“I went back to the office after completing the 2-day Certified ScrumMaster course. People expected me to have answers and solutions, but nobody was offering me any support. I felt lost and alone.”
Heard that before? Yes, we had too. So a group of us at a Scrum retreat in June 2014 decided to do something about it. Our team had a range of experience and knowledge, from newbie Scrum Masters to CSCs, but our joint focus for the two days was to produce solutions for the above situation. We came up with various ideas, including a toolbox of resources that Scrum Masters (and others) could use to help them, but our most significant concepts both revolved around the idea of community.
Firstly, we identified a gap for face-to-face knowledge sharing amongst peers. Similar to the foreign student exchange programmes that many of us used to take part in when at school, this would entail two ScrumMasters (at different organisations) spending time with each other and the teams they work with. The aim will be to learn from one another, ask questions about each other’s practices, provide feedback and offer support.
Secondly, we wanted to investigate the idea of a mentor programme: more experienced practitioners helping those just starting out. Scrum and Kanban already has its Scrum mentorship programme, but we were discussing something on a much larger scale.
I am very excited about both of these concepts and we are currently working towards an initial roll-out to attendees at the retreat. Once we’ve established that they work on a small-ish scale, we intend to roll them out to a wider audience.
Hopefully we will soon be able to dispatch the sense of loneliness and abandonment that many new ScrumMasters are experiencing.