Looking for a facilitator

5 traps
for a scrum master

don't become victim of the system

Trap 1: Start to Serve (be helpful)

It is quite easy to become some kind of an administrator within the teams you work with: It is the human thing that you want to establish good relationships with a team. And so you introduce yourself as a friend. You start to solve existing problems they can solve themselves.

Get out the serving role. Your mission is crystal clear, you are there to improve the system. So stop doing the repetivtive operational tasks. In stead of being the decision maker or solver, start forwarding and sharing information. When you come across a problem, don't jump to a conclusion, but dig deeper. Analyse the situation to get a better understanding.

Trap 2: Get involved into the Work

You are mister do it all. You not only faciliate, but you are doing the work in refinements, planning, creating epics, contacting stakeholders... . You on your own are a team within the team, despite having enough professional at your disposal.

Give your team the opportunity to do the work and learn in the process. You help to build a system that is doing the work instead of doing the work yourself. Teach your team on how to run effective refinements. Explain to your team how to refactor complicated coding. You coach, teach and facilitate.

Trap 3: Owning the process

You are the master of ceremony. People start moving because you own what happens in the process. The daily scrum only runs when you are there to say "go" and share your screen. Retrospectives during your holidays never happen, because you are not there to plan, prepare and run the session. But the thing is... you don't own the process, your teams should own it.

Switch to enabling the process of continuous improvement inside your team. Learn your team about being responsible. Your team is the engine of the process. As a coach, you teach the team and the players to own the process, tactics and rules. Once there, the desire to improve emerge from the team and players themselves.

Trap 4: Work only with teams

Your team has picked of the responsibility to own their process. But you have only been focussing on the team. And while that is already great, you really want a healthy eco-system in which the team operates. So product and organisational constraints need to get the proper attention as well.

You remeber that the actual goal was to improve the whole stream of value delivery. And so you turn your attention to the bottlenecks in the system.

Trap 5: Have no exit strategy

Sooner or later the system will adapt you and you will start to defend existing process in stead of challenging them. Logic, because you can't improve the system forever. Time to reconsider the value you add.

Looking at what is at your disposal when you start on a mission is essential. What is the vision and the kind of ideal prototype you aim to achieve. The vision you had in your mind is answering the question: "where do you want to be with this team in 2 years from now. That vision should be aspirational and in that vision you can start identifying intermediate steps to make as soon as you further understand the system. Never forget that despite you have a vision for the long run, that it is the team's system and the ownership is within the team.

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