Help new Scrum team and stakeholders understand Scrum

To me it sounds like you have a good plan.  The only advice I am going to give is to honor the Scrum framework and incrementally change things.  Don't try to come in and make it Scrum all at once. Ask the team if you can attend their Retrospectives and use the purpose of that event to start working on improvements.  Introduce one, maybe two, things at a time.  Help them realize that they are the ones making the changes instead of you directing them to do things differently. Be completely transparent about why you are suggesting what you do. Help them understand how you have seen the current and possible new behavior work out. 

I am actually going through this with a team I inherited from a Scrum Master that left our company.  They weren't "doing things wrong" but they had started to slip back into old ways and I am trying to help them come back around. The departing Scrum Master discussed this with me before they left. The team had started to see them as just another person involved and weren't really listening to their suggestions. Being the "new kid" has been good because I came in with "I view things somewhat differently and will be making suggestions on things I see that could be done differently to see if you think they make sense.  In the end you get to make the decisions. I am just offering a different perspective."  It helped a lot and they are really listening to things I suggest.  So much so that I have been able to get them to do things that the previous Scrum Master was being ignored about. 

Transparency, inspect, adapt, repeat.   

Good luck.  Come back and keep us posted on your journey.  It can help us and future others learn from your experiences. 

I am wondering if you would have some work of advice to me for such situation. Which lever to pull, where to look - be careful at what?

Are the team aware of whether or not Scrum is currently being implemented? For example:

- are they delivering “Done” product increments of release quality each and every Sprint?

- How useful are their Sprint Goals proving to be?

@Daniel thank you for sharing your view - it helps very much.

@Ian very powerful questions. Actually, you helped me slow down and change perspective. I think I was going to fast to draw conclusions and look for solutions. I will keep probing the current situation.

1. Not all the times, in general they do not deliver Done increments each and every sprint. They do manage to release once a couple of months somehow.

2. Goals are not used.

Great Discussion!

I can add few things here.  Working as Scrum Master and coach for few years now I have learned that it's very important for Scrum Master to be with their team to understand the team culture and team moral as well.  If you do not know your team's culture you can't really bulid the trust with your team.

I agree with above on taking things slow as mindset is different of the team.  we inspect and adapt every iteration and learn from it.  I like the way Daniel explained earlier how to take things at retro meeting.  I think that's very important that team understand why certain things you are suggesting are important.  

But in my opinion I don't agree with an idea of having remote scrum master.  it brings no value to the team of having Scrum master remote.

Thanks

Nayna