Quick Scrum Gains

TL; DR: Quick Scrum Gains

Suppose you are a Scrum Master or Agile Coach. Have you recently been asked to explain your contribution to the organization’s value creation? In other words, does management want to know whether you are pulling your weight or if your salary is an expendable expenditure? This article points to ten quick Scrum gains you can pull off without asking for permission or budget to prove your contribution to your organization’s survival in these challenging times.

Ten Quick Scrum Gains You Can Start Tomorrow

A few years ago, when money was cheap, valuations high, and profits more than decent, no one questioned the necessity of a Scrum Master or Agile Coach. 

If you practice Scrum, you need a Scrum Master, as the Scrum Guide says. And who would challenge that notion when a war for talent is raging? However, times have changed, and the bean counters started balancing budgets and expenditures. Now, however, it is high time you start talking about what you bring to the table. And given the many people with little understanding of Scrum or “Agile,” yet posing as Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches, that approach is not entirely arbitrary.

You can improve your standing among peers and stakeholders by addressing these ten quick Scrum gains to enhance team performance and organizational alignment:

1. Improve Daily Scrums

• Description: Keep Daily Scrums focused and quick to help the team adjust plans.
• Background: Daily Scrums can quickly become status updates instead of opportunities to plan and adapt. This wastes time and doesn’t help the team stay on track to accomplish the Sprint Goal. By refocusing the Daily Scrum, Scrum Masters can demonstrate their ability to enhance team productivity and alignment, which management will recognize as valuable.
• Remedy: Encourage practices like “walking the board,” where team members discuss the progress of each work item on the board. This ensures that the focus remains on moving tasks to completion and identifying blockers.
• Example: Suggest the team start each Daily Scrum by reviewing the progress of work items, asking questions like, “What can we do to move this item to done?”

2. Set Work-in-Progress (WiP) Limits

• Description: Limit the number of tasks the team works on simultaneously to boost focus and productivity.
• Background: Teams often think being busy means being productive, leading to too many tasks and lower output. Without limits, switching between tasks increases, slowing progress. Implementing WiP limits can quickly show delivery speed and quality improvements, making the Scrum Master’s impact visible to management. Additionally, setting WiP limits helps improve the team’s flow, ensuring that tasks move smoothly through the development process without unnecessary delays.
• Remedy: Explain the benefits of WiP limits using metrics to show progress. Encourage the team to try different limits to find the best number. Track and celebrate improvements in focus, flow, and delivery.
• Example: Start with introducing a simple rule such as “no more than two tasks in progress per person” and observe the impact over the next Sprint. Use tools like cumulative flow diagrams to visualize improvements in the team’s flow.

3. Run Better Retrospectives

• Description: Make Sprint Retrospectives useful and lead to real improvements.
• Background: If not facilitated well, Retrospectives can become dull and ineffective, namely by repeating the same pattern over and over again, such as these bloody three questions. This results in missed chances to improve and can make the team lose interest.
• Remedy: Effective Retrospectives that lead to visible improvements highlight the Scrum Master’s role in fostering continuous improvement within the Scrum team. Therefore, use different and engaging Retrospective techniques, focus on finding and acting on improvements, and follow up on agreed-upon actions.
• Example: Use the simple “Start, Stop, Continue” method to identify actionable items and follow up in the next Retrospective to check progress. Or collect anonymous feedback in advance to work with actual data from the team during the subsequent Retrospective. Also, consider inviting your stakeholders from time to time to a joined Retrospective; the Meta Retrospective is a proven format for that purpose and comes with a free Miro template.

