Brace Yourselves, a New Scrum Master is Coming: How to Transition onto Existing Teams
Joining a team that is already doing agile can be one of the biggest challenges for a Scrum Master. Starting a team from scratch allows you to help guide the team into best practices as you have learned them. What about when the team already has practices they believe in and agreed to? What if those practices aren't working for them, or are seen by management as not working?
This session will first provide strategies to approach joining an existing team as an agile leader. We will look at ways to integrate yourself into a team, methods of introducing process changes, and how to work with your leadership's perception of a team in flux. We will also discuss on how you can adapt and change as an agile leader, along with how to make yourself more open to accepting alternate approaches to agile.
Utilizing this information and our collective lessons learned, we will craft a set of best practices for Scrum Masters joining a new team and how leadership can assist in these changes.
Outline/Structure of the Talk
This session will begin with a discussion of some of the more common situations transitioning Scrum Masters find themselves in, along with the key elements to prepare for in each. It will progress into a presentation of strategies and approaches to managing these transitions. At various points in the session, participants will be encouraged to provide their own examples of transitions, challenges, and lessons learned. Together, we will craft a set of best practices for Scrum Masters joining a new team and how leadership can assist in these changes.
Learning Outcome
- Understand strategies to approach transitioning onto existing agile teams as an agile leader
- Ways to assist an agile leader that is transitioning onto an existing agile team
- Lessons learned from other agile practitioners on this topic
Target Audience
Scrum Masters
Prerequisites for Attendees
Participants should have a knowledge of agile practices and a basic knowledge of agile leadership roles.