Remember that Scrum is founded on empirical process control, and that inspection is one of the three pillars.
Each of the Scrum accountabilities participates in one or more inspections. If you feel that there are undesired variances for any aspect of your initiative, think about who could best initiate an inspection.
Inspection is about detecting undesirable variances in progressing towards agreed goals.
So how about the Scrum Master in the Scrum Team.
As part of the Scrum Team, the Scrum Master is collaborating with the team in all aspects of inspection. Yet his/her focus is not the same. The Scrum Master is looking for opportunities to improve the professional use of the Scrum framework in order to raise the effectiveness of the Scrum Team. And this can come from within the team or outside the team.
The Scrum Master can ask a lot of questions for this. Some examples include
- Is the Scrum Team delivering a Done Increment each Sprint providing value to the market?
- Does the Scrum Team have all skills needed?
- Does it have enough mandate to decide how to do their work?
- Does the Scrum Team live the Scrum Values?
- Does the team apply feedback cycles as short as needed? On the product, tools, process, collaborations, etc. And do they involve the right stakeholders for this?
- Do they act on potential improvements?
Every Scrum Event can be used for this. Every day brings opportunities to watch out for possible undesired variances in the professional use of Scrum.
Summary:
The Scrum Master takes active part in detecting undesired variances in the professional use of the Scrum framework, and in detecting undesired variances in the effectiveness of the Scrum Team.
Prompt:
Together with the Scrum Team
- Clarify the different goals: Product, Sprint, Definition of Done, and effectiveness.
- Inspect the current status for undesired variances.
- Evaluate what improvements can be made to close these gaps.
I hope you find value in these short posts and if you are looking for more clarifications, feel free to take contact.
If you want to take a deeper dive into the core concepts we are covering in this blog series, then surely check out our Professional Scrum Master workshop. We have some scheduled in the coming period.
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