4. Quick Scrum Gains: Support Your Product Owner in Communicating Roadmaps and Product Goals

• Description: Help the Product Owner share the team’s product plans to align the team and stakeholders on upcoming work supporting the organization’s business goals.
• Background: Lack of visibility into long-term plans can lead to misalignment and reduced motivation. Helping the Product Owner communicate the near- and midterm product planning demonstrates the Scrum Master’s commitment to team alignment and stakeholder engagement, making their role also more visible within the organization.
• Remedy: Assist the Product Owner in sharing roadmaps, discussing plans during Product Backlog refinement sessions, and involving the Scrum team and stakeholders in planning activities. Use shared tools like dashboards or information radiators to keep everyone informed.
• Example: Organize a roadmap review session where the Product Owner presents upcoming milestones to the team and stakeholders. Follow this up with Q&A sessions to ensure clarity and alignment, for example, by using Liberating Structure’s Celebrity Interview.

5. Align on Sprint Goals

• Description: Support the Scrum team in creating a clear, achievable Sprint Goal guiding the team’s work.
• Background: Without a Sprint Goal, the team may lack direction and cohesion, reducing effectiveness. Clear Sprint Goals help teams stay focused and deliver valuable outcomes, which management can directly see as improved performance due to the Scrum Master’s efforts.
• Remedy: Work with the team to set a meaningful Sprint Goal during Sprint Planning. Review the goal as needed during the Sprint. Ensure the goal is visible and referenced in Daily Scrums and the subsequent Sprint Retrospective.
• Example: Start the Sprint Planning session by discussing the Product Goal and deriving the Sprint Goal from the business objective as stated by the Product Owner, ensuring everyone understands the focus, taking available capacity, skills, and tools into consideration.

6. Emphasize Technical Excellence

• Description: Encourage Developers to become technically excellent and to deliver a high product quality. Help them create a meaningful Definition of Done (DoD) to support this effort.
• Background: Teams might occasionally cut corners to meet deadlines, causing technical debt and lower quality. Moreover, an adequate technical solution from a few years ago may have outlived its utility; there are plenty of opportunities to accumulate technical debt. Consequently, adhering to the Definition of Done is an essential first step for maintaining technical excellence, which supports business agility. Management will see the Scrum Master’s role in upholding quality standards as crucial to sustainable organizational success.
• Remedy: Regularly review and update the DoD, and make sure everyone understands and follows it. Emphasize its importance during Sprint Reviews and Retrospectives. Use real examples of quality issues to show the risks of not following the DoD.
• Example: Conduct a workshop to revisit and refine the Definition of Done with the team, ensuring it covers all necessary quality aspects. Additionally, consider creating a canvas with all known technical issues of your product and reference it for future work. (See also #10: “Foster Cross-Functionality.”)

7. Name: Deliver Small Increments

• Description: Deliver small Increments often to get regular feedback and make adjustments.
• Background: Waiting until the end of the Sprint to release delays feedback and increases risk. Frequent delivery of small increments allows for early feedback and course correction, which can improve stakeholders’ perception of the team’s productivity and responsiveness.
• Remedy: Encourage delivery of Increments whenever they meet the DoD and provide value. Continuous integration and delivery practices should be used to support this approach. Highlight the benefits of early feedback and quick adjustments in meetings and reports; Sharepoint can be a Scrum Master’s friend.
• Example: Besides regular delivery of small Increments during the Sprint, also consider creating a team newsletter to inform your team’s stakeholders about value delivered mid-Sprint before you all meet for the Sprint Review.

8. Engage Stakeholders Regularly

• Description: Have regular, structured interactions with stakeholders to get feedback and align priorities.
• Background: Irregular or unstructured stakeholder engagement can lead to misunderstandings and misaligned priorities. Chatting at the coffee machine is a nice add-on; however, it should not be your regular stakeholder interaction pattern. Recurring, meaningful interactions with stakeholders ensure continuous alignment and demonstrate the Scrum Master’s proactive role in facilitating valuable feedback loops.
• Remedy: Schedule regular stakeholder meetings, use feedback loops like Sprint Reviews, and consider involving stakeholders in Product Backlog refinement sessions or having joint Meta Retrospectives with the Scrum team; see #3. Provide clear agendas and follow-up notes to keep interactions productive and focused.
• Example: Use techniques like User Story Mapping to visualize and align priorities.

