Top 5 Prioritization technique for Scrum Master

Even though Scrum Guide  clearly defines the roles and responsibility of Scrum Master despite this in practical situations there are multiple activities where a Scrum Master need to get involved. This sometimes makes things difficult for a Scrum Master.

This means Scrum master has to deal with all types of situations if the team is not self organized and not practiced Scrum for a long time. Some of them are:

• Behavioral issues, 
• Not having enough backlog for coming sprints, 
• dependencies with external teams
• Required people not available during a scrum events leading to reschedule of the scrum event
• Skill set issue ( from PO or Team) leading to spill over
• Conflicts within the team members
• action items follow up
• Blockers like environment down

Scrum Master managing 2-3 scrum teams (which are not self organized) will have to face these issues quite frequently which may lead to scrum master's backlog becoming too big which ultimately will be unorganized and too many unnecessary meetings.

In such cases, Scrum Master need to mange herself better by prioritizing the activities effectively and following 5 technique can be used for the same:

1. First priority should always be given to the most critical feature which are close to release to production. Slippage of this feature can impact business unnecessarily which needs to be protected. Activities which are related to such features should be given high priority.
2. In Parallel, a Scrum Master should try to start listing the other business features which are next high priority. So the bottomline is to keep aligned with Product owner/business owner schedule.
3. In doing this, a Scrum Master should try to detach herself from the low priority activities and should be delegated to other team members to see if any progress can be made there. By doing this you are bringing your team to a level close to self organized team level.
4. Try to skip meetings where your involvement is not needed and is related to low priority feature and assign someone from team to lead such meetings. This is another way to make your team self organized.
5. Ask yourself always "What will happen if you delay this for a day or two"

let me know your thought.