In Certified ScrumMaster courses a common concern of new Scrum Masters is how to be a more effective coach and help their teams improve. One thing any Scrum Master can do to immediately add value and help the team that they are serving is to facilitate the creation of Working Agreements. Maybe you’ve referred to these as Team Norms, Core Values or Rules of Engagement but for our purposes I’m going to refer to them as Working Agreements. Why are these important for a Scrum team? Without working agreements, it’s really just a collection of people and not really a team. An effective Scrum Master, as active facilitator, can certainly help the Development Team and Product Owner create these agreements.
In the ocean (as marine biologist and Tom Clancy fans well know) there is a point where warm surface water and cold water from below meet. It’s called the Thermocline layer. It’s where the heat from the sun can’t sufficiently heat the water relative to the cooling currents from below.