Case Study – Scrum Master

Agile Team in Trouble

Problem

An 8-member agile team was working on an in-house software project. The team included a Product Owner (Product Owner), a designer, and part-time junior-level developers who contributed occasionally alongside other projects and changed relatively frequently. Management wanted to know what resources, and in what volume, were needed to complete the project, and approximately when the first version of the product, or MVP (Minimum Viable Product), could be launched. Despite the Product Owner having a very clear vision of the MVP’s boundaries, the team could not answer these questions.

Process

I joined the team in the role of Scrum Master when the project had been ongoing for 3 months. Together with the Product Owner, we carried out the following activities:

Assembling a cross-functional team: we added a technical architect to the team, and assessed the minimum resource requirements for designers, frontend, and backend developers
Allocating time resources for the team: we made agreements with the organization’s resource manager, which allowed the team to dedicate themselves solely to this project for the next 3 months.
Product Owner support: we underwent training on how to use Jira, manage the Backlog, write user stories, manage priorities, etc.
Implementing Scrum routines: we adopted all Scrum events and artifacts within the Scrum framework.

Outcome

After three months, we had a dedicated, highly motivated agile team whose members followed an agile mindset in their decisions and effectively utilized the Scrum development method.
We prepared an overview for management on when the MVP would be ready and what the estimated cost of the project was.
Despite a few more team member changes, the team successfully completed the project and launched the MVP as planned. And most gratifyingly, the team members’ job satisfaction and motivation grew exponentially, and they were genuinely sad to leave the project.

My time contribution: 6 hours per week for 3 months > total approx. 70h