Being a Scrum Master during a Pandemic
Firstly, a bit of background about me….
I have been a Scrum Master for almost 6 years now and I have always loved my job, as to be honest it never actually felt like a ‘job’ to me. Instead, I felt as if I was hanging out with a group of cool people, facilitating and guiding them through a bunch of work that needed to be done. We would have a good chat afterwards about how we felt things went, before we would try again.
One of my key traits is that I have a heightened level of emotional intuition and am very aware of the cognitive empathy I also possess. I have always tried to consider both these traits to be a fantastic additional strength, to my role, as I have found them at times to be a guiding light when trying to understand what makes people tick, which in turn, would provide me with the opportunity to change my communication style on any given day, to get the best out of these cool people, who just want to do a good job.
Being emotionally intuitive also allows you to pick up on any ‘Disturbances within the Force’ from within your teams. You become more aware and sensitive to the team’s body language, their general demeanor and their tone of voice, so that when these things change, it can lead you to understand that today might not be a good day for someone and what can you do to help them.
So, 6 weeks ago, I’m working in the same office with these cool people and we are enjoying working together, motivating each other, supporting each other and doing well with our delivery.
Then lockdown is put into force.
Initially, as a team we felt we were ready for the lockdown. We had set up and agreed a communication strategy between us, we were quite excited that we didn’t need to commute for hours on end each day and we felt happy that we could be flexible with our working pattern because we were no longer restricted by train times or traffic problems.
On my part, in preparation for lockdown, I had spent quite a bit of time researching the best tools to use for online retrospectives, making sure that the teams sprint calendar was set up with relevant zoom details, reminding the team about punctuality, making sure tools such as Jira were used rather than our white board to monitor sprint progress and various slack channels were also set up too to support our new way of working. I felt like we were ready and from a process point of view……we were.
But…. then the schools closed, this pandemic is serious stuff.
We hadn’t planned for that.
This changed everything for me. I hadn’t envisaged the true impact this pandemic would have on me from both an emotional point of view, not just in terms of my own situation, but also understanding and having empathy for my team members too, plus what was going on in the world around us. It was just so surreal and I if you refer to the change curve, I was stuck at Denial.
I hadn’t anticipated that the pandemic would ultimately change my outlook on life as being their Scrum Master, as this isn’t a situation you would be coached on in any training course you would have ever attended and ultimately, it’s the first time anyone of us has had to experience a pandemic such as this in our working lives.
I did find myself struggling between the empathy of the teams and the delivery of the project that we were on. When I got asked about the team’s velocity and delivery over the coming weeks, my question back to the programme was ‘How do you measure human behavior in this situation?’
Because for once, I had no answer, so I felt a bit of a failure.
How do you predict the teams output when the team members are trying to homeschool their kids? When they are having problems with their internet? When they can’t find a suitable place to work in their home without having to worry about cats, dogs and kids who love to gatecrash zoom meetings or their pets wanting to sit on their keyboard? When the team members are mentally struggling with the sudden lockdown measures put upon them which has hit them hard? Where the teams struggle to concentrate because of the tragic updates on the news and on social media?
For me as a Scrum Master, I have now ventured into unknown territory and I have struggled to find the right way to motivate the team, when I am also struggling with my own inner turmoil over the situation we now find ourselves in (the curse of being an empath).
The first couple of weeks during lockdown where the hardest for both me and the team. We struggled to manage the status quo of our situation, whilst also accepting that we still had a product to deliver. I found that I was needing to use all my energy into being an extrovert and happy during our sprint ceremonies, trying to show the team that ‘I was fine’ and leading by example; so that it might rub off onto them too. It made me feel exhausted and miserable, knowing full well that I was struggling with the situation but desperately trying not to show it to others.
I had set up a virtual coffee break with the teams each week, so that we could have a chance to get together and talk about anything other than work for half an hour. The take up was good, but each time we did hold one, I was finding it more and more difficult to be chatty and would prefer to just sit and listen to others. This was because all my energy was being used to be happy and normal, which was taking its toll.
