Avoid these 5 Rookie Mistakes as a Scrum Master

Everyone has to start small. And so every Scrum Master has also been new to their role. To make it easier for you to get started in the role, here are the top five mistakes that I see new Scrum Masters make time and time again.

1. Mechanical Scrum/Zombie Scrum

• Mistake: You have learned what the Scrum framework needs to work. You start in a new team and without looking around you start to crunch things and align to the Scrum framework.
  If the environment is not ready for Scrum, the company culture and the organizational structure is not ready to work agile, you end up introducing a mechanical Scrum through this behavior. A Scrum that doesn’t feel natural and in which meetings only serve to tick them off without having any significant added value for those involved.
• Instead, you should do the following:
  Arrive in your team first, try to understand how the work is done. What dependencies and conditions or restrictions exist. What can you change with your team, what can you influence and what can you not influence.
• Only when you have gained some insight can you slowly start to discuss and change these things with your team. You must first make the added value transparent before you make a change.
• Pro tip: I would start with regular…