What is a Scrum Master and how to become one?

 What is a Scrum Master?

During your office walks, if you encounter a wall full of stickies grouped in three categories ToDo, InProgress and Done, please know you have a scrum master around and may be an agile team on that floor.

If you ever encounter a team standing in circle and updating each other with "what I did yesterday", "what I will do today" and "I have a blocker", know you have a scrum master around.

So what the heck does a scrum master do?

Scrum masters are force multipliers of any given organization.  Scrum masters are servant leaders, they enforce scrum framework thereby injecting agility in organizations. They are coaches, enablers, mentors, leaders at the same time. They maximize the product value while working with product owners and team.

How does a day in life of scrum master look like?

Well that totally depends on the organization ! There are thousands of anti-pattern blogs out there to read about it.

This is how a scrum master work week should look like :

1. 15 minute standup with team - Daily

2. Sprint planning - Biweekly if you have 2 week sprint

3. Sprint Review - Biweekly  if you have 2 week sprint

4. Sprint Retrospective - Biweekly if you have 2 week sprint

5. Resolve blockers daily

Rinse n repeat every sprint!

Simple eh ? 

Not really. You need immense emotional intelligence , servant leader mindset to thrive in this role. In this role, no one reports to you, but you are responsible to enact scrum within teams and imbibe agile values. When you implement scrum framework, it unravels immense transparency in the team, you need to know how to deal with human reactions to transparency.  

However if you are comfortable being uncomfortable, go for it!

How to become a scrum master?

There are multiple ways to become a scrum master. 

But if you are a beginner,  I suggest going though the scrum guide : https://scrumguides.org/ .

If you are still interested, go ahead and try to implement it in your daily life. 

After running one sprint of scrum values in your daily life, retrospect!

Still interested? Yes, you are up for this role, lets try to find a training or may be a certification for you!

There are two  industry recognized organizations that provide scrum master certifications :

1. https://www.scrum.org/professional-scrum-certifications/professional-scrum-master-assessments

2. https://www.scrumalliance.org/get-certified

Enjoy this journey! This role changes your mindset! Have fun !