Navigating Digital Assurance With a Scrum Master: Maximizing Quality in Agile Projects

The scrum master simplifies the scrum process, which includes assisting the team in expanding and improving their task management. They are responsible for providing emerging Scrum team members with real leadership and coordinating them to deliver high-quality products on time. So companies that are keen on providing digital assurance services can help their digital teams look into such processes.

An Increase in Scrum Masters Working in Digital Assurance   

During the pandemic, every sector moved into a digital environment. During this phase, the scrum master played a vital role and delivered a high-quality product on time to the customer.

Here we will see what challenges a scrum master faces in the world of digital assurance and how they bring out a quick fix to each day-to-day incident.

Key Responsibilities of the Scrum Masters in Digital Assurance

1. Facilitating communication: The Scrum Master acts as a mediator between the development team, product team, and digital assurance team, ensuring that all sides have a clear understanding of each other's needs and goals. This involves facilitating regular meetings between the three teams and ensuring that information is shared effectively. 
2. Encouraging collaboration: In an Agile environment, collaboration is key. The Scrum Master should encourage the development team and the digital assurance team to work together throughout the project, sharing knowledge and insights to ensure that the software meets quality standards.  
3. Managing the testing process: The Scrum Master is responsible for managing the testing process, including ensuring that tests are conducted in a timely and effective manner. They should also be aware of any issues or roadblocks that arise during testing and work with the development team to address them. 
4. Ensuring compliance: Digital assurance is essential for ensuring compliance with industry standards and regulations. The Scrum Master should work closely with the digital assurance team to ensure that all necessary compliance requirements are met. 
5. Continuously improving processes: Finally, the Scrum Master should work to continuously improve the digital assurance process, identifying areas for improvement and implementing new strategies and technologies to enhance quality and efficiency. 

Real-Life Challenges Faced by Scrum Masters in Digital Assurance

Introducing Scrum to a Team

When SCRUM is introduced to a new team, they face many challenges in adapting to the process. Individual members of a team will be in a different mindset; in this case, the scrum master will guide them and provide a proper roadmap. For instance, setting up meetings, understanding the procedure, assigning tasks to the team, and appreciating each other's work.

Scrum Process can take an example from an old process called Shu Ha Ri, which is a Japanese martial art.

Shu: This is the first phase of the agile process when a team is being formed or switching from waterfall to agile.

Ha: They continue observing team ways of working. They would give clues and occasionally give advice, but they would mostly let the team self-evolve.

Ri: The team is self-organized and self-evolving. If the team needs his or her advice, they will come to him, but SM is no longer observing the team. 

To better comprehend the steps, let's use the football team Gryffindor as a real-world example. Each member of a team will bring distinct skill sets and ways of thinking to the table. If a team is dispatched on the pitch without a coach, the team loses the game because there is an imbalance in the management of skills. Let's introduce a coach who serves as the scrum master in order to solve the aforementioned issue. a coach who is knowledgeable of each skill and directs players appropriately to achieve the team's objectives.

Scrum Ceremony:  Every member of the team will face questions and numerous obstacles when the aim is set. During this stage, some team members will work longer hours than others, which causes an uneven distribution of workloads. Sometimes teams are overworked, which leaves more tasks incomplete.

A scrum process will have a list of meeting activities in the order in which they are to be taken up in order to avoid a gap between the team as a result of this. It must schedule daily and weekly general meetings (ex. Sprint Call).

In my experience, there was a Digital Assurance issue. Since the crew interacted very little with one another, many of the problems were not appropriately tackled. Here, the scrum master encouraged everyone to ask questions and acquire confidence. People will eventually be able to conquer all of their obstacles and fears. They dealt with all the problems.

Team Adapts to the Scrum (Mature Team)

At this stage, the team offers suggestions for various implementation strategies. Transformation is more of a culture shift that involves well-balanced, unconventional thinking as well as delivery techniques. In order to achieve high-quality delivery, the scrum master gathers all of the ideas and works as a team to identify the finest ones.

In Digital Assurance, a real-world Team adds innovative concepts or user-friendly elements to the product. This assists the client in putting their ideas into practice and bringing them into the digital realm. As a result, the application is as current and open as feasible.

General Issues Faced by a Mature Team

The team has general issues regarding the product, who shall do what work, etc. Sometimes there is a greater chance of bigger conflict in the team, which causes a lot of misunderstanding.

In reference to the aforementioned problems, the expression "Too many cooks spoil the broth" is a perfect illustration. Because everyone is aware of the process at this point, they all attempt to assign tasks and overwhelm one another. To avoid controversy, the scrum master steps in and allocates the assignment to the team in accordance with their best judgment. Being productive in this situation is a challenge for the scrum master. Despite wanting to safeguard them, the team makes blunders.

In conclusion, the Scrum Master is a key player in Agile development projects' digital assurance. He or she is a person who takes part in each stage of the process's execution. They are accountable for managing the testing process, guaranteeing compliance, and continuously improving processes, as well as promoting communication and collaboration between the development and digital assurance teams. Scrum masters can assure the success of Agile projects and the delivery of high-quality software by utilizing their experience.