It is easy to focus only on the team.
The stand-ups.
The backlog.
The sprint plan.
But most of the problems a team faces do not start inside the team.
They come from the system around it.
Continue reading A new Scrum Master’s first job – understand the system before changing itOne 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
