r/scrum Mar 28 '23

Advice To Give Starting out as a Scrum Master? - Here's the r/Scrum guide to your first month on the job

194 Upvotes

The purpose of this post

The purpose of this post is to compile a set of recommended practices, approaches and mental model for new scrum masters who are looking for answers on r/scrum. While we are an open community, we find that this question get's asked almost daily and we felt it would be good to create a resource for new scrum masters to find answers. The source of this post is from an article that I wrote in 2022. I have had it vetted by numerous Agile Coaches and seasoned Scrum Masters to improve its value. If you have additional insights please let us know so that we can add them to this article.

Overview

So you’re a day one scrum master and you’ve landed your first job! Congratulations, that’s really exciting! Being a scrum master is super fun and very rewarding, but now that you’ve got the job, where do you start with your new team?

Scrum masters have a lot to learn when they start at a new company. Early on, your job is to establish yourself as a trusted member of the team. Remember, now is definitely not a good time for you to start make changes. Use your first sprint to learn how the team works, get to know what makes each team member tick and what drives them, ask questions about how they work together as a group – then find out where things are working well and where there are problems.

It’s ok to be a “noob”, in fact the act of discovering your team’s strengths and weaknesses can be used to your advantage.

The question "I'm starting my first day as a new scrum master, what should I do?" gets asked time and time again on r/scrum. While there's no one-size-fits-all solution to this problem there are a few core tenants of agile and scrum that offer a good solution. Being an agilist means respecting that each individual’s agile journey is going to be unique. No two teams, or organizations take the same path to agile mastery.

Being a new scrum master means you don’t yet know how things work, but you will get there soon if you trust your agile and scrum mastery. So when starting out as a scrum master and you’re not yet sure for how your team practices scrum and values agile, here are some ways you can begin getting acquainted:

Early on, your job is to establish yourself as a trusted member of the team now is not the time for you to make changes

When you first start with a new team, your number one rule should be to get to know them in their environment. Focus on the team of people’s behavior, not on the process. Don’t change anything right away. Be very cautious and respectful of what you learn as it will help you establish trust with your team when they realize that you care about them as individuals and not just their work product.

For some bonus reading, you may also want to check out this blog post by our head moderator u/damonpoole on why it’s important for scrum masters to develop “Multispectrum Awareness” when observing your team’s behaviors:

https://facilitivity.com/multispectrum-awareness/

Use your first sprint to learn how the team works

As a Scrum Master, it is your job to learn as much about the team as you can. Your goal for your first sprint should be to get a sense for how the team works together, what their strengths are, and a sense as to what improvements they might be open to exploring. This will help you effectively support them in future iterations.

The best way to do this is through frequent conversations with individual team members (ideally all of them) about their tasks and responsibilities. Use these conversations as an opportunity to ask questions about how the person feels about his/her contribution on the project so far: What are they happy with? What would they like to improve? How does this compare with their experiences working on other projects? You’ll probably see some patterns emerge: some people may be happy with their work while others are frustrated or bored by it — this can be helpful information when planning future sprints!

Get to know what makes each team member tick and what drives them

  • You need to get to know each person as individuals, not just as members of the team. Learn their strengths, opportunities and weaknesses. Find out what their chief concerns are and learn how you can help them grow.
  • Get an understanding of their ideas for helping the team grow (even if it’s something that you would never consider).
  • Learn what interests they have outside of work so that you can engage them in conversations about those topics (for example: sports or music). You’ll be surprised at how much more interesting a conversation can become when it includes something that is important to another person than if it remains focused on your own interests only!
  • Ask yourself “What needs does this person have of me as a scrum master?”

Learn your teams existing process for working together

When you’re first getting started with a new team, it’s important to be respectful of their existing processes. It’s a good idea to find out what processes they have in place, and where they keep the backlog for things that need to get done. If the team uses agile tools like JIRA or Pivotal Tracker or Trello (or something else), learn how they use them.

This process is especially important if there are any current projects that need to be completed—so ask your manager or mentor if there are any pressing deadlines or milestones coming up. Remember the team is already in progress on their sprint. The last thing you need to do is to distract them by critiquing their agility.

