On Becoming A Scrum Master

This week I became a Scrum Master I was in fact, certified, through training conducted by the amazingly talented, wise and committed Agile consultant, Tobias Mayer and improv artist and trainer, Matt Smith.

A heady notion to refer to oneself as a master. I keep seeing an image of Yoda... "Master Lucy, Don't try, only do"

What is scrum? Scrum is a systems approach to product development. The term, scrum comes from the game of rugby. By systems, I mean it is based on several foundations of organizational systems change - a sort of change management on steroids that is applied to agile software development. In fact scrum can be applied to all kinds of complex creative work.

The scrum approach reflects at least two elements associated with organizational systems change: team and wholeness.

Scrum is a team-based approach to product development in which:

• all members of the team are valued equally
  
• all team members learn to demonstrate individual and team leadership
  
• all team members are responsible to learn from iterative products development cycles and from each other.

Wholeness is realized in three ways:

1. Greater than the sum of its parts. All members of the team are accountable to each other, rather than to a positional leader.
   
2. Work collaboratively to tackle tough design issues and in so doing exchange skills and knowledge thereby building the team's overall adapt and adjust to forces outside its control.
3. Focus vigilance, while building the product in small iterative increments helps to manage complexity of design, the team should never loses site of the larger vision of the outcome and quality that delivers value to its customers/clients.
   

Scrum demands more of everyone in an organization, not just its team members.

It demands more of product stakeholders because they are actively involved in the process of product and quality acceptance prior to deployment. It requires more of organizational management because scrum surfaces patterns of team and organizational dysfunct and provides opportunities for systemic change.

Scrum, when truly practiced according to its principles, demands much, and in return, it delivers products that meet customer expectations faster, with fewer defects and a a side effect that may be even more valuable that the product itself - a higher performing organization. Primarily used to manage the creative work of software and product development, scrum is capable of simultaneously creating organizational change.

The Myth of Scrum Master:

The scrum master replaces the role of a traditional project manager in software development, yet great scrum masters are not masters because they have been trained and certified. They are masters because they never forget that they are always becoming better masters. They are courageous and invite enough disruption to motivate without overwhelming. They are able to bring out leadership behaviors in others by allowing them to learn and think critically.

One becomes a scrum master by developing practicing the use of the scrum tools, personal mastery and holding a space for organizations to practice supporting scrum with abandon. It is the scrum masters job to educate the organization on the process and its value throughout a project.

Going through scrum master certification was a valuable experience for me, in spite of graduate degree in organizational systems change and years of consulting experience. Organizational change methods look simple but really require the same kind of mastery previously mentioned. Scrum is a concrete application of systems change that can be adapted to deliver real value in my life and profession.

So...with humility I offer Yoda and those who wish to master scrum, be they product owners, certified scrum masters, or part of the development team, “Don’t try, only practice doing, learn and then do some more.”

For more on scrum certification.