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Within the Scrum Framework, the Scrum Master wears a few different hats. One of these hats is the Coach hat. The coach has three core tasks:

Coaching the Scrum Team in their ongoing quest to improve themselves.
Coaching team members in adopting the Scrum and Agile mindset.
Coaching the environment of the Scrum Team on how to interact with the Scrum Team.

What is coaching actually? And how to do this? In this blog, I will dive into the coaching role of the Scrum Master.

What is coaching?

Nowadays you see the word coaching everywhere. The well-known coach roles in sports, but also in the working environment you will encounter more and more coaches. And yes, even for the care of your plants at home, you can now be assisted by a coach.

You come across coaching in various forms in society. Each of these points of view has a different definition of what coaching is precise. The Dutch Order of Professional Coaches (NOBCO) established a general definition for coaching in 2004. This definition shows that coaching is a structured and goal-oriented process in which the coached person is encouraged to conduct effectively by:

Creating awareness and personal growth.
Increasing self-confidence.
Exploring, developing, and applying own possibilities.

Coaching strives at bringing a change in behavior in the coached person, which makes a positive contribution to the whole. Coaching can be applied to individuals and groups.

How to coach?

Coaching encompasses when a coach and a coached person go through a process aimed at bringing about a change in the coached person. But how do you, as a coach, ensure that the coached changes his behavior?

Trust

During a coaching process, it is about the personal situation of the coached, about which skills to improve, and what thoughts and feelings the coached person has. The coached person must be able to trust that this information is treated confidentially.

Building a good relationship of trust between you and the coached person is essential. Take your time for this. What contributes to a good relationship of faith is to approach the coached person as he/she wants to be contacted. Take into account the personality of the coached person. Do not approach an introvert in an extroverted manner; this will cause the coached person to be uncomfortable. If you and the coached do not know how to contact each other, there are countless tools available to help. One of these is, for example, the Insights Discovery model.

Listening

I think the core of coaching is listening carefully to the coached person. This is not just about listening to what is being said, but also, and perhaps more importantly, listening to what is not being said. That is how Otto Scharmer described in his book ‘Theory U’ about the four different levels of listening:

Level 1; Downloading. At this level, there is actually no listening at all and we only hear what we already know, the rest is ignored.
Level 2; Actually listen. We listen with an open mind to what someone says. We show curiosity and ask questions about what is being said.
Level 3; Listen empathically. In addition to what is said, we also listen to the feelings of the other person and yourself. At this level we are also able to empathize with the other. We can see and feel the world the way the other person does.
Level 4; Listen generatively. At this level we are open to new ideas and insights, we see opportunities for the future. At this level there is real contact and thoughts can flow freely.

Be aware that your behavior also influences the coached person while listening. While listening, pay attention to your posture, and keep your focus on the conversation.

Structure

Another important aspect of coaching is structure. This creates a logical pattern in your conversations and you can work towards a concrete goal. Please note that the goal is always determined together with the coached person.

A widely used model for applying structure is the GROW model. GROW is an acronym for Goal, Reality, Options & Way forward. The GROW model has four phases:

Goal; In this phase, you explore together with the coached which goals he/she sees for themselves.
Reality; The coach and coach together determine the current situation.
Options; During this phase, the coaches explore various options.
Way forward; The coached appoints the next steps to work towards the set goal

While going through these phases, the coach can help the coached person by asking (the right) questions. You can use different styles.

Socratic questions

Asking critical, short questions that tie in with what the coached says. These questions help to create a good perception and to put the situation in a new perspective. Examples of this are:

Can you tell me what happened?
What makes it so difficult?
Do you have a blind-spot?

Provocative questions

A provocative approach is about challenging the coached person. Sometimes you have to hurt the coached person for this. Therefore, pay attention with this way that you apply this in a respectful way, preferably with the necessary humor. In this context, you often play the devil’s advocate. Questions to use in this approach are:

Why would you change? This are going currently going fine!
You can’t do that, can you?
Can you prove why it would work this time?

Solution-oriented questions

These questions are mainly aimed at finding the actual answers to personal questions. They contribute to exploring unused possibilities and developing qualities and skills. Think about:

What do you want to achieve?
On a scale of one to ten, where are you now?
Which possibilities do you have right now?

Development-oriented questions

With these kinds of questions you let the coached think about their own role and how to develop it. Examples of this are:

What did you do yourself to achieve your goals?
What worked well and what worked less well?
What role can I play in this?

When to coach?

Now that we’ve looked at the what and the how, is it time to see when you can now coach? Demand-driven coaching is important. Many do not like to be coached unsolicited just like that. For example, use the Sprint Retrospective to find out if (members of) the Scrum Team need coaching and what the focus should be. For example, use the standard Scrum Retrospective questions. In particular the questions ‘What can we do differently from now on?’ and “What don’t we understand yet?” can yield topics where the Scrum Master can coach the team.

If there are team members with a coach question, schedule a 1: 1 moment to get started.

