An Effective Scrum Master — Learning from the Hyperaccumulator Plant
Scientists are now on a quest to discover whether farming these plants could provide an alternative to environmentally-destructive mining, while also helping to rehabilitate former mine sites.
It is rarely we associate mining and agriculture. It has been thought that the latter cannot thrive under such harsh conditions. The presence of heavy metals and toxic materials during extraction pollutes the ground making the condition unsuitable for plants to grow. Meanwhile, a researcher from University of Queensland, Dr Antony , a plant ecophysiologist and biogeochemist who focuses on the repurposing traces elements (Ni, Co, Cr, Mn, Cd, Pb, Zn and REE) in soil and plant system. He has been working closely with plant taxonomists, ecologists, agronomists and X-ray physicists to advance understanding of the regulation of trace elements in plant. At the same time, he has developed globally-recognized expertise in applying cutting-edge synchrotron and microprobe techniques to probe plants’ distribution and coordination chemistry.
Toxic soil and toxic member, what do they have in common. The toxic person not only causes harm, but spreads their behavior to others in the project, killing project momentum and results .…. The “toxic team member” is a common problem…that one person on your team…the bad apple in the team spreads negativity, riles up other team members and makes work life miserable. …
Scrum is a framework that enable effective collaboration between teams. It encourages experiential learning, self-organization within the team solving problem. Carried out retrospective to reflect on their wins and losses to continuously feedback and improvement.
While scrum is commonly used by software or product development teams, its principles and lessons can be applied to all kinds of collaboration. This a framework in agile which is often considered that it can also be used in a conducting meetings, to help teams structure and manage their activities even in a smaller and shorter timeframe.
A sprint goal is an overall objective that describes the critical outcome for each sprint that a Scrum team undertakes. The same way that a product release assists the longer-term direction of a product aligns the team. The sprint goal guides the development team to understand the purpose of building the current increment or features. It also strengthens the belief of the team why it is worthwhile participating in the sprint and meeting the value of the product owner. An excellent sprint goal does not mean reiterating the top priority user story for the sprint. However, it should be at a higher level intent behind the purpose of the sprint and which is meant to help the team understand the impact of the work they are doing.
Stay Open — Know what you do not know, ask the team
Does this team member have a negative perspective on you personally, or on the adoption of Scrum? What does your organization look like (are there other Scrum Masters / teams)? Has the organization as a whole adopted Scrum?
Ask around individually,” how the last Sprint go with regards to people, relationships, processes, and tools,” what is the team’s perception of your effectiveness as a Scrum Master? Perhaps a part of the plan for implementing improvements would be for the team to develop actions that everyone could take to help the team within your role. You could also talk a bit about what you do now; how is it benefiting the Scrum Team? Getting the team to follow and appreciate the ceremonies to fit together to help organize and manage sprints.
Scrum ceremonies enable collaboration — 4S
Sprint Planning aligns with what to bring from the product backlog to the sprint backlog. It requires the team to estimate how long tasks on the product backlog will take to complete with the development team’s capacity. You should also plan and indicate dependencies, which is excellent if you have tasks that affect others.
Daily standup meeting is an opportunity for the team to share their progress. The actual intention is not to use it as a status report but to identify any blockers that might stop or slow down the completion of a task. The Scrum Master manages and facilitates these blockers within or outside the scrum team to help the team complete the job on hand as efficiently as possible.
Sprint Reviews is a chance for the development team to share or demo tasks completed with the stakeholders. It is a time to gather feedback about the work done and discuss and prioritize additional jobs, maybe adding Stories or Tasks to the backlog.
Sprint Retrospective meeting is about continuous improvement and learning from how things went in the previous Sprint. This desire to always do things better is a vital part of Agile project management.
Stay Inform — Track the Spread of Toxicity, know who and what they are
Are you able to determine who is affecting or being affect? Is this team member consider indispensable? Is there a concentration risk within the team? What are the behavior is that is toxic?
Some examples of toxic behaviors include repeatedly:
- Taking credit for others’ work
- Being unreliable and overconfident
- Being inflexible
- Inconsistent execution and performance
- Insufficient respect to team and deliverables
- Not inclusive or transparent, and insist of withholding details and work
- Passing judgment and manipulative instead of being constructive
- Flying under the radar
Stay Active — Take Preventative Measures, pivot when needed
Do you have space to make tough decision? Are you able to negotiate with the stakeholders? Are you in a critical stage of the product release cycle?
“Pivot” is defined as a fundamental change in a business strategy in the lean startup methodology. In a project, the idea of a pivot is initially changing the direction of your target setup while staying grounded in your vision and learned facts. The team must be aware that a pivot includes more moving to brand new objectives or goals and a systematic change in strategy and structure of the team. At the same time, deeply consider all the facts you’ve learned along the way, especially those about markets and keeping your business vision as a compass.
When leading a startup, the most crucial question in this context is when you should make a pivot. A little complicated scientific answer is that you should make a pivot when each additional experiment you do leads to less progress. That means that you hit a local maximum. If you aren’t satisfied with the local maximum, you have to pivot to find a new, higher full; the highest possible maximum is the global ultimate. If you manage to hit that, you usually become one of the market leaders.
Even if you don’t hit the global maximum, you can probably be satisfied with one of the local maximums. Many companies aren’t global market leaders and are doing just fine. If you’re making enough money and enjoy the kind of business you have, the local maximum is okay.
