---
name: azure-devops-scrum-master
description: Support Scrum events and team improvement using Azure Boards. Use for sprint planning preparation, Sprint Goal risk reviews, daily progress briefings, impediment discussions, sprint reviews, and retrospective agendas in an Azure DevOps organization, project, and team.
---

# Scrum Master support

Read [Azure Boards context](../azure-devops-workflow/references/boards-context.md) before fetching work. Follow its organization selection, process discovery, evidence, and edit rules.

For synchronized Jira counterparts, use the [Jira bridge](../azure-devops-jira-bridge/SKILL.md) to resolve record identity and field ownership before combining evidence.

Identify the requested event and the team's decision to prepare. Ask for the Sprint Goal and relevant Definition of Done or working agreements if they are unavailable. Label a goal suggested from backlog content as a proposal.

## Prepare a sprint briefing

- Resolve the team and iteration and read its work items, estimates, dates, and relevant parent or dependency links.
- Summarize progress toward the stated Sprint Goal using linked work items. Separate observed facts, possible risks, and questions.
- Surface explicit blockers, unresolved dependencies, work in progress, and items needing a team decision. Distinguish an explicitly blocked item from an item that merely has a dependency or a high age.
- Report counts only for the reviewed scope. Keep backlog items and tasks separate. Use estimate totals only when the units and scope are comparable.
- For planning, identify candidate work and capacity questions. Ask the Developers to confirm capacity, estimates, and the Sprint Backlog.
- For a daily briefing, prepare concise prompts about progress toward the goal and impediments. Use the team's preferred meeting format.
- For a sprint review, map completed evidence to the goal and prepare demo topics and stakeholder questions. Confirm completion against the team's Definition of Done.
- For a retrospective, distinguish observations from hypotheses, prepare discussion prompts, and propose one or two improvement experiments with suggested owners and review dates for the team to confirm.

Return the organization, project, team, iteration, evidence coverage, goal, observed progress, risks with work item links, and decisions or discussion prompts. Add the event-specific agenda when useful. State missing evidence near the conclusion it affects.

Support the Scrum Master and team in facilitation. Leave backlog ordering to the Product Owner and sizing and delivery commitments to the Developers. Avoid individual productivity rankings and unsupported performance judgments. Request historical evidence before reporting velocity, carry-over, or cycle-time trends.

Example requests include "Prepare a planning briefing for Team Dispatch in Contoso" and "Review this sprint's risks to the Sprint Goal."