This week Christiaan Verwijs and I facilitated a workshop at a Dutch customer in which Scrum Masters could provide a pitch for participating in "Your Scrum Master Journey".
During a 2-hour session we invited everyone to create a journey line to share the ups-and-downs of their professional career. Inspired by the format "remember the future" we encouraged the Scrum Masters to imagine the end state of this Scrum Master journey. What did they achieved? When did they left their comfort zone? Of course we needed a digital "done" increment as a result of our meetup. Therefore every Scrum Master help each other create a 1-minute video in which they shared their motivation for participating in this 6 - 12 months Scrum Master journey. The result? Lot's of laughter and learning!
Next week we'll have another round of pitches and afterwards we'll start the journey with ±12 Scrum Masters.
Your Scrum Master Journey?
So what is this "Your Scrum Master journey about? We strongly believe that Scrum Masters are in the perfect position to create an environment where Scrum (teams) can thrive. Being part of a Scrum Team, the Scrum Master knows precisely what needs to be changed and more important: why change is necessary. The Scrum Master can facilitate conversations and collaboration with other Scrum Teams. Together with other Scrum Masters (s)he can ignite the necessary organisational changes by influencing the system from the inside out. So from the perspective of the Scrum Team, the Scrum Master is the ideal change facilitator.
"The Scrum Master is the ideal change facilitator."
In the upcoming paragraph we'll describe the Scrum Master journey in a bit more detail. These are the steps we currently have in mind. Most likely however, it will change along the way, something with "inspection and adaptation"...
The Scrum Master journey in a nutshell
Within a period of 6 - 12 months we will:
- Provide a Scrum.org Professional Scrum Master course to discuss the principles, theory and techniques that are fundamental parts of the Scrum framework;
- Facilitate a workshop in which the Scrum Masters can pitch their ideas with this journey;
- Guide Scrum Masters in creating individual "ambition plans" being a Scrum Master;
- Provide monthly workshops with practical exercises to try-out afterwards. Possible topics are "The 8 stances of a Scrum Master", "services to the Development Team and Product Owner", "Coaching Teams", "Being a change agent" and "Liberating Structures";
- Encourage peer-to-peer coaching in using new techniques and practices during the Scrum events;
- Facilitate monthly Retrospectives with all Scrum Masters to discuss the progress and define improvements;
- Collaboratively create a toolkit with techniques, products and facilitation formats that Scrum Masters can use;
- Help strengthen the internal and external Scrum community by having Scrum Masters share their insights with blog posts, videos, by organising a meetup themselves or giving a presentation at a seminar;
- Organise Scrum Master safari's and visit other inspiring organisations;
- Invite the Scrum Masters to demonstrate their gained knowledge by giving the Scrum.org PSM-II assessment a try.
Closing
In this blog post we've shared our ideas on "Your Scrum Master Journey" and the first steps we've made at a Dutch customer. As the journey progresses we'll share newly gained insights with you. And yes, we're definitely standing on the "shoulders of giants" like Tobias Mayer who is also doing great stuff with his Scrum Master journey! Let's learn from each other and unleash the Scrum Master potential within every organisation, so they can create environments where Scrum (teams) can thrive!
What do you think about our idea of "Your Scrum Master Journey? We're always eager to learn more, so feel free to share your thoughts or ideas.
