Whether you are new in the role of a Scrum master, or you’ve been in for a while, sometimes you may wonder, “What should I do during the day each day? How do I live scrum every day?”

It is one of the top questions I usually get from new or transitioning scrum masters. They want to know what a typical day looks like for a scrum master and what they sign up for.

While this is a good question, most of the time, the response you get is not very explicit. They refer you to the scrum guide or self-evaluation checklists consisting primarily of questions such as: “Are your stakeholders part of your sprint reviews?

Because the scrum guide isn`t prescriptive, some Scrum masters have difficulties translating the accountabilities of the Scrum master into their own circumstances.

What does it take to figure out how to start?

First, let’s get the basics right.

What is a Scrum Master?

The scrum master is accountable/responsible for implementing Scrum as defined in the Scrum guide. As a Scrum Master, you are responsible for the efficiency of the Scrum team. Because the Scrum guide does not tell how to do it, some people come up with their interpretation.

Some Scrum Masters think they must organize all team meetings and send the report. Sometimes they act as a relay between management and the Scrum team.

As a professional Scrum trainer from scrum.org, let me guide you.

What does a Scrum Master do all day?

 Short answer: This varies from day to day.  It depends on how mature the team is or the problems they are facing at that time.

According to whether the team is young in Agility or Scrum, the focus of the Scrum Master will be centered within the team and its immediate environment. If the team is mature, most of the Scrum Master’s focus will be beyond the team.

Let’s say your team is young in Agility. Here, as a Scrum Master, you’ll have to make sure Scrum is understood and implemented according to the Scrum guide. For example, you can ensure that the daily Scrum is timeboxed to fifteen minutes and that developers focus on achieving the sprint goal.

Let us identify a few elements to guide you. Keep in mind that all these aspects may not apply to your specific environment.

1. Identify areas of improvement

As a Scrum Master, your role is to coach the team and the organization on delivering valuable and useful increments to your customer. However, jumping into it as a team without direction will be useless. That is why you’ll need to identify the most significant pain points and focus on these areas as a first step.

Set a meeting with the Scrum team and discuss. What are their biggest pain points? What is the customer or stakeholder feedback? How are the values upheld in the Scrum teams? These are examples of questions that can help you identify the areas to focus on first.

2. Research

Once you have determined the areas for improvement, you must plan how to achieve them.

Doing a lot of research is the most significant part of your Scrum Master role, so you have to be prepared and willing to do it. The same actions will bring the same results so you might want to find new ways of working.

You should research and familiarize yourself with tools and techniques. There is a lot of material that you can find on the internet. Create a network of Scrum Masters to share the tips and identify those that apply to your own context.

The Scrum guide states that the Scrum Master assists the product owner by “Helping to find strategies for setting product goals and managing the product’s backlog.

Do you know impact mapping? MoSCoW? SWOT? Story mapping? These are some of the tools you might need to learn to help your product owner.

3.Coach the team and organization

It is an important part of the Scrum Master’s job to be an effective coach.

This domain is often delegated to Agile coaches; though it is an important aspect that enables the Scrum Master to help the Scrum team.

Having short-, medium- and long-term plans of the areas you would like your team to work on, especially if they are new to Scrum and Agile is a must as a Scrum master.

You can coach your team on becoming self-managed and help them adopt the Agile mindset. Additionally, you must coach management about organizational challenges, such as helping them recognize how their interference hinders the team’s self-management.

A good way to start is to coach about the Scrum values. I usually plan a workshop where, as a team, we will identify how good or bad we are related to the Scrum values and plan actions according to these elements. These values are the foundation of the mindset and cultural change.

4.Facilitate scrum events

The role of the Scrum Master is NOT to facilitate all the Scrum events. As a Scrum master, you should only jump in here if needed. You might feel like they could be doing it better, but remember that the more you act, the less they learn.  Remember that your presence is optional.

You can follow the Scrum team in their meetings, not as a secretary or facilitator but to observe.

