So here’s a trick I use….

I offer to type up all of the whiteboards and ideas into AzureDevOps, Jira etc.

Now I know a bunch of agile coaches and scrum masters will throw their hands up in the air and say we shouldn’t do that, but I find I remember stuff (and learn better) when I write things down. And it starts to build a mental model for me around the organisation.

And it also gives you a chance to bring transparency into the backlog – so for example no acronyms, put in roles not people’s names, and so on.

Then when you refine the backlog – whether with a troika pattern or the whole team – you have a chance to reflect back what you understood and confirm things.

There’s a couple of other advantages too

– getting stuff wrong “in public” with the team is going to show people that it’s okay to get things wrong, misunderstand and ask dumb questions. This matters a lot. You are “walking the talk” on psychological safety and making yourself vulnerable. Vulnerability builds trust, and without trust, you cannot have an effective coaching relationship.

– reflecting things back to the team can actually expose gaps in thinking, holes in logic, and expose mistakes (a mistake is a planning error); so in that sense it can actually help the team build a better product too

While YMMV (see what I did there?) I spent some time workings as a Scrum Master for the military here, and it was the ONBLY way I could survive the alphabet soup they dispense. We even had an Acronym Finder on the website, and different branches of the military that used the same acronym for different things.

So – typing up stuff was how I learned quickly..

Sure I guess!

But time zones and so on might not work and it depends on what kind of support you need.

In the short term my counsel would be that the base level of Scrum Master certification (PSM-1, CSM) is more or less like a theoretical driving licence. You know the rules of the road in a transactional sense, but not how to drive.

In that context I’d suggest you need to continue with self-directed learning AND adding more “strings to your bow” through professional development courses. The certification is just the start.

Allen Holub’s reading list is a good baseline of what you should really know about development in an agile context : https://holub.com/reading/

I’d add to that Lyssa Adkin’s book on Coaching Agile Teams.

You might also want to consider (depending on your experience):

– an ICF-accredited coaching course
– leadership courses
– communications courses : conflict resolution, facilitation, courageous conversations, negotiation skills, that type of thing
– business courses (potentially online via Coursera) on areas like finance, marketing, sales, as well as compliance
– technology courses (eg via Microsoft Learn etc) on things like could technologies, security basics, testing basics and so on

I’d also suggest following online discussions on LinkedIn – the “Scrum Practitioners” and “Agile And Lean Software Development” groups are especially helpful, spam-free and have a lot of good content. You might want to look at MeetUp and join in with some online or face-to-face meetups in your area as well.

That might be a better place to start off and find a mentor, perhaps?

I’d suggest breadth not depth, for example

– undertake an ICF-accredited coaching course
– undertake Kanban Method courses (eg Kanban University accredited)

However most importantly, never stop learning; self-directed study is also important.
Allen Holubs’s reading list is a good start : https://holub.com/reading/

Rather than certificates, the ability to put knowledge into action and then explain that succinctly at interview matters a lot.