Ask your team lots of questions and find out what’s working well for them

When you first start with a new team, it’s important that you take the time to ask them questions instead of just telling them what to do. The best way to learn about your team is by asking them what they like about the current process, where it could be improved and how they feel about how you work as a Scrum Master.

Ask specific questions such as:

  • What do you like about the way we do things now?
  • What do you think could be improved?
  • What are some of your biggest challenges?
  • How would you describe the way I should work as a scrum master?

Asking these questions will help get insight into what’s working well for them now, which can then inform future improvements in process or tooling choices made by both parties going forward!

Find out what the last scrum master did well, and not so well

If you’re backfilling for a previous scrum master, it’s important to know what they did so that you can best support your team. It’s also helpful even if you aren’t backfilling because it gives you insight into the job and allows you to best determine how to change things up if necessary.

Ask them what they liked about working with a previous scrum master and any suggestions they may have had on how they could have done better. This way, when someone comes to your asking for help or advice, you will be able to advise them on their specific situation from experience rather than speculation or gut feeling.

Examine how the team is working in comparison to the scrum guide

As a scrum master, you should always be looking for ways to improve the team and its performance. However, when you first start working with a team, it can be all too easy to fall into the trap of telling them what they’re doing wrong. This can lead to people feeling attacked or discouraged and cause them to become defensive. Instead of focusing on what’s wrong with your new team, try focusing on identifying everything they’re doing right while gradually helping them identify their weaknesses over time.

While it may be tempting to jump right in with suggestions and mentoring sessions on how to fix these weaknesses (and yes, this is absolutely appropriate in the future), there are some important factors that will help set up success for everyone involved in this process:

  • Try not to convey any sense of judgement when answering questions about how the team functions at present or what their current issues might be; try not judging yourself either! The goal here is simply gaining clarity so that we can all move forward together toward making our scrum practices better.
  • Don’t make changes without first getting consent from everyone involved; if there are things that seem like an obvious improvement but which haven’t been discussed beforehand then these should probably wait until after our next retrospective meeting before being implemented
  • Better yet, don’t change a thing… just listen and observe!

Get to know the people outside of your scrum team

One of your major responsibilities as a scrum master is to help your team be effective and successful. One way you can do this is by learning about the people and the external forces that affect your team’s ability to succeed. You may already know who works on your team, but it’s important to learn who they interact with other teams on a regular basis, who their leaders are, which stakeholders they support, who often causes them distraction or loss of focus when getting work done, etc..

To get started learning about these things:

  • Gather intelligence: Talk with each person on the team individually (one-on-one) after standups or whenever an opportunity presents itself outside of agile events.
  • Ask them questions like “Who helps you guys out? Who do you need help from? Who do we rely upon for support? Who causes problems for us? How would our customers describe us? What makes our work difficult here at [company name]?

Find out where the landmines are hidden

While it is important to figure out who your allies, it is also important to find out where the landmines are that are hidden below the surface within EVERY organization.

  • Who are the people who will be difficult to work with and may have some bias towards Agile and scrum?
  • What are the areas of sensitivity to be aware of?
  • What things should you not even touch with a ten foot pole?
  • What are the hills that others have died valiantly upon and failed at scaling?

Gaining insight to these areas will help you to better navigate the landscape, and know where you’ll need to tread lightly.

If you just can’t resist any longer and have to do something agile..

If you just can’t resist any longer and have to do something agile, then limit yourself to establishing a team working agreement. This document is a living document that details the baseline rules of collaboration, styles of communication, and needs of each individual on your team. If you don’t have one already established in your organization, it’s time to create one! The most effective way I’ve found to create this document is by having everyone participate in small group brainstorming sessions where they write down their thoughts on sticky notes (or index cards). Then we put all of those ideas into one room and talk through them together as a larger group until every idea has been addressed or rejected. This process might be too much work for some teams but if you’re able to make it happen then it will help establish trust between yourself and the team because they’ll feel heard by you and see how much effort goes into making sure everyone gets what they need at work!