Do your Daily Scrums often exceed the time-box or end up in a deep technical discussion only relevant to few team members? In this post, I will put down some practical ideas on how to have a more efficient Daily Scrum meeting.

What is the Daily Scrum?

As stated in the Scrum guide, the Daily Scrum is a 15-minute time-boxed event for the Development Team. The Daily Scrum occurs every day of the Sprint. The Team will inspect the work done since the last Daily Scrum and forecast on the upcoming work. By doing so, the Development Team optimizes collaboration and performance.
Besides this, the Development Team inspects the progress towards the Sprint Goal and how this is trending towards completing the Sprint Backlog. Doing so shall result in an increased understanding of how the team will work together reaching the Sprint Goal. As a result, the probability of reaching the Sprint Goal will also increase.

Why a good and efficient Daily Scrum is important

So no we know what the Daily Scrum is, let’s have a look at why it is so important for the team. First of all, as stated above, the Daily Scrum is the moment where the Development team inspects its progress towards the Sprint Goal. Secondly, the Daily Scrum meeting will improve communications within the Development Team. In the third place, because this meeting is the meeting where the team arranges the work, there is less (or no) need for other meetings. Another key aspect of a good Daily Scrum is the identification of impediments for development. And last but not least, during the Daily Scrum important information is shared about progress and approach which will improve the level of knowledge of the whole Development Team.

A few practical ideas to make the Daily Scrum more efficient

So, then what can you as a Scrum Master do to make the Daily Scrum more efficient? A few practical ideas are listed below.

Put items on the Parking Lot

It is not seldom the case that during the Daily Scrum topics arise that require a more in-depth discussion. And often those discussions are not a concern to the whole Development Team. Besides that is also pretty normal for people to tend to have those discussions straight away, on the spot.

Yes, the discussion must be held.
And, no, the Daily Scrum is not the correct place for these discussions.

A good practice to keep the Daily Scrum focussed and concise is to use a Parking Lot. Topics that arise and require discussion, but no during the Daily Scrum, can be placed on the parking lot. The items on the parking lot can then be discussed after the Daily Scrum by the team members for which it is relevant.

Bring ELMO into the room

Another approach to preventing the Daily Scrum from being hijacked by non-relevant discussions is to bring ELMO into the room. No, I don’t mean the puppet from Sesame Street. ELMO is the abbreviation for “Enough Let’s Move On”.

Whenever team members start a discussion that should not be held in the Daily Scrum any other team member can pull-off an ELMO. Often this is done by raising your hand and remain silent. Any other team member who spots ELMO being played should also play ELMO. This will result that after a few moments, most of the team will have played ELMO. The few persons having a discussion will highly likely automatically stop their discussion. After this, the meeting can continue in the way it should.

Use a talking token

Believe me, your team is not the first where Daily Scrums end up in discussions where all team members are talking at the same time. To bring a little more discipline in the meeting you can introduce a talking token. This token can be literally anything that you can hold in your hand (maybe bring your own team’s mascotte). During the Daily Scrum the person who holds the token, and only that person, is allowed to talk. When finished talking he/she can pass on the token to the next team member.

Focus on meeting the Sprint Goal

The intention of the Daily Scrum is to inspect the Sprint Plan and verify if this plan is still valid, simple as that. To be able to do so, the Development Team requires information on the progress towards the Sprint Goal to be available in the meeting. The Scrum Guide provides a bit of guidance on how this can be achieved. This is better known as the three questions for the Daily Scrum:

What did I do since the last Daily Scrum that helped the Development Team meet the Sprint Goal?
What will I do until the next Daily Scrum to help the Development Team meet the Sprint Goal?
Do I see any impediment that prevents me or the Development Team from meeting the Sprint Goal?

Yes, these questions do help teams get the required information out in the open. But often the Daily Scrum ends after answering these questions. As a result of this, the Daily Scrum becomes nothing more than a mere status update meeting.

So, instead of all team members answering these questions, I have tried the following in my Daily Scrums. During the meeting we inspect the status of the Sprint Backlog, we identify if there are any impediments on the work that we’re trying to deliver at the end of the Sprint. And then we answer the question:

Are we going to achieve the Sprint Goal?

Now, if the answer is a loud and clear “Yes”, we wrap up the meeting. Whilst at a negative response we find ourselves adapting to a new plan on how to still achieve the Sprint Goal.

This approach will not only focus on the more important thing of the Daily Scrum. It also steps away from individual status updates and leads to a better inspection of the team progress towards the Sprint Goal.

If everything fails…

You have tried everything you can as a Scrum Master, and the Daily Scrums still end up in technical deep-dives that last for hours? Then still there is no reason to panic as there is always one more thing you can do. Lately, I came across the “Daily Plank meeting“. In this approach, all Development Team members lay down on the floor during the Daily Scrum. Whenever you talk, you must keep a plank position. Guaranteed your Daily Scrum will be within the time-frame in no time!

Auteur: admin

The Scrum Master as Coach | How, what, and when?