Getting Started as a Scrum Master
Embarking on a journey as a Scrum Master is a challenging and rewarding endeavor. As you step into this accountability within a Scrum Team, you'll find yourself at the crossroads of collaboration, leadership, and continuous improvement - a position that is necessary to deliver value effectively.
As you learn more about Scrum and the Scrum Master accountability through education and practice, your ability to facilitate effectively, navigate impediments, and empower teams will improve. So, whether you're a seasoned Scrum Master or just beginning your journey, the work ahead promises at least a chance to make a valuable impact on your organization as you help your team become more effective at delivering value.
While there are many concepts an effective Scrum Master must learn and apply over time, you will likely face the following questions soon. These are the topics we’ve addressed for you first through a series of articles and videos that contain practical ideas, tips, and activities with step-by-step guidelines that you can try immediately.
- How can I be (more) effective as a Scrum Master?
- What should I do when joining a team as a new Scrum Master?
- How do I help myself and the team build collaborative relationships?
- What are effective ways to facilitate the Scrum events?
- How can I help the Product Owner and Developers manage the Product Backlog?
- What are different ways to navigate impediments?
Consume this advice in whatever order makes sense to you. Bookmark or save and return to those articles often; you can find your saved articles in your Scrum.org profile under Saved Content.
How to be more effective as a Scrum Master
As a Scrum Master, you are accountable for the Scrum Team’s effectiveness. But what does that mean and how might you do it?
The following resources are a great first step in exploring what team effectiveness is and dives into some key Scrum Master techniques like how to enable Scrum and its purpose and how to encourage a continuous improvement mindset.
Joining a Scrum Team
As a Scrum Master joining a Scrum Team, you’ll want to get to know the team, understand their needs, challenges, goals, the organizational environment in which they work and who the stakeholders are.
The following resources offer tools to help a new Scrum Master assimilate into the team and get familiar with their new environment.
Encouraging collaboration on the Scrum Team
Working together on shared goals is a key aspect of a Scrum Team’s success. The following resources provide several techniques to help a Scrum Master promote a collaborative environment including steps on how to create a team working agreement as well as a video on how to create a team’s first Definition of Done.
Enabling effective Scrum Events
Often, Scrum events don’t go as planned. Good, lightweight facilitation can help the Scrum Teams get back on track. The following resources provide techniques for facilitating the Scrum Events as well as offering tips for Product Backlog refinement.
Dealing with Impediments
Scrum Masters should help the team learn how to address and resolve impediments. These resources offer advice on learning how to identify, create transparency around and resolve impediments.