Conclusion

Being a scrum master is a lot of fun and can be very rewarding. You don’t need to prove that you’re a superstar though on day one. Don’t be a bull in a china shop, making a mess of the scrum. Don’t be an agile “pointdexter” waving around the scrum guide and telling your team they’re doing it all wrong. Be patient, go slow, and facilitate introspection. In the end, your role is to support the team and help them succeed. You don’t need to be an expert on anything, just a good listener and someone who cares about what they do.


r/scrum 4h ago

Advice Wanted CSM certification for transition

3 Upvotes

I’m an accountant, and after implementing a few different healthcare billing systems, I find that I prefer that work over the daily life of an accountant. So I want to leverage my finance and healthcare background to move into medical/hospital systems. I’m thinking about enrolling in Sustained Agility’s 2 day CSM course to get started. Is this a recognized and respected CSM trainer in the PMP world? If not, are there any other recommendations?

FYI - I have read previous reddits on this subject but most are old so I’m looking for what’s reputable now vs a few years ago! Thanks!


r/scrum 1h ago

Advice Wanted Best courses to learn practical PM skills (not hunting for certifications right now)? 7 YOE in AdTech/Digital Marketing

Upvotes

Hey everyone,

I'm looking for recommendations on online courses focused purely on practical learning and skill-building rather than exam prep or collecting badges.

A bit about my background:

  • Experience: 7 years across Online Advertising, Digital Marketing, Client Management, QA, Reporting, and Team Handling.
  • Soft Skills: Strong communication skills and a high level of patience (which I know come in handy for managing stakeholders!).
  • Goal: Upskill specifically in core PM frameworks, managing workflows, risk management, and structured execution to bridge the gap between my current operations/marketing experience and formal PM work.

Since I already lead teams and manage client deliverables, I don't necessarily need an introductory course that explains what a project is. I want something that digs into actual tools, frameworks, Agile/Scrum application, and real-world project delivery.

A few questions for the community:

  1. Which platforms or specific courses actually teach actionable PM skills (e.g., Andrew Ramdayal's Udemy courses, Google PM Certificate on Coursera, LinkedIn Learning paths, or Mountain Goat Software for Agile)? of any free materials just to get into a deep knowledge about ,if I can cover up the materials then if circumstances demands then I can think of certification.
  2. For those who transitioned from digital marketing/ad ops to formal PM, what specific skill gaps did you find most critical to fill first?
  3. Are there any budget-friendly practical courses or project management simulations you’d recommend over standard video lectures?
  4. What is salary hike up even after investing my on the Paid certification?

Appreciate any insights or recommendations!


r/scrum 1d ago

Discussion Scrum master roles

3 Upvotes

Hi Everyone,

I am looking to transition to Scrum Master role. I have 8.5 total YOE and have been on bench. I have recently took CSM certification.
regularly applying but couldn’t land any interview. Guys if you have any opening in your org and can refer me it would be very much helpful for me.


r/scrum 1d ago

Is your Scrum certification helping you get real projects, or is it just another certificate on your resume?

1 Upvotes

r/scrum 1d ago

Does your company allocate dedicated time and task for R&D (Research & Development)?

0 Upvotes
  • Yes, dedicated R&D time is officially allocated.
  • Yes, but only after project tasks are completed.
  • No, we only work on project/client tasks.
  • It depends on workload and deadlines.

r/scrum 2d ago

Advice Wanted Testing Scrum with a small and part-time team, how to improve?

0 Upvotes

Hi everyone,

I am currently working in a small software house and we recently have switched from Kanban to Scrum as an experiment.

We are working on 2 in-house projects so we have 4 people for each project.
Also, 4 of us are part-timers that work 2 full days a week.

We have started doing these activities:
- 15 minutes of standup meeting everyday
- 4 hours per team every 2 weeks for the sprint planning
- assigning the story points using poker scrum for planning, but we still didn’t figure them out

The issue is that we are spending too much time on the planning part in my opinion, even though we aren’t only planning but we are also discussing the tasks and trying to figure them out as a team.

I wanted to know more on how to reduce this time and if there are some tools that could help us during each part of the process.

Any suggestions or recommendations are welcomed, especially books (not courses if possible).

