10 tips to earn trust with your team as a scrum master

One of the first tasks of any good Scrum Master is to get to know the team and earn trust with the team. It is actually a prerequisite for you to be able to change anything in the team in the long term. TTherefore, every experienced Scrum Master has a portfolio of ideas and techniques. These approaches have proven effective in practice, and he uses them regularly.. Check out at least a few tips that help me with this.

10 proven tips for earning trust with the team

1. For the first 1-2 weeks, just watch how the team works, don’t want to change the team without knowing it. Let them explain what the team does and how its delivery works. What works and what doesn’t work in the team? Get to know the product, what the team produces. It has proven useful to secure access to the test environment. I then click through the application myself or together with a colleague, such as a tester. Discuss with your team and your stakeholders expectations for agility in the team as well as expectations for your role.

2. I found it more useful when the Scrum Master role is dedicated. Combining it with other roles can distract from working with the team.

3. Help the team remove obstacles, but always explain how you achieved it. This will increase their self-sufficiency and you will free up your hands for any other team.

4. It is ideal to implement Scrum or scale it so that it always helps to solve a specific problem of the team. A nice example can be found in Matěj Nešetřil’s article My experience with team scaling.

5. In some companies, the transition to agile working brings very large changes. Teams often cannot accept everything at once. When you discuss too many major changes, people may start to see them as science fiction. In such a situation, the team may choose a path that does not align with agility. You may not be able to bring them back immediately.

At such a moment, warn the team that you do not think they are going the right way. But at the same time, let them try out your design to gain their own experience. Agree with the team to return to the topic later. Then evaluate whether the approach works or not. But beware. Do this only when you know the mistake will not have serious consequences for delivery or for the company. Likewise, I do not recommend letting the team fail at everything related to agility. They have you to help them.

6. f the team asks why you implement certain agile practices, never refer to the Scrum Guide or framework websites. Always have a practical answer ready. Explain how the practice will help the team in their daily work.

7.Be with the team and don’t get overloaded. The fact that you have too many teams, or too many people in teams, no one will remember in the future. Instead, people will remember that you don’t care enough about teams. The scrum master’s task is, among other things, to teach people to prioritize and limit how much they do in parallel in order to maintain focus. We must set an example ourselves in this. You can read more about this topic in the article How many teams can an agile coach have at once?

8. One of the important qualities of a good scrum master or coach is patience. Many companies have incurred a large technical and organizational debt over the years. In other words, the quality of applications, but also the organization of the entire company, has had some shortcomings over the years. And unfortunately, these problems mean that an organization cannot move toward agility overnight. In such a situation, verify that the reasons are objective and agree on how and when you will resolve the problem.

Example:

Several teams work with one monolithic system, which needs to be tested in its entirety whenever a change is made due to technical debt. So you have a problem with how to test the app’s increment in a sprint. For example, you can solve this by dividing the system into modules that you can test separately. However, every modularization comes at a cost, and the company does not always choose to make application changes that the client does not recognize. At such a moment, one possible solution is to wait with the adjustments for a suitable opportunity and combine the modularization with one of the other customer projects.

9. When someone does not initially support an agile approach, it does not automatically mean that they are the enemy. 😊 The company’s setup and systems often lead people to adopt specific behavior patterns.Therefore, always try to find out what is the primary cause that leads him to this action, although it may not always be easy. Subsequently, you will be able to make a change that will be effective and will make sense to people.

Example:

• team members do not collaborate on a common team goal because they have set individual performance goals and are currently able to represent themselves.
• a member of another team will not own the goals of our team as if they were his and will not creatively invent with us how to build the whole solution beyond its subcontracting. He will only look at our assignment as a subcontractor. In such a situation, this is due, for example, to the fact that the other team has its other goals and we may not have the right design of the teams.

10. Want to have the opportunity to get to know the team and the product owner before you take care of the team. It is very important for all parties to sit down humanely when you spend most of your time together in the future.

Hopefully the tips I have given here will help you and if you want to share your experience how to earn trust with the team do not hesitate to write to us.

Tip: Interested in more practical experience? You can learn a lot more in the Scrum in practice training.

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