the full impact of the ScrumMaster role – all of this takes years, if not decades to master.
You will explore what your own strengths and weaknesses are as ScrumMaster or capability growth leader and present opportunities for professional growth in these areas. You will take away specific points that you can use to explain the ScrumMaster role to colleagues as well as what the likely trade-off are when combining or replacing it with other roles.
98. #sydscrum
Advanced Certified ScrumMaster℠ is now
available in Australia!
• expand your Agile toolkit
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Focused on implementation & skills acquisition
Audience: Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches,
Iteration/Delivery Managers