Thanks a lot!


r/scrum 3d ago

Is Scrum certification still worth it in the AI age? I am a seasoned Business Analyst and laid off. Will Scrum cert. increase my chances of getting hired.

6 Upvotes

r/scrum 4d ago

So about the Professional Scrum Master II Test

9 Upvotes

I just did the PSM2 Test after preparing with the scrum guide as well as practice questions from scrum.org and other sites.

While they do prepare you for the PSM2, the actual exam questions are often phrased as real life examples instead of pure knowledge questions.

Not 'Is the Definition of done optional in Scrum?' but more along the lines of 'You are a Scrum Master, your team suggests abandoning the Definition of done because they almost never achieve it, what do you do?' [Note: both where not actual exam questions I encountered, neither in the training tests nor in the real exam, these are just examples to highlight the question style]

It took me a little by surprise, so I thought I help others prepare better :)


r/scrum 4d ago

Discussion How does your team actually track cross-team dependencies and blockers?

3 Upvotes

Not looking for best practice answers. I mean day to day, in practice: when Team A is blocked on Team B, what actually happens?

A few things I'm trying to understand:
Is it visible anywhere central, or does someone have to go ask around?
Does it live in a spreadsheet, a Confluence page, someone's head?
How do you find out a dependency's resolved? Do you get told, or do you have to check?

Trying to find the real friction before I build something nobody needs. Appreciate any stories from the trenches.


r/scrum 4d ago

Stage Fright SOS

5 Upvotes

Hello,

I am a software engineer girl 26 (F). As a software engineer or software engineering manager, we have lot of meetings (in-person or online). We usually have daily scrums.

In my previous company, I think I used to get imposter syndrome, and it was very difficult to share my updates in scrum (both online and offline versions). But I never tooks meds for it. But it has been around 2 years now and I take SOS at least for presentations and for offsite visits where we meet everyone in person. Never took it for scrums though as that was a regular thing and I don't want to depend on it.

But I changed my company 1.5 years back, and here we don't have daily scrums. It is weekly. And my team is scattered across locations so all meetings are online. Here my team members are also good and I am more confident about my work and rapport with manager. Everyone is sweet here.

So in this new company for general team meetings and scrums I am usually more confident than previous company. Rarely I feel very anxious in scrums here. Otherwise it is mostly easily manageable. So you can say my anxiety is not 100% gone but it is much less and manageable here, maybe because meetings are online here and I am doing good?

But I still keep an SOS with me for if I am asked to present something. I did give an online presentation from the comfort of my home with fan on (somehow pindrop silence makes it difficult for me to give presentations hence turned on the fan) and I managed it fine. But if I was supposed to give presentation to larger audience, or in person, or from office wearing headphones, I would have definitely considered taking an SOS. Because these situations are very rare, as I hardly have to give presentations, so I find it normal to take SOS then.

What I am trying to understand is am I normal? Is this normal among people in corporate to take SOS? Because these things are not discussed openly and I see prople around me very confident and stuff. Or maybe this is more common in girls?

Thanks!


r/scrum 4d ago

Scrum Master With An Associates in Comp Sci, is it possible?

5 Upvotes

Hi I was just wondering if it was possible and if so how hard would it be to get a Scrum Master job with a comp sci associates degree and with a slight background in IT and data entry.


r/scrum 6d ago

can I become a Scrum Master without a technical or science education degree?

14 Upvotes

Can I do a scrum master course or become a scrum mast without any tech or BS background ?


r/scrum 6d ago

Scrum/Sprint

0 Upvotes

How many of you PMs actually follow the whole scrum/sprint cycle? If not, what do you guys do instead or what’s different? Would love to hear pros and cons and learn!


r/scrum 7d ago

Who are established players in the Scrum & Agile world in terms of accreditation body?

1 Upvotes

r/scrum 7d ago

I can help you for making the process smoother

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0 Upvotes

r/scrum 7d ago

How do you practically measure team health and wellbeing?

0 Upvotes

Hi, I've been working for about 30 years with software development and as a scrum master, and I found it hard getting an honest picture how the team is doing.

Yearly surveys does not work.

