Two articles recently published cover what it takes to to Become a SCRUM Master, each with insightful looks into the process and reasons behind the dedication.

One becomes a scrum master by developing practicing the use of the scrum tools, personal mastery and holding a space for organizations to practice supporting scrum with abandon. It is the scrum masters job to educate the organization on the process and its value throughout a project.

Lauren Wood also went through certification to become a SCRUM Master over a two day intensive course and covers her experiences on her blog,

the Scrum Master role is very similar to what I’ve always understood the role of the project manager to be – keep the team moving, get rid of obstacles for them, keep meddling managers or sales people out of the way.

Going through the steps is a somewhat formal process but the tools learned help simplify what can be an overly complex role, one that most find very gratifying.

To get started, this list of 10 techniques for gathering requirements is a must-read.  As a rebuttal to that article, here’s another list of techniques to gather project requirements.  Looking at the goal from the other end, AC offers How to give the user what they want.  This is an essential part to dealing with any client, and probably the most spot on way of looking at gathering data.

Going into the meeting with the goal of giving the client what they need or want often involves listening first, but most clients don’t always know how to tell you what they need, so a set of discovery questions and situations is needed.  These techniques will enable you to gather all the requirements to be sure you can start any project and feel confident that you’ve met your client’s goals at the end.

The Help Guide has a great article on Stress Management with simple to implement techniques.  Get 5 more simple stress management techniques from essortment, Mftrou has 7 more and Reader’s Digest lists out 37 stress managment tips.

The fundamentals of most all tips and techniques goes back to the basics, breathe, eat well, sleep well, take a few minutes to gather your thoughts.  The rest of the tips are somewhat creative, yet very easy to work into a daily routine.

White Board. Extremely efficient in smaller offices, a simple white board with tasks, goals, deadlines, etc. on it for everyone to see, then erase when they’ve completed their goals.  White boards are also great for brainstorming, allowing a visual aspect not always seen during emails or chat sessions.

Notebook. The once mighty notebook got put in the desk drawer when cloud computing came out, however notebooks never crash and work when the power is out.  They also provide a built in timeline of what you wrote down and when, provided you start from the front and work towards the back.

Phone. Sometimes picking up the phone to discuss something with a team member instead of dropping an email will result in a faster answer, more pleasant outcome and show that you are accessible to everyone, all the time.

In a quest to really tackle the question, InfoQ asks Is low tech really better? where they discuss digital spreadsheet vs. paper and other similarities.  Choosing the right tool to do the job is as important to the bottom line as the job itself.

Customer Managment Insight suggests a series of scoring tools, checklists and sliding scales.  This is an excellent way to start, but requires a good amount of due diligence prior to a new hire coming in to their first interview.  Make sure you take your  time, look over all the job requirements that they will need to accomplish and make sure your sliding scale doesn’t exempt them from more than one category.

Smart Business covers all aspects of a job well done from why you need to offer rewards to how to recognize and reward your employees.  Over at eHow they suggest three different rewards.  Verbal, rewards & monetary compensation and additional responsibilities, and the benefits of each.  The University of Washington has a collection of great ideas, one of the funnier ones is to give your employees cans of silly string to help blow off steam.

The point is, making your employees know when they’ve done a good job, from a sincere thank you, job well done to letting them leave early on a Friday afternoon will boost the working moral of everyone.  They will continue to work harder, and better, but most importantly be happier through the day too.

If there still isn’t a solution in there for you, check out these old school Windows tools.

To round out the list of tools, Mind Tools has a great tutorial on how to efficiently utilize brainstorming tools to be the most productive for you and your projects.

1. Early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise
2. Diligence is the mother of good luck
3. God helps them that help themselves

More of his words can be read here, here and here, but the important part is what you do with them.  On industry, Franklin has said, “Lose no time; be always employ’d in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.”

As project managers, that says a lot.  Lose no time, that falls right in line with the turn of the century acronym, GTD, short for getting things done.  Nothing we do in work, with projects or team members should be at a loss of time, hence all the tools we are now using to become more productive.  Being more productive is a direct result of getting things done, hence keeping you employed.  Cut off all unnecessary actions is a unique part of the quote, also referred to as cutting the fat.  Sometimes the most direct result from A to B is a straight line, something to think about.

1. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t
   
2. Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
3. A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge: (Pmbok Guide)
4. The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century
5. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable

Unlike reading an email newsletter or an RSS feed, books are tangible, transportable and easy to bookmark, highlight and write notes in.  Learning is an ongoing part of every career, utilizing books to see how things were done can often inspire new ideas for projects moving forward.  Other times, they can reinforce the, why bother trying to re-invet the wheel mentality when certain systems have proven to be effective year after year.

Instant messenger.  Built into Google’s Gmail email system, accessible by a multitude of third party clients like Pidgin, instant messing is a fast, effective way to communicate with people, share links and even get private group chats going.

VOIP.  The voice over Internet protocol is often free, but even paying for services like Skype are drastically cheaper for international calling when compared to traditional phone services.

Video conferencing.  Apple has built a webcam into all of their laptops and the iMac line of desktops for the last few years so that the built in instant messaging client iChat can support video chatting.  If you don’t have a Mac, don’t worry!  Google has built the video feature into GTalk, you’ll just need a computer with a webcam attached.

Cell phones. Cell phone plans have continued to climb in prices, but most all of them feature nationwide long distance included in the plan.  If you need to talk to people across different time zones often, it can often be far cheaper to utilize a cell phone than a traditional land line.