Positive Attitude

Being a person who sees a glass half full does have its share of benefits. Even when things go wrong you should still find a way to motivate the team and lead them in the right direction. Having a positive attitude doesn’t mean that you are totally satisfied with the way things are going, you should always aim for better, and use positive constructive criticism along the way.

Transparency

Everyone should be aware what on earth is going on. As a scrum master you are not a manager who secretly decides with the rest of the management and then forces down the decisions. Even though the scrum master can lead, the decisions should be taken as a team.

Serving

As is highlighted in several agile books the team leader or scrum master is there to be a servant for the team and facilitate any issues. The modern project leaders, or scrum master should aim to control rather than enforce rules. A scrum master’s role is there to remove any impediments and come up with solutions for the problems the team face. If developers don’t have a good sense of what each other are doing, the Scrum Master sets up a physical taskboard and shows the team how to use it. In essence the scrum master is there to solve issues and help out the team.

Aim to become redundant

Your aim should always be to find people who can do your job better than you, so that you can move on to other things. The minute you get stuck, is the moment you stop improving which will lead you to boredom and eventually death – actually you are going to die anyway so it’s not a good example. But the point is that you should aim to not be a single point of failure, the team should operate without you.

The only value required

I really like this ad from apple produced back in 1997 when Steve Jobs rejoined the company. This video probably sums up what a scrum master should be all about, basically it is about being a good leader. To be honest a leader has all the values which I mentioned above. Which makes my previous 4 values of scrum masters pretty much useless and defeats the whole purpose of this blog post.

Basically what I’m trying to say is, that as a scrum master you should be a leader. What I would like to point out is that there is a great difference between leaders and managers. Managers enforce processes while leaders always try to improve and are never happy with the status quo. They are the square pegs in the round holes or rather the round pegs in the square holes.

1. We are all nerds in some way or another.
2. Having a blog adds an extra line to my CV.
3. In theory blogs should open opportunities such as MVP, career opportunities etc…
4. Get more job opportunities.  You readers might prefer to hire me rather than a complete stranger.
5. Get a following with the idea that people who follow this blog will be tempted to try out any of my future projects.
6. Give something back to the community.  I’m not a person who would go out of my way to save the whales.  But if this is an accident of other benefits then let it be.
7. I believe that “If you want to master something you should teach it”. I try my best to encourage team members to share knowledge amongst themselves in my team. Hopefully I’ll master my trade as I try to organize the messed up ideas within my mind.
8. This will serve as a repository for storing any ideas that come to mind.
9. Almost all nerd heros have a blog in some form or another. Eg Scott Hansleman, Jon Skeet and countless others.
10. In reality I’m hoping this won’t take too much of my time and hopefully will be doing this while being wasted anyways.

All in all I hope this will be a win win situation. That’s it for this week, I’ll leave you to enjoy the rest of your day while I finish the rest of my drink.

Stay tuned for more posts to come.