Situation
Problem: most SMs are really only meetings facilitators, which is not cool and not effective; it also doesn’t allow reusing all power of Scrum framework.
Goal: Make SM a person who challenges the team and helps them to improve.
Actions: Happiness index metrics, with approach of implementing improvements (or problems solving) in next sprints as highest priority; Re-energizing retrospective of retrospectives: looking for new formats, enabling scrum masters to make decisions.
Expectations: it’s a long and interesting trip of a cultural change 🙂
Retrospectives play important role here. But what is retrospective and how should it happen? Is retrospective a meeting where you list what went well, what didn’t, and what you want to change? E.g. “A team member might say he felt he had to complete work that should have been completed by another team member. Or a team member might say she received emails constantly which prevented her from getting any work done….”
While a retrospective may help you solve this type of problems or improve the way you work, not all problem-solving or process-improvement is a retrospective. I think there is no need in a retrospective to solve daily problems; it can be done on every day basis.
To make company better place to work following concepts must be kept in mind while doing retrospective on different levels:
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Building a shared picture
- Different people notice different things, even when working together in the same environment
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Joint learning
- As representatives from different teams and different point of views we can form a joint perspective of what is happening and what is now possible. It doesn’t mean we all must agree, but different points of views should enable us to learn and look for opportunities
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Taking actions/Making decisions (the thing that we are missing sometimes)
- It is not about only “fixing problems”. It’s about decisions based on join learning, which might be making experiments to try out something new, or maybe even to decide not to change anything for a while.
Remember! Scrum Master is not the one who only organizes daily stand ups, planning and review meetings. He is the person who challenges the team and helps them to improve.