9. Quick Scrum Gains: Support the Product Owner to Manage the Product Backlog

• Description: Help the Product Owner manage the Product Backlog and make informed decisions.
• Background: A Product Owner overwhelmed by tasks or lacking authority can slow the team’s progress. By supporting the Product Owner, the Scrum Master ensures better Product Backlog management and prioritization, leading to more efficient and effective development efforts.
• Remedy: Coach the Product Owner on prioritization, and help with Product Backlog refinement practices involving the other team members and stakeholders. Encourage regular training and provide resources to enhance their skills and authority.
• Example: Schedule regular one-on-one sessions with the Product Owner to help them address their most pressing issues.

10. Foster Cross-Functionality

• Description: Encourage the team to work together across different skills to achieve Sprint Goals.
• Background: Working in skill silos can slow progress and reduce collaboration. Cross-functional teams are more flexible and can respond better to changing requirements, showcasing the Scrum Master’s ability to create a more adaptable and effective team structure.
• Remedy: Promote knowledge sharing, pair programming, and collaborative problem-solving. Celebrate successes from cross-functional work and provide mentorship to ease the transition.
• Example: Initiate pair programming sessions where team members with different expertise work together on tasks. Arrange brown bag sessions for knowledge sharing, create skill matrices to identify and address gaps, and occasionally organize team open spaces on technology topics to foster innovation and learning.

Quick Scrum Gains: Food for Thought

To maximize the impact of these quick Scrum gains and fully demonstrate your value as a Scrum Master, consider the following additional points:

Continuous Improvement

• Metrics and feedback: Regularly collect and analyze metrics to track improvements and gather feedback from the team and stakeholders. This helps you (and the Scrum team) make data-informed decisions and showcase your impact.
• Adaptability: Be ready to adapt and tweak these practices based on the team’s evolving needs and challenges. What works today might need adjustment tomorrow.

Communication

• Transparency: Maintain open and transparent communication with both the team and stakeholders. This builds trust and ensures everyone is aligned with the goals and progress. And if it takes a report or newsletter to reach your stakeholders, so be it.
• Storytelling: Use stories and examples to illustrate your interventions’ positive changes and benefits. This can make your contributions more relatable and understandable to management.

Professional Development

• Stay updated: Stay current with Agile and Scrum trends and practices by attending and participating in workshops, webinars, Meetups, and conferences. This will allow you to learn and bring new ideas to your team.
• Certification and training: Pursue advanced certifications and training to deepen your expertise and credibility as a Scrum Master, as passing challenging certificates still carries weight in many organizations. (See, for example, the Scrum Master Salary Report 2024.)

Building Relationships

• Stakeholder engagement: Develop strong relationships with key stakeholders. Understand their expectations and pain points, and show how Scrum practices can make them successful.
• Team empowerment: Focus on empowering the team to take ownership and drive their improvements. Facilitate a culture where team members feel safe to experiment, innovate, and accept responsibility.

Leadership and Influence

• Lead by example: Demonstrate Agile values and principles in your actions. Be the role model for continuous improvement, collaboration, and transparency.
• Influence without authority: Learn to influence and drive change even when you don’t have formal authority. This is crucial in environments where the Scrum Master’s role might be undervalued.

Considering these additional points, you can further solidify your position as an invaluable asset to your organization, driving team and stakeholder success and contributing to broader organizational goals.

Conclusion

By addressing these quick Scrum gains, Scrum Masters can significantly enhance their team’s performance and demonstrate their critical role in the organization. These actions not only improve team efficiency and product quality but also foster better alignment and communication with stakeholders.

In doing so, Scrum Masters can ensure their contributions are visible and valued, proving their indispensability in driving organizational success.

How do you lift your standing in your organization? Please share your suggestions via the comments.