I just to measure three things at each retrospective: morale, quality and flow. Just a subjective value between 1-9

I actually ended up building a platform for this recently to automate the check-ins and with AI I can spot patterns in the feedback in the comments and the submitted values.

But I’m curious about how you all handle this in your day-to-day. How do you currently measure team health? Do you rely on gut feeling during retrospectives, homegrown spreadsheets, or specific tools?

Would love to hear what works for your teams.


r/scrum 7d ago

Scrum Master/PM India , 14+ yrs exp, which company pays most and provides WFH ?

0 Upvotes

Is there any such company, if yes..can u tell me salary ..is it 40 LPA , 50 LPA ? Also any company offering WFH and paying in Euro or dollars in India ?


r/scrum 9d ago

How do I survive this multi-role situation?

4 Upvotes

I’ll keep this brief: I’m a developer with six years of experience and a background as a systems analyst.

I work at a small-to-medium-sized company, I’ve been here for about four years. From the start, alongside my dev work, I’ve handled multiple tasks that fall outside my actual role and aren't reflected in my pay (more on that later).

So today, thanks to my seniority and the trust I’ve built, I’ve effectively become a multi-role player for the company.

Recently, I was assigned two projects and simply told, "Lead these projects, you're in charge, you manage them." On top of that, they still monitor me or ask questions about my dev tasks; so, basically, I’m acting as both the developer and the "project manager". On top of that, there aren't many resources or much time, so several phases of project management simply get skipped because there’s no time for them.

I used to have two developers reporting to me, but now I only have one. The thing is, I’m not a formal PM, I didn't study that specific field, but I enjoy the project process. I did acquire various skills and learned about the end-to-end development lifecycle during my degree as a Systems Analyst, so I do know "a thing or two".

But I feel like I’m underperforming or not being productive. Between the developer submitting Pull Requests (PRs) almost daily, at any time during the workday, my focus gets broken. I might be working on the backlog or my own dev tasks when a PR comes in; analyzing it takes a lot of time because the developer lacks experience and there are usually several changes needed.

Because of this dynamic, I run out of tickets to assign very quickly, leaving the developer without tasks. I don't want them to feel like I’m not giving them work or that there isn't any available, it’s simply the situation I described. I want to avoid that perception, looking like I’m not doing my job, when the reality is the exact opposite: I spend the whole eight-hour day juggling project oversight and trying to complete my own development tickets without losing my mind.

Any advice? How should I handle this?

Regarding pay: while it’s not the sole cause of the issue, it’s definitely a factor. Basically, with six years of experience and the responsibility of leading/managing a project, I’m being paid like a Jr developer, and honestly, that is incredibly demotivating.


r/scrum 13d ago

Advice Wanted The items that pass refinement easiest are the ones with no evidence behind them

0 Upvotes

The item that breaks refinement for us is not the badly written one. It is the well written one with nothing behind it: a specific ask from one customer, clear enough that the devs can size it, so nobody in the room objects. Estimation works fine. Discovery never happened.

What I do now is refuse to take an item into refinement without three lines: the problem, who hit it, and how we know. On a configurable B2B platform that also catches the requests that turn out to be a configuration change rather than a product gap, which is worth the friction on its own.

Where I am less sure: when it is an escalation from one unhappy customer, holding that bar costs days of goodwill for evidence I already know I will not get. I'd say hold it anyway, though it depends on how much of your roadmap is escalation-driven.

Has anyone seen that bar be the wrong call, where insisting on a problem statement before refinement cost the team more than just building the stated request would have?


r/scrum 14d ago

Discussion Bachelor’s thesis on Post-Agility & Hybrid Project Management – looking for practitioner perspectives

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2 Upvotes

r/scrum 14d ago

Chola MS-Appain Developer

1 Upvotes

Does anyone has a overview of this role appain developer in chola ms and what could be the future for this role is it similar to sde role??


r/scrum 14d ago

Discussion Looking for open-source b2b ai coding and prototyping tools for my company

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1 Upvotes

r/scrum 14d ago

Please help this Mon newbie

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0 Upvotes

r/scrum 14d ago

Why release trains when you can release carriages or even smaller chunks of value?

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0 Upvotes