July 16, 2025 • 29 mins
This week I chat to Helen Garcia, who works as a scrum master. We discuss what the role is, how to get certified and what a typical day looks like.
⬇️ Connect with Helen
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helengarcia-agile/
Learn more about being a project manager: https://www.prospects.ac.uk/job-profiles/project-manager
Leave us a review:
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/future-you-achieve-your-career-goals/id1477627168
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3uXOufxy2nDl7BvnuAt655?si=68bf143ae52b4309
📝 Take the job match quiz: https://www.prospects.ac.uk/job-match
📩 Follow Future You on:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/futureyou_pod/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@futureyou_pod
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@futureyoupod
📜 Transcript of this episode: https://www.prospects.ac.uk/podcasts/future-you-podcast-transcripts
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hello and welcome back to Future You.
The podcast brought to youby graduate careers experts prospects.
I'm your host, Emily Slade.
And in this episode,I chat to Helen about being a scrum master
so I'm Helen Garcia,and I'm a scrum master.
Amazing. What is a scrum master?
Yeah, quite a common questionthat we get asked because obviously,
(00:21):
if you're an engineer or somethinglike that, it kind of comes to mind.
You know, what it is,but a scrum master, essentially
is a personwho works within a development team.
And they are,
sort of responsible and accountablefor supporting the team
with their processes to become moreefficient and effective with them.
(00:42):
But what I like to add to
the role is also looking after the peopleand their well being.
An example of that might be thatmaybe you’re having a team meeting
and it's all a little bit chaotic.
Nobody knows what's the priorityand how things are getting done.
As a scrum master, you might go in there,you might observe a few things
and sort of call out,
you know, if we get to work on something,what would be the highest priority
(01:03):
in this situation?
And really help the, the teamkind of see the woods through the trees.
So essentially the scrum master role fallswithin a framework called scrum.
And that framework is, is a wayto support organisations to become
more agile.
So when I talk about agile,it's about being, flexible to change.
So I would like to give the example of,the pandemic.
(01:29):
So organisations that kept on doingthe same thing over and over
and over again.
Unfortunately, quite a lot of themdidn't survive.
But those organisationsthat went from car manufacturers to now,
ventilator manufacturers,then they thrived and survived.
They never planned to do that necessarily.
Maybe they didn't want to, butthey did something to support the value
(01:49):
that the customers needed at that time.
So that's what I mean,when I talk about kind of agile and agile.
You talk about it as a, as a mindsetbecause it's a culture thing.
Rather than a process thing.
So, that’s where scrum comes in., Okay,and as a scrum master, you tend to be part
of a company or do you tend to be somebodythat they bring in from outside?
(02:10):
So you could be contracted into a team.
But the idea would be that you would workwith that team for a long period of time,
because to be ableto understand the process
and how people kind of tick,you need to be you need a a bit more,
I guess, insight you can't just kind of bedropped in, dropped out.
And I think part of the time,
it doesn't matter if you were a contractoror if you you're a full time employee.
(02:34):
As long as you're therefor an amount of time,
it's going to be ableto be supportive of the product
and get to know the peopleand not just be sort of airdropped in
and change a whole bunch of thingswithout having a real understanding.
And that can work for any industry.
So it's very popularwithin the tech industry.
So developing or,you know, platforms or whatever
(02:56):
it is online,I sound like a really old lady, ‘online’.
Actually, scrum in itselfor becoming more agile
can be in the construction industry.
It can be anywhere,it's just less popular at the moment.
And I think that's somethingthat we need, really need to grow.
Because essentially, you know,if you go to, I don’t know, you’re
building a railway
(03:17):
and there's somethingthat doesn't go quite right
and you need to block the line,you need to be flexible
to change at that point, you need to say,okay maybe you can't do this bit there.
But in order to get closer to our goal,we could do, I don’t know, XYZ.
That's the
sort of thing that that as a scrum masteryou can help reflect.
Right back to the beginning.
What was your educational journey like.
(03:38):
Okay.
So you want the honest one?
So I went to university.
I started off at university.
And I had a passion for architecture,and I went to university to do that.