In terms of our scrum process, things were running smoothly and I was proud of the team for adapting to our new way of working. We are always looking for ways to improve, but I had started to notice within myself, that if the team didn’t meet their sprint commitment, this feeling of dread would rear up on me and it felt like a heavy weight laying on my shoulders, as I knew questions would be asked as to the reasons why we didn’t fully deliver.
I felt as though I didn’t have an appropriate tangible answer, but I desperately wanted to protect the team from any noise.
I always seemed to be conflicted between the emotional needs of my team and how this affected their delivery versus the delivery expectations of the programme. No amount of coaching can prepare you for the situation of a disappointing delivery during a pandemic and this has been one of the hardest things to resolve.
Being in this situation has deeply affected my confidence. I have questioned that maybe I might not be good at my job, especially if I base this opinion on the output of each sprint and that maybe I might be failing the team in some way?
But then I must remind myself that we are all working in this un-precedented situation and that maybe doing our best is good enough right now?
What I have realised, as an empathic Scrum Master, is that no-one has been in this situation before, and what I’m learning is that we need to accept slowdown, failure, tears, and most importantly, empathy for others.
Here are some of the key points I’ve taken away from this time: -
· No one has ever worked in this kind of situation before, so give yourself a break and take one day at a time. Try not to put additional pressure on yourself and accept that there will be a slowdown, as you try to adjust to the new ways of working. It’s about having faith in the team and knowing that things will pick up eventually, it might not happen as quick as some might like, but having belief that things will get better and listening to the team’s feedback about how we make that happen, is a great start.
· You are doing the best you can under the circumstances. There is no written book for this kind of situation. We are literally writing this new book as we go along. But once it is over, you will look back on it and realise that it was one hell of a good read and something to share with future Scrum Masters in the making.
· You are doing the right thing by making sure that your team are first and foremost ok. Dont forget that you are also part of the team, and should allow yourself the chance to be honest with them and say when you might be struggling too. Even though as a Scrum Master we are expected to be impartial, these are differing times and you are only human after all. It might also encourage the team to speak out and express their feelings more freely if they see that you are doing this too. On the day when I did let my team know that I was struggling, I was amazed to hear that I wasn’t the only one, and that as a team, we had been struggling in our own personal ways. You need to be mindful that not everyone is cut from the same cloth and there will always be someone who is living the dream while in lockdown and this is fine too. Its about the person you are and not feeling ashamed of that, as there will always be someone who feels the same way as you.
· Celebrate any success from the team, no matter how big or small it might be. This will ultimately give the team a big boost of confidence, including you too. Finding time to celebrate any success is good for the soul and if it puts a smile on the faces of your team, then that is a big win in my book.
· Make sure you take the time out for some self-care so that you can then provide care back to the team, when they need it most. This has been my hardest lesson. I spent so much time and energy on pretending that I was ok, putting a brave face on things and carrying on regardless, that I didn’t realise I was making myself quite unwell. I now make sure that I have a routine start time, I have a regular lunch break and that when I finish for the day, my laptop is put away so that I am not tempted to check in. Currently there is no break between work life and home life so it is really important to be strict with yourself about the breaks you take. It means saying no to Zoom meetings at times and maybe sitting quietly in a room to declutter your brain from the noise within it. As an empath, for me this also means not watching the news and blocking out social media whenever possible so that I don’t feel that I have the weight of the world on my shoulders but instead surrounding yourself with things that make you smile and enjoying the simple pleasures in life.
· And lastly, this situation isn’t going to last forever. When it is all over, we can look back and be proud that we got through it and in the long run, it will hopefully make us stronger as a team.
I am hoping that in years to come, I can look back and think to myself that I did a good job after all the self-doubt I experienced. As a Scrum Master, you don’t look for praise as you are the person behind the scenes making sure things are ticking along nicely, so to think that this group of cool people I work with can come out of the lockdown feeling stronger as a team from when we first went in, then that is feedback enough for me.
Thanks for reading
Lucy x
