Starting in February, I will experience a big change in my career. I will become a Scrum Master and therefore be much more involved in agile practices.

To supercharge this new start and be effective quicker, I (re)visited some resources about agile in general and the role of Scrum Master in particular. Here is a short summary of this journey, hoping it can help new or future Scrum Masters to get started.

Basics

First, it is always a good idea to go back to the basics. Revisiting the goals, principles and values of agile software development:

• Manifesto for Agile Software Development: The root ideas of the agile movement (with the 12 associated principles)
• Scrum Guide: All the basics of the Scrum framework

Books

Some books that I found interesting on the subject:

• The Phoenix Project: A novel, pleasant to read, that goes through the transformation of a fictive company to agile and DevOps
• How to kill the Scrum monster: A good introduction and field guide to Scrum and the role of the Scrum Master
• Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for ScrumMasters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition: A very practical guide, full of real life experiences
• Changing your team from the inside: Excellent short read with lots of practical tools and practices

Podcasts

Some good resources for the ears:

• Scrum Master Toolbox: Each week 5 interviews with a different Scrum Master
• LeadingAgile: Conversations about agile in general, Scrum, scaling frameworks...
• Agile for humans: Great hosts, humor and interesting conversations
• Meta-cast: Hilarious podcast with great content

Physical meetups

I cannot emphasize enough the importance of meeting other agilists and sharing your experiences. One good way is to look on a site like Meetup if there is any agile group in your city (for instance Agile Bordeaux for me).