At some point, every Scrum Master faces this tension.
Do you enforce the process?
Or do you support the team?
It is easy to drift into becoming the process police.
But that is not where real value lies.
Continue reading Scrum Master not process police – choosing the role that actually helps teamsStarting with a new team creates pressure to act quickly.
You want to improve things.
You want to show value.
You want momentum.
But in your first month, the most effective thing you can do is often the simplest: observe before you act.
Continue reading Your first month as a Scrum Master – why observation matters more than actionStarting as a new Scrum Master can feel uncomfortable.
You arrive with responsibility but very little context. You want to add value quickly. You want the team to see that you are useful…
Over the next few Mondays I will be publishing a short series of practical posts with advice for new Scrum Masters. This is the first.
… that pressure often leads to the biggest mistake new Scrum Masters make: trying to fix the team too quickly.
Continue reading The biggest mistake new Scrum Masters make – trying to fix the team too quicklyOne of the harder parts of being a Scrum Master is this: sometimes you can see that a team needs to slow down, but managers or stakeholders want the opposite.
That is understandable.
From the outside, slowing down can look like reduced effort.
But in practice, reducing overload is often how delivery improves.
The key is not to argue for ‘slowing down’ in the abstract.
It is to help people see that too much work in progress, too many competing priorities and too much pressure to start work are often the very things that stop work from finishing.
Continue reading How to influence when slowing down is the right move
