What does a new scrum master do within his/her first few weeks in the role?

Woody Arnold answered this question on this page and here is the quick summary:

Day 1 (Monday)

  • Admin – Paper work, meet with HR, get connected.
  • Meet with manager. Understand expectations & situation.
  • Schedule meetings for the week – 1-on-1’s with team members, customers etc.
  • Discern the situation, develop hypothesis.

Day 2 (Tuesday)

  • Start floating ideas – problems you’re hearing, solutions.
  • If you need a half day scoping meeting on Thursday, you need to schedule it today to give people a little warning.
  • Continue with 1-on-1’s

Day 3 (Wednesday)

  • Create a short presentation for the Thursday meeting. This contains for instance: What you’ve heard, changes you’d like to implement starting next week.

Day 4 (Thursday)

  • Prep for planning meeting.
  • Meeting. Quick presentation – Problems we’re trying to solve, why Scrum… etc.

Week 2

  • Monday – Sprint planning, and the start of sprint 1.
  • Daily Standups – Coach the team into making effective daily standups.
  • Sprint Review – schedule the sprint review for the last day of the sprint. Make sure to invite “customers”.
  • Retrospective – Schedule the retrospective for after the sprint review.

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