Kaizen and Scrum Master

We all understand that in order to be able to succeed in our business life and not only, we need to learn, get better, gain more experience and let the positive elements of our experience guide us to the desirable success we all seek, with the support of course of our failures and lessons learned out of the Kaizen journey.

If you do not try something, then you will never know what will be the outcome. If you don't find the courage and the boldness to stand up for your idea and support it with valid arguments, try it out and implement it, then you will continue live and work within the boundaries of your daily routine and just continue depthening the "technical debt". How can you know what would have been the result of what you have thought if you do not just try it? But again, what is behind that thinking?

In order to be able to think of an improvement you need first of all to be in position to identify what is the challenge you are trying to face, what is the impediment you are trying to deal with. Sometimes, you need to take bold decisions but it does not mean necessarily that has to be a big change or decision. Sometimes you just need to take a step back or step out of your daily routine and identify the anchors that slow you down. And this is where the Scrum Master role shines by cultivating the right culture that will assist and support you identify these gray areas and try to support you find solutions.

Keeping a transparent impediment log, help you identify what slows you down but then what? What actions did you take to deal with those impediments? Before getting into the logic of what that impediment is about, what caused it and how it affected your goals, you need to think and understand why this impediment was there and was not able to think of it in advance. Of course this comes alongside with the experience. And how do we get this experience?

Scrum Master needs to create the right environment that will allow you to enrich your experience and be able to identify these impediments on time or even before they occur. A simple solution is a place next to the impediment log that will allow you to post on daily basis what you have achieved today. All these quick wins raise the motivation, enriches the experience of the whole team and keeps the positive team spirit on high levels. Yes, we will always have impediments but the whole idea behind this improvement log is for the team to be able to know what they achieved, focus on the positive elements of the team and build on them.

Konstantinos Kareklas - Agile Coach