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Is the role of Scrum master influenced by the pandemic in 2020?

06 Aug, 2020
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If the Scrum Master is not available to orchestrate the product delivery, bridge the gaps, and remove any impediments, a product will never be delivered even wors; A wrong product will be delivered.

To achieve this understanding, the Scrum Master must add value to the team as a natural leader, regardless of its geographical location.

Knowing about SCRUM glorifies the significance of the scrum master role.
SCRUM is a framework within which people can address complex adaptive problems, while productively and creatively delivering products of the highest possible value. Scrum is not a methodology. Scrum implements the scientific method of empiricism.

Over the past 20 years, Scrum has achieved an impressive level of maturity and is successfully adopted by technology companies of all sizes ranging from start-ups to major global enterprises. At its core, Scrum is an approach for iterative software development through small self-contained teams, achieving a clearly defined goal (functionality) in short bursts (typically 2-week sprints).

Right now, due to the outbreak of COVID-19, organizations are embracing Scrum

It will be a new experience for many employees who have not worked at home for a significant part of their careers, and for teams habituated to in-person interactions. Though this is not a new concept, it is becoming an organizational phenomenon as technology is making it easier for employees to work from any place and sharing the benefits.

How can a scrum master orchestrate the remote teams effectively?

The Scrum Master is responsible for ensuring that the product is being built the right way. He/she confirms that the team is being productive by assisting the team in implementing the Scrum process. He/she also helps remove any obstructions to progress during the sprint. They work directly with the teams, training them to self-organize and shielding them. They create an environment for people to embellishment, which serves to motivate agile teams and holds a mirror up to the team to help them observe and adapt. They ask thoughtful questions and provide their observations.

In the present situation with geographically dispersed team members,

Remote ScrumMaster concept had a positive experience working remotely in diverse roles on agile teams. Proper technology in place is a requirement for working remotely, but once the tools are in place, there is no loss of value or time. We can see some loss of communication efficiency, but there "Might be a real benefit from the ScrumMaster not being physically present, in that people would no longer be able to look at the ScrumMaster and report the status to him or her…This would scale back the ‘manager effect’ of the ScrumMaster being physically present and ‘running’ the meeting, and would, therefore, contribute to team self-organization."

Some other factors that we need to consider when deciding whether the “remote ScrumMaster” approach works or not.

As per the current situation, everyone is working remotely and it is going to be a little longer time so if the team is truly self-organized, this should present no issues at all hence this will give ScrumMaster the ability to concentrate on the tasks that do not require input from the team. It also endorses a sense of ownership within the team and inspires team members to resolve problems. Even if there’s a small decrease in communication effectiveness, those aids will justify a ScrumMaster being remote.

It does not matter whether or not a ScrumMaster is remote if the trust between a ScrumMaster and the team is central. If the ScrumMaster is remote, the team members can fulfill their commitments, continuously advance, and preserve the atmosphere of complete transparency and trust. At any point in time continuously building a development and cooperation method that helps to deliver value to the client is very important.

The role of a scrum master in a remote environment is a combination of two big challenges.

When Experimenting with translating exercises and activities to a remote environment it’s easier to miss some red flags. you can use Confluence page or build a whiteboard for your team in any other tool which

  • Need to be accessible by everyone.
  • It should be like something you see when you enter the team’s “virtual space”, be it a Slack channel, a Confluence space, or a JIRA instance.
  • Make it Easy to edit and manage by every team member.
  • The main purpose of this is to collect the relevant and engaging information.

The second biggest challenge is building trust.

Building trust is critical for active collaboration. The first steps may be tough, but when you focus on encouraging self-confidence and maintaining transparency you have all the foundations you need. focus on building trust from both inside the technical team and between the technical team and the client or whole business team on the client-side. Make sure the team has some space for having fun together. Just a few ideas to spark their imagination. Always Maintain transparency between development and business to make sure to build the product in the right way.

Above all this remote work requires maturity. Self-reliance and self-regulation of the team is an important topic when working remotely because both the cost of the failure and the payoff from success is doubled.

Finally, it’s a Scrum Masters’s role to guarantee that the organization understands what it means to involve with a Scrum team, regardless of the working location.

The world is chaotic right now and this sudden transition to remote work can feel stressful.   Being a ScrumMaster on a distributed team is challenging One has to adopt and evolve.

Can a scrum master code and test 😉 ?

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