BONUS: The Scrum Master Journey, a program to help you succeed in your role. With Marc Löffler

This is episode 1 of a series of episodes dedicated to the content, and the steps of the Scrum Master Journey, a program hosted by our guest: Marc Löffler.

The Scrum Master Journey (SMJ) is a program designed to help you succeed as Scrum Master. Marc joins us to explain what that SMJ program includes, and share some first-hand stories of how this program has already helped many Scrum Masters in practice. 

We start this episode by reflecting on the observation that the Scrum Master role has become a profession, with specific training needs, as well as a specific type of tasks that come with it. These tasks, and responsibilities are different from many other roles in the product development space, and therefore require a specific journey of learning and practicing. A Scrum Master Journey! 

Marc has written several books on the Scrum Master role, and he is also the host of a Scrum Master focused program, that cuts through the weeds of the many different things a Scrum Master must learn and helps us go through a journey designed to get us ready for the challenges ahead. 

The chaos of new ideas that Scrum Masters must understand and apply

In today’s world, it is no longer enough to know Scrum, the roles and the practices to be a good Scrum Master. In a world where companies are adopting Sociocracy, Holacracy, Radical Candor, many flavours of leadership, etc., the Scrum Master must be aware and understand the driving aspects of these many frameworks and approaches. 

As Scrum Masters, we must be growing personally, and enlarging our horizons continuously. And even if the 2-day certification courses are useful, they are little else than a “driver’s license” for Scrum Masters: necessary, but not sufficient. 

The 2 top obstacles that Scrum Masters face in the real world

Marc has trained many Scrum Masters and has hosted his Scrum Master Journey program for a while. From that experience he identifies 2 main obstacles that many Scrum Masters face in their journey: 

• Helping teams reach a sufficient level of self-organization
• How culture works and influences the work we do, and what happens in an organization

In this segment, Marc describes the reasons why those are the key obstacles, and we then explore a third, common, problem many Scrum Masters face: being alone in their journey. This last problem is the reason why Marc started the Scrum Master Journey, a program to help Scrum Masters overcome the obstacles we talk about, in a community setting, where other people like you share and learn from your experiences, just as you can learn from theirs.

About Marc Löffler

Marc’s a super active member of the Agile community. In his spare time from consulting, speaking and training he’s found the time to start a blog, a podcast and write two books! 

Marc is also the host of the Scrum Master journey! 

You can link with Marc Löffler on LinkedIn and connect with Marc Löffler on Twitter.