Here is an example of what you can do while following the team in their meetings:

identify problems and address them at the Sprint retrospective for example. Always have at the back of your mind that the goal is to help the team become self-managed.

You can equally help developers understand the importance of staying on time for the daily Scrum to raise blocking points or how to keep their focus on the Sprint goal.

5.Build relationships with your team.

In Scrum, trust and transparency are paramount. For there to be trust, there must be psychological safety.

Building a space where the Scrum values live; respect, openness, commitment, focus, and courage will be required. Organizing team outings and team-building activities, whether paid for by the company or not, can be an excellent way to start. It can be a lunch out, team coffee or drinks after work, game night, etc.

You are not the saviour or the know-it-all; discuss as a team to find ideas and build accountabilities around them, inspect, and adapt.

Building psychological safety might also imply working with HR or the organisation to improve the current context.

6.Remove impediments to progress.

An essential role of the scrum master is to work on impediments with the team.

It is your job as a Scrum Master to remove blockers, but there is significant confusion on what we call in Scrum, impediments. They are the roadblocks which impede the team’s effectiveness in building valuable and usable increments every sprint.

The first steps are to identify them. It is equally essential to determine if the blockages are beyond the ability of the team to remove them.  

Remember the Scrum Master’s role is to build a self-managing team. This means, if the Scrum team can’t do it or if the Scrum Master can’t teach them how to do it, it won’t be the responsibility of the Scrum Master to solve the issue. It is completely beyond the scrum team then the Scrum Master can work with the organization to unblock the Scrum team.

It is very important to make the impediments transparent and track the progress and the solutions.

 I have a rule of thumb that I usually use when working with teams. The more competent the Scrum team is in this respect, the less involved I am.

At worst, I teach them to do so and withdraw so that they can move on. My aim is for the team to grow, become self-organized and self-managed in order to work on issues beyond the Scrum team

7.Prepare training materials

I believe that taking time to teach about Scrum and agile is a must. It can be about basic Scrum or agile 101 as well as it might be about the role of management or leadership, or techniques and tools. I teach about non-violent communication as a way to have fact-based conversations in the team.

In my current job, I have planned a Scrum 101 session on monthly bases for leadership, new joiners or any people in need. The goal is to raise awareness and understanding which is the foundation for cultural change.

8.Work actively with the product owner, the developers, and the organization

The product owner is the person who is accountable for maximizing the result of the Scrum team. They are in charge of ordering the product backlog and identifying when the increment should be released.

The product owner is also responsible for communicating with stakeholders, gathering feedback from customers, and making sure that the team has everything they need to complete their tasks

How can you help the product owner?

• Make sure the Scrum team has a clear product goal coming from your Product Owner.
• Help the Product owner make sure the product goal is transparent, meaning visible and understood by the Scrum team and the stakeholders.
• Help the product owner with stakeholder management.
• Help to empower your Product Owner to make decisions if this is not yet the case.

You can also help the product owner with techniques to identify value.

The developers are the ones who are responsible for building the product. They are the ones who will be implementing all our designs and specifications. So, they should have the right skills to do the work. Developers should be able to self-organize and be empowered to make decisions to get work done.

The Scrum Master can help the developers with self-organization tools and techniques.

A team can do Scrum, but without the assistance or involvement of the organization, the results will always be limited. When the team becomes mature, as a Scrum Master, you’ll change your focus towards systemic problems such as the notion of quality in the company, processes, and tools. You can also discuss culture with human resources. Your role is not to decide but to act as a change agent. Let your goal be to help the entire organization embrace the Scrum values and put the customer at the heart of their strategy.

You will be a coach, mentor, teacher, servant-leader, manager, agent of change, and facilitator.

I can assure you that with all these problems, you have busy days ahead.

 Learn to be transparent with all you do. And sometimes you’ll need a break because the job of a Scrum Master can be emotionally draining, but it’s still exciting and fascinating.