Don’t panic!

Signs that your team is doing just fine.

Being new to the Scrum Master role can be an overwhelming experience. Determining if the teams that you serve are doing well under your guidance is not always as apparent as it should be. Sometimes it’s easy to succumb to paranoia and believe the team is falling apart. 

As a fairly new Scrum Master myself, I’ve noticed a few behaviours or signs that can be good indicators of how your team is doing. These signs or behaviours can be good focal points when laying the foundation for both a happy and performing team, instead of making high impact and disruptive changes to the team.    

Finishing work over starting work. 

Does the team focus on starting new work or finishing work that is in progress? A lot of this stems from the realisation that complete work is more valuable than work that is still incomplete. A by-product of this understanding or behaviour is that work tends to flow across the board and the team will slowly start to lean towards tackling challenges as a group in order to maintain that flow. 

Fear of failure

Does the team make decisions without the fear of failure? Is the team willing to learn from their failures? These decisions can be made everywhere from their processes to the way they decide to tackle the day at their stand-up. The environment is a huge factor in this one and yes, the team may fail a lot! But there will be instances of discovery that can increase their efficiency tenfold.

Collaborating at stand-ups  

This one is relatively easy to spot when attending a stand-up. It is also a good way to ascertain just how well the team is doing in the self-management department. Are they able tackle any impediments that come their way and do they plan out what they aim to achieve for the day? Do they do these things as opposed to being told what to do and using the session just to report on their work?  

Working sustainably 

Do team members hold each other accountable when it comes to working unsustainably? This one is ever more relevant in 2020, given the COVID-19 pandemic and the explosion of remote work. The lines between life in and out of work can get blurred without one even noticing, which can easily result in team members working at a pace that is unsustainable. This can have negative repercussions on team member’s work-life balance. 

Regardless of the approach, it just takes time... 

As the majority of these are habits or behaviours, it may take some time in guiding your team in implementing or reinforcing said habits. Moreover, some of them may be a bit harder to pick up than others. While there are a multitude of approaches that one could use in this respect, creating opportunities for constructive conversation is key.  

A few examples of creating opportunities for conversation would be allowing a team to run its own stand-up and you poking and prodding with a few leading questions; or using stats and graphs relative to flow and throughput to spark conversation. 

Regardless of the approach you choose, it just takes some time.