Quick Start Course — How to Become a Scrum Master in 3 Weeks
I was in your shoes 6 months ago. I needed to become a scrum master for my new role at Disney Streaming — and fast. This onboarding guide is how I made it happen. Since then, I’ve doubled the amount of my engineering teams.
Here’s the fastest way I figured out how to become a scrum master:
Week 0: Rest
Before your new job, travel or relax. While it can be useful to prepare in advance, I don’t recommend it. This plan is designed for you to hit the ground running and not infringe upon your work-life balance.
Week 1 Goals:
Get Administrative Tasks Out of the Way: Equipment and Pay
Set Expectations with your Manager
Familiarize Yourself with Scrum Vocabulary and Ceremonies
Find Out your Team’s Specific Vocabulary
Learn about the Scrum Ceremonies
Shadow Meetings
Create an Onboarding Plan
Day 1:
Get Administrative Tasks Out of the Way: Get your equipment, and get it up and running. Undoubtedly, you will run into hurdles with it; so find out how to reach out to IT. Make sure you understand how to receive your pay and how your benefits work. Beyond week 1, questions about benefits, pay and equipment might seem stale.
Set Expectations with your Manager: If your manager does not reach out to you by 8am on your first day, kindly introduce yourself. In your first meeting, your manager will likely give you a set of expectations. Consider creating a google doc just for you and them to take notes every time you meet. This will be a great place to keep track of your questions about your new role.
Familiarize Yourself with Scrum Vocabulary and Ceremonies: The internet is your friend. Google “scrum master” and “agile”. Watch youtube videos, read articles, and most importantly, take notes to actively learn! It is easy to become passive, but remember that soon you will be expected to run a team.
Days 2–5:
Continue to Familiarize Yourself with Scrum Vocabulary and Ceremonies.
Study your Team’s Specific Vocabulary: Your team will undoubtedly have processes, terms and phrases that are new to you. This is your week to find them out. Consider starting a glossary for these words, and give your manager access to it. They’ll be happy to have visibility into your learning.
Shadow Meetings: Ask your manager to observe some team meetings. Be eager to see how things work. These meetings are not your place to talk or ask questions. They are purely there for you to watch and learn. Take notes on how people run things so that you may repeat them later.
Create your Own Onboarding Plan: Come up with an onboarding plan for the next 3 weeks (or copy this one!). If you’ve already been given one, fill in the gaps with things you know you need to learn. At the end of the week, run this onboarding plan by your manager. They will be happy to see that you are taking an active role in your own onboarding.
Vocab you should know by the end of Week 1:
Agile
Scrum Master
Sprint (and the length of one on your team)
Tickets/Stories
Story points
Standup
Week 2 Goals:
Get Access to Your Team’s Agile Software (Most Likely JIRA)
Familiarize yourself with the Software/JIRA
Meet the Engineering Manager(s) on your Scrum Team(s)
Read All the Documentation you can on your Team’s Tools and Processes
Day 1:
(If your Team Uses It) Familiarize yourself with JIRA: There are three important JIRA pages for you to know as a scrum master: the backlog page, the active sprint page, and the reports page:
The Backlog Page
This page tracks all of your team’s present and future tickets/stories.
The Active Sprint Page
This page shows you what tickets the team are currently working on in the current sprint.
The Reports Page
This page will help you visualize your team’s trajectory for completing work.
Meet the Engineering Manager(s) on your Scrum Team(s): On a scrum team, there is typically a TPM, an engineering manager, “ICs” (individual contributors), and product managers. Have a 1:1 with your engineering manager. Ping them and say, “Hi (name of eng manager)! I’m excited to be joining the team. I’d like to schedule a 1:1 with you this week to introduce myself. Does tomorrow work for you? I can put something on our calendars” They will most likely say yes or postpone. If they say no (red flag), it might be time to look for a new job. Consider creating a google doc just for the two of you to take notes.
Days 2–5:
Read All the Documentation You Can on Your Team’s Tools and Processes: Find documentation on your team’s processes. As you’re reading through it, consider writing down a list of questions with links to the pages that confuse you. Email these questions to your manager and sync on the answers.
Vocab you should know by the end of week 2:
Jira
Documentation
Backlog
Individual contributors
Engineering manager
Product manager
Stakeholders
Week 3 Goals:
Be Able to Facilitate Scrum Ceremonies
Learn JIRA Special Features
Meet your Teammates and Stakeholders
Have a High Level Understanding of Your Team’s Product
Be Able to Facilitate Scrum Ceremonies: By week 3, you will have either attended all of your team’s scrum ceremonies or will have been tasked with implementing the ceremonies. In either case, you should know the ceremonies like the back of your hand: sprint planning, sprint review, daily standup and sprint retrospective, backlog refinement and backlog maintenance.
Learn JIRA Special Features: There are many special JIRA features that can help take your role to the next level. Consider learning about structure boards. A structure board allows you to see your team’s tickets in specialized views. For instance, if you have multiple teams, a structure is where you can filter by team. Say you want to view a team’s tickets by quarter (¼ of a year), structure boards can help you to do so.
Meet your Teammates and Stakeholders: At this point, you should have met with your manager and your engineering manager. Now is the time to cast your net to more people such as your individual contributors and stakeholders. Set up meetings with them to get to know each other as well as identify any gaps in your learning. Ask questions like “what do you think I should focus on the most?”
Have a High Level Understanding of Your Team’s Product: By the end of week three, be able to explain what your team is working on. Ask yourself, can I explain the feature that I work on to my family or friends? If the answer is yes, I’m in great shape for it only being week 3.
Week 4:
By the end of the three weeks, you will know:
Scrum vocabulary
Your team’s vocabulary
Where your teams documentation lives and how you can refer to it
What your team works on at a high level
JIRA basics and some special features
What your manager expects of you
What your engineering manager expects of you
How to Facilitate Scrum Ceremonies
During week 4, sync with your manager on your technical and cultural adaptation. Ensure that you are meeting the expectations established in your first sync. Are you ready to lead your own agile team?
