Our website uses cookies to improve your online experience. By continuing to use our website you consent to cookies being used according to our Privacy Policy.

OK

Hiring a Freelance Scrum Master

Why and when you need a Scrum Master

Scrum Master is a critical role that requires a subtle combination of facilitation and enablement while staying focused on the delivery.
COVID-19 has led to the evolution of a critical need for Scrum Masters to sustain the emotional wellbeing of people as individuals and scrum teams, in addition to the key areas of facilitating key ceremonies and ensuring effectiveness of the team.

The main areas of development are concentrated around the emotional side of individuals and teams. Good listening and observation skills in this age of distraction are some of the prized assets of an excellent Scrum Master.

Getting a certification as a Scrum Master does not make you a good scrum master. It actually doesn’t even qualify you as a scrum master. This is not a multiple-choice tick box exercise. The role requires practical hands-on experience of facilitating teams and working with challenging varied personalities in complex environments within a global workforce. A Scrum Master requires good theoretical knowledge of scrum frameworks in addition to a deep experience of servant leadership and coaching mindset in pursuit of excellence.

A good Scrum Master can help the teams in virtually everything about how they work and live with higher motivation.

Find and hire the best and most qualified Scrum Master freelancers through Outvise paying only for the time/project you need them.

Certified Scrum masters in the Network

case study
Transformation case study from a Scrum Master in the Utility & Telecom industries

Challenge, Context, Problems to be solved

Achieving a 35% global market share in Telecom Asset Management is a huge achievement, however maintaining it is an even bigger challenge. This telecom utilities department had been Agile for two 2 years when they approached me with a view to up the ante. Despite working in an agile way, the teams suffered from low motivation as they were tired of working round-the-clock one sprint after another.

They had been executing back-to-back Sprints and Releases for years which eventually resulted in the teams being demotivated and exhausted. Sprint is a fast-paced, energized work cycle that releases a product / software or part of it at the end of each cycle and the un-ending “hamster wheel” without any gaps would drive even the most talented and gifted employees crazy. The question was simple. How could we ensure productivity in Agile teams without compromising team motivation?

Mission, tools and methodology

Even a true sprinter like Usain Bolt does not run daily sprints. Such athletes need to pace themselves and provide the much-required breathing space for their body to recover and perform at its optimal strength. Similarly, the employees, even a cream of professionals in their field, cannot deliver consecutive Sprints for too long without feeling trapped and exhausted.

Diagnosis:

Our first step was talking to the demotivated professionals and engaging with them to recognize their pain points. They were not just demotivated; they were angry and frustrated. They would storm out of the meetings in frustration sometimes. Feeling of being trapped in a Hamster’s Wheel was the root cause. Based on two decades of my personal research, I have seen time and time again that lack of productivity is merely a symptom of a deeper root cause. The main challenge & root cause is the lack of motivation and innovation.

Prescription:

I began an 18-month transformation program with the team by focusing on Motivation. Although the teams were Agile, they were trained with the sole focus on productivity. I believe that you cannot be productive if you are not motivated enough.

I began engaging the Telecom teams so they could visualize their progress and retrospective actions by making cumulative flow diagrams, doodling technology solutions and using visualising work using KanBan boards. This was to get their creativity flowing. Creativity inspires motivation and innovation. To enhance motivation, I laid emphasis on Autonomy, Master and Purpose across teams.

To help the team get some breathing space between sprints, a novel concept of innovation weeks was introduced for the team to brainstorm, pitch innovative ideas, or do whatever they want as long as they presented it at the end of the week. For a whole week the employees came up with a range of creative ideas and presented a demo at the end. When the idea is yours, you own it. You go an extra mile to make it a success. And that reinvigorates innovation and motivation in the team working behind the idea. As the Innovation Week concluded, a total of 9 ideas were presented to the Product Owners and at the spot they removed 3 features from the existing product to incorporate the top 3 ideas presented at the innovation week demo.

Achieved results

  • The outcome of these sessions on innovation week was overwhelming as it unlocked people’s true potential by providing them with a breathing space to explore their creative ideas without the typical delivery focused grind for a week. The department broke its records on innovation and their product sales skyrocketed.
  • With the help of a combination of emotional, visualized and varied facilitation process - I ensured productivity in the teams without compromising team motivation. The three-step methodology from Diagnosis to Prescription to Lifestyle change, helped us produce tangible useful outcomes.

Must have Scrum Master skills beyond enabling delivery

  • Team Motivation
  • Team Emotional Intelligence
  • Growth Mindset
  • Virtual Facilitation
  • Virtual Visualization Techniques
  • Agile Endocrinology
  • Coaching Teams

Responsibilities of this role

  • The emotional wellbeing of teams and individual team members is now a fundamental responsibility of authentic scrum mastery.
  • This key role now demands a wide and deep experience beyond facilitating the core ceremonies including Daily Standups, Planning, Sprint Review, Demos and Retrospectives. 
  • Helping the team remove the barriers/ blockers and ensuring focus on sprint goals with delivery of outputs and generation of the required outcomes are all part of the responsibilities of being an effective Scrum Master.

Challenges and hot topics for a Scrum Master

  • The COVID-19 pandemic has led to widening of the scope of this role (as understood before COVID-19).
  • This role now demands provision of individual and team emotional support by picking up the early signs of frustrations and emotional roller coasters.
  • The Scrum Masters with too much delivery focus are not suitable for being in this role in the near future. With most team members now working remotely or being geographically spread, the new norms and disciplines are to be introduced and sustained with high emotional intelligence.
  • Scrum Masters cannot work effectively without the deep understanding of team level emotions and dynamics.
  • Keeping the team engaged, motivated and most importantly aligned to a shared vision are some of the upcoming challenges in this growing virtual global workforce.
  • A Scrum Master requires good theoretical knowledge of scrum frameworks in addition to a deep experience of servant leadership and coaching mindset in pursuit of excellence.