Introduction
The role of a scrum master is perhaps the most underrated and least understood by all who are new to Agile. While some confuse the role of a Scrum Master to that of a Project Manager, others underestimate the importance of a Scrum Master to the success of a project. Scrum masters possess a unique combination of skills that include: domain knowledge, technical knowledge, and soft skills. While all good scrum masters are excellent scrum coaches what differentiates the best from the rest is a winning blend of their soft skills.
Playing the ScrumMaster role of the book is not enough. Successful ScrumMasters have developed many skills throughout their experience, often soft ones. We present hereunder a handful of such soft skills that we have identified as important during our own experiences as ScrumMasters and Scrum team members
Top 10 soft skills for a career change to Scrum Master
Communication
My previous role in education required me to discuss my ideas and plans with a variety of people. We also had to deliver messages to many teams of audiences and develop those messages in a way that would be beneficial to every team of people. This translates well to the project management and Scrum Master role, in which communication is a major part of your duties. You often have to deliver messages to your team, the customer, and the project. You will have to customize the message to each target team.
Good listening
As important as it is to deliver messages to a variety of teams, it is just as important to accurately receive those messages by listening and sometimes observing the behavioral cues of the different audiences. Being empathetic and a good listener are valuable soft skills for a Scrum Master.
Persistence
Persistence is an important skill to successfully change careers, and it is a crucial and useful skill as a Scrum Master. Removing impediments, organizing meetings for your team, and on times simply getting everybody to attend those meetings takes persistence. Since changing careers alone take a lot of persistence, tap into that drive that helped you with your change to keep the momentum going to obtain your goal and use it in your job.
Facilitation
Facilitating discussions and meetings between parties is one of the skills required to be an effective Scrum Master. You should coordinate and facilitate the Scrum rituals for your team and help them use Scrum to its fullest potential.
Accountability
This isn’t so much skill but an attribute or quality to have in any job you do. As a Scrum Master, it is important that your team and the business know they can count on you. You are human, and you are not perfect, but rather you need to demonstrate that you can be relied upon. If you make a mistake, own up to it and work to fix it.
Organization
This is a valuable skill that translates well across many industries. As a Scrum Master, you should ensure that many of the processes that support Scrum operations within your team exist and are being used to their fullest potential. You will own the tracking of the teams’ development using Scrum artifacts.
Servant leadership
Servant leadership means helping teams work toward their best selves. It includes a lot of mentoring, coaching, training, and encouraging teams to build on their strengths and eliminate their weaknesses. whether it has been in your past career or in your personal life, think of ways you have done this and draw from those experiences to use in your role as Scrum Master.
Optimism
It’s important to be optimistic. As a Scrum Master, make sure that your team maintains up to high morale. Help them to see the bright side of things; it develops their work.
Team player
Collaboration is important for a Scrum Team. As a Scrum Master, create an environment that invites collaboration and champion collaborative behavior. This is a skill you might have used in your previous career or personal life. Draw from those encounters and utilize them as a Scrum Master.
Flexibility
Be open to change. The fact that you are changing careers shows how open to change you are. This is an important skill while getting to be Agile. It is human nature to fear change and the unknown. As a Scrum Master, you can help your team with being available to the changes that they will face as they adopt an agile culture. A good mindset to adopt is to become comfortable with being uncomfortable.
Conclusion
The conclusion is that the Scrum Master removes impediments, guides the team members in Scrum practices, and protects them against the outer interferences. Thus, the Scrum Master ensures the sustainability of a project by taking appropriate actions. In addition, Scrum Master organizes Scrum events whenever required and plans Scrum implementation. With the above-mentioned scrum master skills, scrum master improves the skills of his team members, which, in turn, increases productivity.
For more blogs: https://blog.aleph-technologies.com/
Aleph Technologies is a premier IT training and staffing group with state of the art facilities based in Dallas, Texas. Aleph Technologies specializes in providing hands-on classroom based and onsite IT certification training courses taught by expert instructors with practical industry experience.
