Scrum Master Standard Work

We talked about the Standard Work for Product Owner in my earlier post. Now, let’s look at the other important role in Scrum: The Scrum Master (SM).

Scrum Master wears many different hats while working with the Team. I like to say that Scrum Master has many faces. He is a Facilitator and ensures the Scrum framework is followed; as well as he is the Protector of the Team. He is a partner with Product Owner and other players in the organization, as well as he is the ‘Terminator’, eliminating Impediments so that team can continue making progress. I can go on and on.. but let’s keep that for a separate post.

Standard Work: Scrum Master
Let’s start identifying the activities that the Scrum Master is carrying out to ensure the team continues to create and deliver Value for customers. Here is my recommended list of activities, categorized into Daily, Weekly, by Sprint, by Release, and so on. I also have listed activities that Scrum Master has to do to ensure a successful launch of a new Scrum Team.

Standing up a new Team

• Ensure the team has gone through Agile training
• Working with the team, collectively, come up with a ‘Scrum Calendar’ to ensure that all the events are discussed, time and locations are agreed upon. Use this activity ‘Scrum Calendar’ to facilitate this discussion.
• Ensure the team has a good understanding of the roles. Use this activity ‘Start with Y’ to bring everyone on the same page and have a common understanding, expectation about each role.
• Ensure that PO has shared and discussed the Vision and Roadmap with the team
• Use ‘Agile Bingo’ to Ensure that the team has worked on and collectively agreed upon: [Download Agile Bingo here http://bit.ly/agileBingo
  • Working Agreements
  • Office Hours
  • Definition of READY
  • Definition of DONE (for User Story, for Release)
  • Dependencies and Risks has been discussed and identified/acknowledged
  • Make it Fun! Ask the team to create their own identity; come up with a name that reflects their collective identity and purpose
• Ensure all the events have been scheduled and show up on appropriate stakeholders’ calendar. Send out the invites for next two to three months
• Get more details on Agile Bingo and other activities mentioned here at http://bit.ly/improveScrum

Daily

• Attend and facilitate the daily Scrum event.
• Rigorously ensure the rules of Scrum are followed.
• Provide updates on impediments and dependencies reported by the team.
• Update and post the task burndown and story completion charts.
• Update the Scrum board and other information radiators to make work and progress visible
• Be the ‘Sherlock Holmes’: Look for unidentified impediments and work towards removing them, even before they have a chance to distract the team
• Work to remove the impediments identified by the team and escalate them to stakeholders as required.
• Represent the team to outside parties.
• Protect the team from distractions.

Each Sprint

Information Radiator

• Ensure that the team is ready for next sprint
  • The User Stories have been identified and are READY
  • The Dependencies have been identified and ‘separated’ from User Stories slotted for the sprint
• Facilitate sprint planning
• Facilitate Daily Scrum, and ensure that it finishes within the allotted 15 minutes (use the Productivity Hacks we discussed earlier such as Parking Lot, Yellow Card, After Party, ..)
• Ensure that team is adhering to their Working Agreements as well as the Definition of Ready and Definition of Done
• Ensure that the team follows their WIP limits. Challenge team to finish the work, before starting new work (user stories)
• Ensure that various tracking charts are updated and posted in the area where they are visible.
• Ensure the Team conducts ‘Backlog Refinement (Grooming) event while in the sprint, focused on getting stories READY for the future sprints. The team should have a pipeline of READY stories that will keep them busy for at least n+2 sprints.
• Own the impediments, track progress on resolving them, and provide regular updates to the Team on each one of them. Ensure that team has worked around to continue making progress until the impediment is resolved.  
• During the Sprint, ensure that Story Burn up chart and Task burndown charts are updated daily
• Pay attention to the Story burn up chart, and work with team to avoid the Hockey Stick
• At the end of the sprint update:
  • Release Burnup chart – This chart should show the “top line” scope, actual velocity for completed sprints, predicted velocity for future sprints (Trend line using 3 sprint average), and the planned release date. Identify the gaps (between the predicted points and the desired “top line” points) and start having conversations around it with Product Owner and the team.
  • Feature completion – This chart should show the progress toward all features as well as the priority/sequence order that features are to be built.  Highest priority features should be on the left side. Ensure that there is activity on the feature at Left.  
  • Identify and keep a running list of ‘Features at risk’. Lowest priority features are “at risk” if the predicted velocity doesn’t intersect the “top line” by the planned release date.
  • Continue to have a discussion around them with Product Owner.
  • Business value completion – Work with the Product Owner to produce the desired graphs (e.g. business value points per story point, story point burn-up, the breakdown of business stories vs. enabling stories, etc.).
  • Update the Team velocity chart and Say: Do ratio based on the completed sprint.
• Facilitate Sprint Demo (Showcase) and Sprint Retrospective events.
• While team is focused on the current sprint, spend some time and energy on getting things lined up for and ready for next sprint
  • Update Team Calendar, incorporating vacation times and holidays. This will help in predicting team’s capacity for the upcoming sprint.
  • ensure that various events are planned, scheduled and on the calendar. Various events such as Sprint Planning, Sprint Review, Backlog refinement, Sprint Retrospective.  
  • Work with Product Owner to ensure backlog items are identified and READY for next sprint
• Communicate sprint/release progress to stakeholders
• Communicate Impediments to stakeholders

Each Release

• Facilitate Agile Planning  / Release Planning
• Collaborate with Product Owner to ensure that:
  • Backlog Items are identified and prioritized for the Release cycle
  • Highest priority backlog items have gone through ‘Backlog Refinement (Grooming)’ activity and are READY
  • Dependencies have been identified

Would it help to have your standard work documented? Can it help you – the Scrum Master, your team improve the productivity and deliver more VALUE for your customer?

Go ahead and document your Standard of Work. Start with this list, update it, refine it, and put your team on the “hyper Productivity” lane!