Training your teams

… a post for ScrumMasters

Are you a ScrumMaster? Have you trained your team in Scrum?

I’m guessing most people will say yes at this point. When last did you train them? Look at your team members – were they all in that training? Often we forget about churn on a team, and when we look and think, about half the team wasn’t actually in that training.

But they are all going through the motions – meetings, artefacts, etc – they know what scrum is.

Do they? Or do they just know the mechanics? How may of them understand the values behind Scrum? Why do we have a Sprint Planning meeting anyway? And what is the point of the Review and the Retrospective?

As a ScrumMaster it is your responsibility to be the Master of the Process. To understand it. To live it. To teach it.

You have many options available to you. A full day training, perhaps just a 60 minute workshop on 1 topic. Inject some energy into the session by making it controversial, get your team to debate pro’s and con’s. Get your managers involved!

We know this can be a daunting task – especially if you have never created a training course before. Please don’t fall into the Death By Powerpoint trap! To truly master your craft (as a ScumMaster) you need to teach it, explain it. Every time I do Scrum training I cement the whys behind everything into my head. I become better at explaining the purpose of meetings and roles. You too will become better at this over time.

Even if your team has been doing Scrum for 3 years, pick a topic and see what happens when you train it. Inspect and adapt 🙂

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 We created this book “Growing Agile: A Coach’s Guide to Training Scrum” for this very purpose. To help ScrumMasters train their teams, either with a 2 day course, or just a 30 minute topic. We have done the hard work for you. Slides, training plans, activities, times etc. Brush up on your knowledge and give it a go – you’ll be amazed at how much YOU learn!

Growing Agile: A Coach’s Guide to Training Scrum with forewords from Ron Jeffries and Sharon Bowman.

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