A day in the life of a Scrum Master

5:00 am - Usually get up and go to the gym for at least 45 minutes, but given the fact that we are working from home now, I will either walk/run on the treadmill or jump rope for 30 minutes

5:45 am - Shower up and get dressed

6:15 am - Have some breakfast and make coffee/espresso

6:40 am - Drive into work

7:00 am - I get to work and clean up the team room before the team gets in

8:00 am - Read emails and respond to priority emails from the team, team’s manager or agile coach

8:45 am - Get a fill-up of coffee from the break room

9:00 am - I typically will spend time just checking in with the team and taking a look at the team’s Jira Scrum board just to see if there are any patterns of behavior I might need to address. Also, modify the team’s impediment board if an impediment or impediments have been removed

10:00 am - Daily Scrum (time-boxed for 15 minutes)

10:15 am - Any parking lot items are discussed right after

11:00 am - I might have a meeting with the team’s manager, leadership, or facilitate a community of practice or brown bag lunch around topics like effective engineering practices for example

12:00 pm - During this time, I might have a lunch meeting or coffee with a product owner

1:00 pm - Lunch - usually 30 minutes is more than enough time for me

1:30 pm - I could be facilitating a backlog refinement event leading up to Sprint planning also could be a Sprint review/demo or Sprint Retrospective

2:30 pm - Meet with Test Automation or DevSecOps Team

3:00 pm - I facilitate a team-building workshop

4:00 pm - I do final check-ins with team and then answer final emails

4:30 pm - Update the team’s Scrum journal

5:00 pm - I complete my To Do list for the next day

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Scrum is a framework in which software development teams deliver working software in increments of 30 days or less. There are three roles: Scrum Master, Product Owner, and Development Team. A Scrum Master is a facilitator, coach, teacher/mentor, and servant/leader that guides the development team through executing the Scrum framework correctly.

A Scrum Master removes impediments and helps the team to become self-organizing and empowered to create, innovate, and make decisions for themselves as one team.

The Scrum Master is a master of the daily Scrum, Sprint planning, Sprint review, and Sprint retrospectives.

I had been in traditional IT for many years prior to becoming a Scrum Master. I eventually decided that I could use other skills such as my business experience and management experience to work with software development and DevOps teams to create high-performing teams.

Software/DevOps teams use Scrum to deliver software faster, incrementally, and with a high level of quality and sustainability. To me, it was a great decision. Being a Scrum Master is also about removing impediments. I coach the team on how to solve their own problems, but if it becomes necessary, I will step in and help resolve the issues.

The Scrum Master role is fun, exciting, and fulfilling, but also pressure-filled and stressful sometimes. But it ultimately is worth it as I get to see my teams grow and not only deliver best in class software, but become better people.

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