Techno Scrum Master

The definition

A scrum master is the facilitator for an Agile development team; they are responsible for managing the exchange of information between team members.

A scrum master is constantly involved in decision making, getting the blockers released for the developers to march forward to delivery the scope of the story.

In a new product development using agile methodology, we don’t have the luxury of sitting for months or if not weeks to come up detailed design, UML diagrams and other documentation. What we have is a relatively clear vision of the target state. It is like first time trekking of a medium to hard category mountain through a path which is being explored.

Here the design and architecture evolves in as we go along, as in trekking we will have to adjust the route or course correct based on the conditions of the route on the way.

The Challenge & Solution

Challenge: Developers will be busy coding and who will do the technical course correction?

Based on a couple of agile product development experience in green field projects, what we understood is that a technical scrum master would be ideal, who can along with running the scrum can also be refining the architecture, design choices and keep a clear presentation to the team at the beginning of each sprint along with the sprint planning. This will help the developers to have a good understanding of the direction they are going.

One of the experiment we did during our recent project is to have a container diagram (C2 of C4) of the solution with the changes of the components highlighted which are getting impacted in the sprint.

It proved to be useful not just for the team but also for the teams like the platform or infrastructure team, interfacing teams etc along with the stakeholders, a clear indication that building is growing

Solution: A Techno Scrum master can fill the technical void that can exist in scrum architecturally, design refinement or tools and framework directions.

This may not be applicable in all cases, but being a practitioner and being seen the benefits, I would recommend trying this blend in agile projects.