What must be in the Daily Checklist of a Scrum Master?

Ideally, there should be a scrum master in every agile management company. This is because the role of a scrum master in an organisation can’t be overemphasised. They help to ensure the company meets the target per time and there is continuity throughout product development. 

While the Scrum master is going about his activity, there is a fundamental tool he must have in his toolbox – a checklist.

The scrum master checklist is a list that includes the various activities and tasks that are to be carried out daily by the scrum master. For the checklist to be effective, the checklist must be done in such a way that the tasks requiring urgent attention are written first, then followed by the regular daily activities to be carried out. 

The importance of the scrum master having a checklist is to ensure that there is togetherness working with his or her team members. The checklist galvanizes the team to effectively work together to achieve the common goal. If you want to learn how to become an Agile Scrum master, you should consider joining an Agile Scrum certification course. 

Going forward, there are some important items that should be present in the scrum master checklist. In this article, we will look at them. Let’s dive in. 

1. Facilitating the product owner

This is a key item that enables the scrum team to work together. Facilitating the product owners helps in improving the effectiveness of the workforce. The scrum master can also contribute to the effectiveness by maintaining the release plan as well as the product backlog. 

In facilitating the product owner, there are some important questions that the scrum master needs to answer to have a good checklist. 

You should also educate the product owner about the concept of technical debt and why to avoid it at all costs. Also, 

• Can we create charts to facilitate the flow of information?
• What kind of help are you willing to offer to the product owner to organize the backlog items in releases of priority? 
• Does the release plan fit well with reality? 

These are critical questions that you as a scrum master need to answer as part of your daily checklist. 

2. Accessing the performance of your team.

A good scrum master checklist must be able to help you access the performance of your team. This is something most organisations don’t have as it is not properly coordinated. 

Some of the questions that you can ask to assess their performance are; 

• Is the team focused and concentrated? Is the team working towards fulfilling the required goals? 
• Are the team members collaborating in such a way that yields fruitful results? 
• Are you as a scrum master offering immediate feedback directly to your team members? 
• Do the members hold each other in high esteem, that is, do they play a role in making each other grow in the job? 
• Are the artefacts sufficiently protected from faults and impediments? 
• Do team members volunteer to engage in the various tasks? 
• Is the task board reflecting what the team is doing at that moment? 
• Is the task board updated? 
• Is the team avoiding issues and opportunities that are uncomfortable? 
• How large is the team and does it possess the required blend of skills in the right proportion?

These are some of the questions that you can use to access the performance.

3. The technical and engineering aspects.

This is also a crucial part of the scrum master checklist. The scrum master must be aware of what is happening in the engineering section. Some important questions that will help in navigating this aspect are; 

• Does the system have a unified framework that easily facilitates testing? 
• Are all the teats rolled up in the continuous integration test server? 
• What items from the product backlog that are marked as done, will also be tested?
• What is the useful grey area between the unit and systems test? 
• If there is a regression failure, is the continuous integration server constructed to sound off an alarm? 
• What kind of testing tools are available, automated units tests or end to end system tests? 
• What about the pair programming, is it going to be researched by the team members?
• Are the team members involved in pair programming? 

These questions will help the scrum master to effectively plan the technical and engineering aspect of scrum and agile management in his or her checklist.

4. How the organisation will benefit from scrum

In one way or the other, the organization has to find a way to benefit from the checklist done by the scrum master.  But for this to come to take place, some questions must be answered. They are: 

• Will there be time allocated for inter-team communication? 
• Is the director for development aware of the organization’s impediments? 
• How are the team working independently to achieve the required results? 
• Are the scrum masters working on fixing the impediments? 
• Is the organization playing its role in ensuring that the career objectives of the team are met? 

These are questions that will be determined if the organization will benefit from the checklist or not.

5. The involvement of the team

The scrum master must make sure that all the team members are carried along with all activities being done. The scrum master also needs to be sure if the scrum or set of scrum calls are happening or not. It is the responsibility of the scrum master to prepare the team for the Sprint review and also participate in the sprint retrospective meeting.

Conclusion 

These are some of the top checklists that should be present in a scrum master daily checklist. One easy way to maximize the scrum daily checklist is to use the task board, impediments, and the burndown charts. 

The task board must be updated with the task lists, who they are assigned to, and the time remaining for the task to be completed. This provides a means of an update to all the task members. Impediments should also be visible to all team members. It allows team members to understand the present challenges and brainstorm ways of solving them. Finally, the burndown chart which shows the work left undone per time remaining must be updated from time to time, and proper action should be taken based on the status of the actions in the chart.  If you want training on how to work in an Agile environment, enroll in a reputable online Agile course and get started.