Software Practices

VSH04 Top 10 Ways to Go from Good to Great Scrum Master

11/16/2017

8:00am - 9:15am

Level: Advanced

Benjamin Day

Consultant & Trainer

Benjamin Day Consulting, Inc.

The Scrum Master role in an organization can be difficult. You live between a rock and a hard place. You're influential but you probably don't have any real power. You're not a project manager but you're on the hook for delivering. You're asked to promise dates when the best you can give is a forecast. You're long on responsibility and short on power. (Awesome.) But you do it because it's a great job, right? There's nothing like helping your team come together and deliver actual working software.

It takes a special kind of person to be Scrum Master - Nerves of steel, a lot of finesse, and some ridiculously great people skills. It's a lot of knowing what to look for and knowing how to fix it. Even better if you can anticipate issues and get in front of them. What can you do to help keep everything on track? How do you have the difficult conversations when things are 'sub-optimal'? From that lazy guy on your team, to the Product Owner who doesn't like to estimate, to you losing your mind because you're always picking up the slack. How do you help your team to solve problems and really sing? You're a good Scrum Master. Come find out how to be great.

You will learn:

  • If you're a technically-oriented Scrum Master, how do you help your team?
  • The right balance between Big-Design-Up-Front, Emergent Architecture, and suicidally reckless non-planning
  • How to efficiently align Teams with Products