Harnessing Team’s History: The Key to a New Scrum Master’s Impact-Start
I was going through this article on reddit — which has a lot of useful and practical tips to help a new Scrum master succeed in his or her role after joining a new scrum team.
Even for an experienced Scrum Master, joining a new team in a new environment can be an important and potentially nerve-wracking moment. While the prior experience equips you with knowledge and skills, every team, organization, and project brings unique challenges, dynamics, and expectations. Isn’t it?
And often the Scrum Master’s role involves fostering trust, aligning with the team’s working style, and understanding the organizational culture — all of which usually takes time and a lot of effort.
So, how do you as a scrum master or servant leader approach this new journey?
One of the ways I personally found it helpful to “know” a new scrum team is to review the retrospective points captured by the team from their previous Sprints.
The retrospective points captured by the Scrum team from previous Sprints are usually documented in a way that is accessible to the team for future reference.
The specific format or location of these records can vary depending on the team’s practices and tools, but there are some common methods used widely in the industry. For example, many teams use digital tools like Jira, Confluence, Trello, Miro, or Notion to document and organize retrospective feedback.
If your team uses one of these tools, the retrospective points are often stored in a specific section or board labeled for Sprint retrospectives.
Some teams maintain a running document (like a Word file, Google Doc, or shared Excel sheet) where they record the “What went well,” “What didn’t go well,” and “Action items” from each retrospective. You can ask the team or the previous Scrum Master if such a document exists.
So, once you get an access to the “historical” record of your team’s retro, what should you do next?
I would look for at least 2 key things: recurring challenges, and areas of improvement that they have already identified.
Here’s why I think they’re important:
- Recurring Challenges: Identifying challenges that appear consistently over multiple retrospectives can highlight persistent issues that the team is struggling to resolve. These could be related to technical hurdles, team collaboration, communication gaps, process inefficiencies, or external dependencies. Recognizing these recurring challenges helps you prioritize them and work on root causes, ensuring that they are addressed in a structured way. By tackling these recurring problems early on, you can create an environment where the team feels supported and can move toward higher performance.
- Areas of Improvement: Looking at the areas where the team has identified room for growth can guide you in understanding how the team perceives its own performance. These might include things like improving communication, adopting better tools, refining workflows, or enhancing sprint planning. As a new Scrum Master, understanding these improvement points helps you align your support and coaching to meet the team’s needs, set realistic expectations, and foster continuous improvement.
While there may be many other insights you can gather from the retrospective data, focusing on these two points can provide immediate value and help you build a solid foundation for your role.
As a new Scrum Master, you may feel the need to address many more aspects at once.
Starting with only 2 or 3 key areas generally helps you prioritize what needs the most attention, especially if the team is experiencing frustration or inefficiency in certain areas. It also allows you to create a sense of momentum, where the team can start seeing tangible improvements right away.
What do you do when you join a new team as a scrum master or other similar role? Do let me know your thoughts and thanks for your attention and time.
