I can’t juggle. But this post isn’t about me. Instead, let me introduce our latest curated experience report author and Scrum Master juggler Iurii Ialtanskii.
In his report, Parallel Juggling while Coaching Multiple Teams, Iurii shares his experiences juggling his duties as a Scrum Master in support of multiple teams.
OK, Iurii didn’t have to juggle beach balls, bowling pins, and ping pong balls at the same time, but he did juggle Scrum Master duties between different teams. Each team had its unique needs, skills, challenges, and aspirations.
Iurii never had to support more than two teams at a time. So, this sounds like a relatively easy task, right? I’ll let you decide.
Remember the Manifesto: People Over Processes
While it might be tempting to follow the same basic approach with different teams, that wasn’t Iurii’s style. He writes: “While time management is important, switching contexts can be hard, too. If you are spread too thin, you might not have enough ‘free’ time to have the necessary conversations to find out what is going on.” He advises Scrum Masters to get to know their new Agile team and to strive not to be always busy and at the center of things.
Get to Know Your Scrum Team and Customize
As Iurii found ways to help his teams improve the ways they worked, he didn’t try to force-fit the same practice everywhere. Instead, he sought to find out what support they needed, practices they needed to refine, or skills they needed to acquire. And then he went about helping them do so.
One thing that impresses me about Iurii is his penchant for fostering simpler, more effective ways of working—whether it be how to run an effective retrospective, estimating work, or handling customer support duties.
I hope Iurii’s report inspires you to ask, “How can I leverage my past experiences while at the same time listening, experimenting, and offering fresh new ideas to help my team improve?”
Share Your Own Agile Experience
If you’d like to share with others what you’ve learned on your Agile journey, I encourage you to consider writing an experience report. The Agile Experiences Program is interested in hearing your ideas and helping you write your story.
Footnotes
If you are interested in learning how to juggle, there are some easy-to-follow step-by-step instructions on Wikihow. It is one thing to juggle same-sized and shaped items. Even more skill is required to juggle different-sized and shaped items, let alone Scrum Teams.
