Scrum Master is one of the accountabilities of Scrum Team. Scrum Master’s primary focus areas include: facilitation, coaching, mentoring, help in impediments removal, helps team to be self-managing and cross-functional, enables transparency and collaboration, teaching Scrum and so on. Primarily Scrum Master “improves the ability to improve” for the Developers, Product Owner and the Organization.
Scrum Master day schedule may not be predefined just like a sports coach day schedule. It varies day to day based on the factors like team maturity, organizational maturity, support from the management, level of agility, and so on. This article helps you understand a typical day in the life of a Scrum Master based on the day of the Sprint.
Sprint Planning Day (First day):
- Help facilitate the Sprint Planning keeping it effective and timeboxed
- Help Product Owner and Developers to create a Business Value based Sprint Goal
- Helps Product Owner in Backlog items to be ready and teach prioritization (if required)
- Help Developers to decide the capacity available for the Sprint
- Help Developers to decide how much work can be pulled into the Sprint Backlog
- Help Developers to breakdown the PBIs into small tasks
- Facilitate discussion between Product Owner and Developers to achieve consensus
During the Sprint (After the Sprint Planning and before Sprint Review and Retrospective day):
- Daily Scrum facilitation (Scrum Master is optional for Daily Scrum as per Scrum Guide) but depends on the team’s maturity Scrum Master can help in facilitating to keep it timeboxed, help them with some effective structures
- Help Developers in Organizational/Global/Systemic impediments
- Coach the Product Owner for effective Product Backlog management
- Coach Developers (one-on-one or team) for effective collaboration, communication
- Facilitate Product Backlog refinement to keep few items ready for the upcoming Sprint
- Looking into Sprint level and Overall level progress and help the Developers and Product Owner to address any issues
- Ensures Product Owner is available to the Developers as and when it is required
- Check the health of the Product BAcklog
- Helps Developers to keep Sprint progress (Burndown/Burnup charts) and Sprint Backlog up to date
- Closely observe the Processes, Tools, Practices used by the Scrum Team to find any improvements possible
- Help Developers with any inter team coordination support so that the Developers can focus on the Sprint work
- Attending any Organizational level meetings
- Help Product Owner and Developers to come up with Scope renegotiation in case any unforeseen situations happen during the Sprint
- Helps Developers and the Product Owner with any tool related issues (like JIRA access issues, permissions, training)
- Conduct training to the Developers (based on the need)
- Resolve conflicts within the Developers or between the Product Owner and Developers
- Meeting with other Scrum Masters of the Organization to learn and share some good practices
- Help to provide any information requested by Management
- Self development activities like reading Scrum related books/Blogs or attending webinars/meetups
Last day (Sprint Review and Sprint Retrospective day):
Sprint Review:
- Facilitation support to make the event timeboxed and everyone participates and contributes
- Encourage collaboration with Stakeholders with open and constructive feedback
- Promotes and ensures transparency by encouraging Developers and Product Owner to update what is done and what is not done
- Helps Product Owner in gathering the feedback
- Ensures all the participants focus on inspecting the increment and provide most useful feedback to improve the increment in future
- Creates psychology safety for the Developers
- Ensures all the conversations will be focused on value, outcomes rather than just output focused
Sprint Retrospective:
- Before coming to the Sprint REtrospective, the Scrum Master has to get all the data related to the Sprint and prepare a one or two slides infographic that reflects the current Sprint information (includes: Sprint goal, what items were selected, what were done, what were not done, available capacity, utilized capacity, impediments open date and closed date, any unplanned items that were added to Sprint backlog etc)
- Ensures the meeting is timeboxed and everyone contributes with their inputs
- Facilitates using any technique (like Speedboat, Hot air balloon, 4L model etc)
- Ensures the meeting is safe, open and constructive discussion based
- Ensures the discussion is not only to focus on the things that went well, but also focus on the things to be improved by the team
- Makes sure the discussions will not be focused on personal blaming
- Help the Scrum Team to do root cause analysis for severe problems using techniques like “Fish bone diagram”
- Help Developers and the Product Owner to Identify any internal knowledge transfer sessions or external training needs
- Help Developers and Product Owner to identify at least 2 to 3 actionable improvements and they commit to implement those improvements
Conclusion: Overall the Scrum Master’s time will be spent during the Sprint in a very dynamic way focusing on: facilitation, coaching, training, helping the Developers and the Product Owner wherever they need support and resolving impediments and many other areas. Most of them are to ensure the Scrum Team is self-managing, cross-functional and focusing on value delivery through collaborative, trust and transparent environment. The more maturity the team gains, the focus of the Scrum Master will shaft from team level to Organization level.
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