What follows is the list of competencies that I believe a great Scrum Master / agile Iteration Manager should develop over time.
August 2014: I updated list in conjunction with adding my Agile Coach Competencies blog. Additionally a two page PDF cheat sheet of Scrum Master Competencies are now available.
Organising the Team
* Knowledge of Scrum rules* Communicating internally
* Communicating externally
* Up to date Team level documentation
* Reporting team status
* Involving whole team in Sprint planning
- Setting clear elevating goals
- Appropriate commitment level
- Ownership of the commitment
- Adjustment of the Sprint Plan
* Provides Clear Direction
- Set clear and elevating goals
- Balances conflicting team priorities
- Focuses team on delivering priority/valuable items
- Limits team WIP
* Dealing with impediments
- Identifying impediments
- Resolving team impediments
- Resolving cross team impediments
- Appropriate Escalation
* Effective Facilitation
- Outcome focused Meetings
- Time Boxing
- Adjusting to different situations
- Dealing with Difficult people
- Observe while participating
- Be Participant and Facilitator
- Create safety
- Root Cause Analysis
* Using Collaborative engagement techniques
- Planning Poker
- Fast Estimation
- Visual Planning
- Dot Voting
- Story Maps
- Brainstorming
- Cause Effect Diagrams
Improving the team
* Managing Technical Debt* Establishing a good Team Culture
- Celebrate successes
- Social bonding
- Supporting each other
- Promotes cross skilling
- Let’s the team experience failures
* Improving team members
- Providing Feedback
- Motivating
- Coaching
- Teaching
* Using Agile Technical Practices
- Refactoring
- Agile Testing
- Test First
- Test Driven Development
- Acceptance Test Driven Development
- Continuous Integration
- Pair Programming
- Simple Design
* Using Continuous Validated Learning
- Plan, Do, Check, Act
- Designing Experiments
- Collecting & using Data
- Safe to Fail
- Varied Retrospective Approaches
* Leading change
- Effective Retrospectives
- Influence without authority
- Challenging the status quo
- Kaizen / Continuous Improvement
- Celebrate successes
* Using Lean principles in decisions
- Eliminate waste
- Build Quality in
- Create Knowledge
- Defer Commitment
- Deliver Fast
- Respect People
- Optimise the whole
Establishing a Self-organising team
* Exhibit Servant leadership* Exhibit Scrum Values
* Using Agile Principles in decisions
* Ownership of team commitments
* Making it visible & get the team to take action
* Get team to identify and remove impediments
* Involving whole team in grooming / design
* Involving whole team in medium term planning
* Encouraging ‘leaders’ within the team
* Do yourself out of a job
Thinking Big
* Basic medium term planning* Visualise teams medium term progress
* Ownership of Department level commitments
* Optimising the whole
- High level knowledge of medium term plan for all teams
- Volunteering to help other teams
* Communicating with other teams
* Identifying and resolving cross team impediments
* Improving cross team Technical Practices
* Recording appropriate feature information for future teams
* Up to date Department level documentation
* Up to date Company level documentation
* Improving other Scrum Masters and POs
- Providing Feedback
- Motivating
- Supporting
Self-Development
* Balances Responsibilities of SM, Team Contribution, Self-Development
* Learns by reading / researching
* Learns by experimenting / doing
* Learns by discussing
* Coachable
User Stories
* Formats* Personas
* INVEST
* Splitting Approaches
* Vertical Slicing
* Sizing
Other Characteristics
* Patient* Assertive
* Self-Starter
* Organised
- Prepares well for meetings
* Consistent
* Understands people
Getting Team Based Results
* Team delivering consistently* Team regularly finishing their top priority stories first
* Team regularly finishing >=33% of stories prior to the Sprint half way mark
* Team and PO collaborating extensively on stories (planning, splitting, design, implementation, verification)
* Team not building up inappropriate Technical Debt
* Retrospectives regularly result in positive changes
* Innovation is occurring
Your Thoughts...
Have I missed anything?Is there any that you disagree with?
Photo Credit: angus clyne via Compfight cc
