You have read my opinion about certification in my last Blog entry. But what can you do to become a good Scrum Master, if a certificate doesn't really help you? Well, here is my opinion:
- Start. Only who is fully grounded in experience can understand why and how Scrum works.
- Learn from your (own) mistakes (inspect and adapt). Everybody who starts doing something will make mistakes. No worries - but learn from them. Reflect yourself regularly. Especially reflect every single item that comes up in the retrospectives. Check if you could have avoided or anticipated it. Also ask yourself, if you had a share in this impediment coming up. As I said: This is not a problem, as long as you learn from it.
- Participate in a training. On the one hand, you can learn from a professional how Scrum works. On the other hand you can meet interesting people and keep in touch with them.
- Exchange your thoughts with other Scrum-users frequently. No matter if you choose UserGroups, Scrum Tabels, a beer with friends or a Community of Practice in your company - go looking for the exchange. If you can't find anything similar to the aforementioned, create something yourself.
- Read much. Even though reading alone does not make you a professional, it broadens your horizon. This gives you some ideas in real situations, which you might not have had without reading. Books, Blogs and forums should be consumed in exactly this priority.
- Improve your skills far beyond Scrum. Management practices, psychologies, moderation, mediation, creativity techniques, sociology and so on are at least as important as the hard Scrum knowledge.
- Use every opportunity to put to practice whatever you have learned. You are planning a private project? Good - why don't you try a Backlog and Iterations on this one? Your girlfriend cannot decide where to go for the holidays? Well, take the role of the PO and write down the relevant criteria. Your private project has ended? How did it go and what can you learn from it for the future? Of course you are allowed to use your skills on projects from your professional live as well.
- Take aid. If your Team is stuck, it needs an expert - so do you. Nobody can be perfect in all areas - this is valid for you as well. Look for somebody who is a professional in the area you are lacking the most skill (Psychology? Process? Organizational development?) and learn as much as possible from this person. Maybe you can solve related problems alone next time.
- Consider that you can strengthen your strengths and weaken your weaknesses. You won't ever become a hero in your weak spots though. Usually it's better to acknowledge your weaknesses and take some aid there, while you develop your strengths to a point where you are a true expert.
