Scrum gained its popularity in the 2010s; it was first publicly introduced through Ken Schwaber‘s “The Scrum development process” paper submission at the OOPSLA Conference in 1995. The growth was mainly driven by its new-age principles of flexibility, focus on teamwork, and ability to adapt to complex projects that frequently change their requirements. It is introduced as an alternative to traditional waterfall project management methods.
This leads to many professionals focusing on Scrum-related roles. But as a professional, new Scrum Masters face many challenges when they start their initial career. In this blog, we are going to address the biggest mistakes new Scrum Masters make and how to avoid them with some helpful tips.
Why is the New Scrum Master Making Mistakes?
New Scrum Masters entering the field are prone to making mistakes due to limited understanding of the day-to-day role, a lack of practical experience, and possible misunderstanding of Agile principles.
Ideal role of a Scrum Master:
The Scrum Master should act as a Servant leader, a coach, and a facilitator to the team, improve their work nature, and help them adhere to Scrum principles.
Key responsibilities are:
- Servant Leadership
- Coaching and training
- Organize and facilitate Scrum events
- Identify and address any obstacles or blockers to the team’s progress
- Plan and lead the organization’s adoption of Scrum to increase productivity
- Encourage Collaboration to ensure product backlogs are managed effectively
So when the Scrum Masters fail to do these duties, then they fail to become a Scrum Master for the organization. So their costly mistakes lead to project or product failure and reduce organizational value.
The Common Mistakes of the New Scrum Masters:
Even after taking charge or transitioning to the Scrum Master role, finding it difficult to change the Agile mindset is one of the challenges for new practitioners.
The disconnect from Scrum Values:
New Scrum Masters are most of the time focused only on the mechanics of Scrum without a deep understanding of its main principles.
The core values of Scrum are:
- Commitment,
- Courage,
- Focus,
- Openness, and
- Respect.
As a main duty, SM should direct how the team works together and make better decisions. Forgetting these values can create broken and inefficient teams.
Mistakes related to a lack of Agile understanding:
- Too rely on Process over Value: Giving too much attention to how meetings are run instead of helping the team deliver real value to customers.
- Blindly Following Scrum Ceremonies: Applying every Scrum Principle rigidly without customizing or adjusting based on the team’s needs.
- Neglecting Continuous Improvement: Forgetting retrospective meetings or converting them into complaint sessions. These unfocused sessions created missing critical opportunities to analyze and adapt the team’s process.
Confuse the Role with a Manager’s:
Many new Scrum Masters fall back on a “ command and control “ mindset management style from traditional old school management practices. This completely deviates from Scrum’s Collaborative and self-organisation ethics. This creates confusion among the entire team.
This misunderstanding of proper roles and responsibilities taken to:
- Micromanagement: Instead of giving independence and creativity, Scrum Masters are taking authority and trying to control every task and monitoring every inch. This kills the team’s ability to solve its own problem.
- Become an Admin instead of a Servant leader: By trying to be helpful for the team, some Scrum Masters take advantage of the work for themselves. It creates dependency and stops the team from solving issues on their own.
- Making decisions for the team: Instead of allowing team members to take ownership and accountability for decisions, interfere with decisions. SMs are focused only on facilitation, not interference.
Failing to help the Team’s Growth:
The Scrum Masters are evolved along with the team, guiding them to become more self-organized. For every issue, if the team depends on Scrum Masters, they miss the opportunity to learn and act as self-organized.
Mistakes related to a failure in team development:
- Not empowering the team: restricting the team’s abilities to manage themselves can weaken their confidence and ownership.
- Not giving importance to team conflicts: Forgetting or avoiding solving interpersonal issues with team members can damage trust and block open communication.
- Improper Poor communication: As a facilitator, SMs follow clear communication. Failing to create transparent communication channels between the team and stakeholders can cause misunderstandings, which is not good for a better Agile team.
How to Avoid These Mistakes:
Learning is a continuous, never-ending process in Scrum. New Scrum Masters should invest in strengthening their skills to avoid mistakes by following the steps.
1. Develop a Servant-Leadership Mindset: Focus only on coaching the teams, not controlling or micromanaging. Let the team take responsibility and accountability for their work and decisions.
2. Invest in Continuous Learning: Find out the courses as a choice of Certified Scrum Master training and supplementary resources to deepen your understanding of Agile principles and practices.
3. Be a dedicated facilitator: When conducting Scrum events, implement time-boxing and help the team to stay focused within given time limits. Make sure retrospectives are taken to clear, actionable improvements.
4. Clarify Your Role: Fix the right expectations for both the team and stakeholders about what Scrum Masters are capable of doing.
5. Protect the Team: Advocate for the team’s requirements and save them from outside external pressures and deviations that hurt the team’s productivity and organisational morale.
Final Thoughts:
Keep always in mind, being a great, effective Scrum Master isn’t only about controlling. It’s about guidance, paving the way to growth, and building trust. Avoiding common mistakes like micromanagement, poor communication, and a lack of empowerment helps teams to become more self-organizing. Avoid enforcement, coach the team, train them to face courageously, and the guaranteed valuable outputs will automatically be brought to your table.