I realised, it wasn't my passion,and I didn't want to do it anymore.
I actually dropped out of uniand I applied
(04:00):
for all the jobs under the sun,and the job that I ended up getting was
possessions planner for the railway.
Which basically meant
blocking all the lines from Londonto Birmingham, for maintenance work.
So I was really loved.
That introduced me to more project work.
So I moved into a project manager role.
(04:22):
And I did project managementfor, I don't know, maybe
ten years, something like that.
And after a while I realised I was, like,super stressed out all the time.
I was like, this is a horrible role, like,surely this isn't right.
And shouldn’t be the way that i’m living.
And I noticed that actually,I was making a lot of the decisions that
(04:43):
I had people around me that would bebetter off making those decisions.
I had experts that were working for me.
And so, funnily enough, my wife actuallydid a scrum master course, randomly.
And we had a lot of debates at homesaying, no, you know, project management,
a linear way of doing thingsfor complexity is so much better.
You got a planand you need to stick to that plan.
(05:04):
And she was like, no, you know, wouldn’tit be better just to be more flexible
and like, you know, as you learn, growand then change and decide.
So what I did isI spend a lot of time in work trying
to prove that that wasn't the right wayof doing things by doing it that way.
Turned out that it was really great.
And I was like, wow, actually,my stress is a little bit lower.
(05:26):
People enjoy coming to workbecause they're enabled
to make decisions, they’reempowered to do things differently.
And actually,we started to deliver things a lot quicker
because we were being flexible to change,
we weren’tjust stuck with the Gantt chart.
And I just want to be really clear,
waterfallkind of linear project management
is great for really simple tasks,because you make a plan
(05:48):
and you deliver it by that planbecause you know what's going to happen.
For more complex tasks,you need to be flexible.
So yeah, and then I startedI went on my first scrum master course.
I think that was abouteight years ago now.
And, and my eyes were kind of opened,I thought, this is amazing
and it's also fun, and that's reallyimportant to me in my working life. Why.
(06:12):
So when you say a course,was that something run by university?
Was it like workshops in, like what?
What do you mean by course?
Yeah.
So, it was run by a training organisation.
So there's a couple of different waysthat you can,
I suppose, start to understandwhat a scrum master does.
And that's, ScrumAlliance is an organisation
(06:36):
and Scrum.orgSo Scrum Alliance is very UK based
Scrum.org is US based.
So if you go to the ScrumAlliance webpage, there are loads of
trainers in there.
And I will tell you which trainerI had, because he’s amazing.
So I went with PaulGoddard and Geoff Watts.
So Geoff isn't doing the traininganymore, but Paul definitely is,
(06:58):
and he's just brings everything to life.
So there's no PowerPoint.
That is the best thing about it.
It's all practical, and,there's loads of breakouts.
Yeah. So I did that first Scrum course.
And I was like, wow,this makes a whole level sense.
And it actually tooka lot of pressure off me.
So I was a project manager.
You are,you know, responsible for saying things.
(07:20):
But essentially it's time,you know, scope and budget, isn't it?
Whereas with if you put a scrum
hat on the most important thingabout your delivery is quality.
So, oftenif you're delivering to a deadline,
the quality drops and dropsand drops, doesn't it?
And the it gets more and more expansive,you put more and more people on it
(07:42):
and you kind of end up deliveringsomething that's a bit mediocre.
Whereas if we work in more agileway, the, the quality is our driver.
Like, we want to be able to deliverthe best quality thing.
And so if that means that what you want iswe we do it in
small batches, we know that we're alwaysgoing to be delivering to top quality.
And that was a real eye opener to me.
(08:04):
And I also realized as a scrum master,
I don't have to be likecompletely responsible
for absolutely everything on the team,my team, our responsible and accountable.
It actually talks about accountability.
It is accountablefor delivering the quality of the work.
And I know this sounds really basicand very simple,
(08:25):
but you just don't get that in in projectdriven teams that are more waterfall.
So that was yeah, that was great.
So I did that cause, I then startedto play a lot within the teams I was in.
So I was like, I'm up, you know,because they talk about never say
agile and organizationbecause it's that swear word.
We the actual oh,we don't want to Keegan's idea
(08:47):
because that means you just be changingnew requirements.
In which, I mean, that's really not case.
So I started to experiment,with an organization.
He was a, for an organizationthat I was working with at the time.
And after a couple of years, I could do,the next part of my score on mastery.
So it's called, I think it's called,
advanced scrum master in the scrumalights, and in scrum,
(09:08):
the old gets called professional scrummaster to, And they're very similar.
And actually what I, I will call outis that from my experience having done
scrum the org things and ScrumAlliance things, is the Scrum Alliance
really support the coaching thembehavior side of things.
So I think that's really, really importantbecause at the values,
(09:31):
looks at behaviors, looks at,
you know, how you can help a teamwithout telling them what to do.
from a scrum to all perspective,they definitely look at the the values.
They look at allthose foundational pieces. But
but it is, it's
very much focused on the process of scrumfrom my experience of training.
so I think for so people listening,if you're, you know, more people oriented
(09:54):
about Gary scrum lines,if you're more kind of process
now let's goand that's warranted and guidance combo.
Right.
What kind of personwould make a good scrum master.
Someone that's able to listenbefore this week and advise someone
that cares about people and someonethat's able to be fairly levelheaded.
(10:14):
So in the scrum master role,you will be bombarded from many different
angles and not only just from your team,but everybody.
I mean, I've worked with CC people,so you're you're dealing with
lots of different charactersand lots of different power dynamics.
So you need to be able to listenand be levelheaded.
(10:36):
Now that didn't defamation comes in first.
I was like the opposite of that.
Anything like that was so
yeah, so I think that's important.
I'll definitely help you.
Let me run you, Jim.
And, I think anybody who is willingto experiment and learn
and accept that actually their ideais never going to be the best idea.
(10:59):
That's all you really need.
Because that's what you're there for.
You can make a suggestion.So you work, but it's a whole team.
A nah, you know what, aand that is not what we want to do, right?
Then be going insane.
Actually, that's what we're going to do,
because you need to be ableto step back and say, you know what?
Even if I even if I know you,their idea is not
is going to fail,does it for let them fail because boy,
(11:21):
by failing your learning, and you're building character
and you building a team to like,get together and be like, you know what?
This stinker. Right?
And they're goingto do something different.
And I think he's a to accept Dex I think.
Yeah, you're it's always the best. Cool.
You what would you say is
(11:43):
the most challenging partof being a scrum master?
Everything.
He stands out
over people.
So I guess it's like, iswe focused on product team.
So if you're building a product,I mean, it's not always,
but it's the building productwas something then.
It's hugely complex.
But for me, my my product is the people.
(12:04):
And everybody is different.
But it's the hardest thing.
And coming back to that pointof like the different power
dynamics it's, it can be really draining.
As a scrum master,you kind of show up in a space or so
if I sort of build,you're kind of battery charger.
So you go in and you know,you need to be very happy
(12:25):
if everybody's really driving the thinga bit rubbish, like
you'd be the one being like,come on, we can do this.
How are we going to do this?
Who knows, let's work it out.
But we can do it.
And there are definitelydays I don't feel like that.
And that's really hard.
Yeah. To be able to coming.
But what I would say, it's like anythingmy mum used to say to me, like,
(12:47):
even if you come out of thereand you feel a bit rubbish,
like put on a smileand always like fake it to your mate.
And I think that Kenny works in this roleand as well,
like you always come out being like,you know what?
But that was actually a good day.
Yeah, it was really difficult,
but it was a good daySo yeah, the people are very challenging.
And I think part ofthat is because you're not a manager
(13:07):
like and that's your EQ
for me that's a beautiful role.
So if you are the sort of personthat wants to go up the ranks
and manage people,this is definitely not the role for you.
Because you don't manage anybody,you've got to insolence without any power.
And that's very difficult.
(13:27):
Yeah, but you could justchoose not to listen to you. So
you got to be very sort of hard skinned, to be, you know, again, that doesn't.
That's okay.
And I've done my best job.
It's also a thankless job.
I think what's on my dayis, I'd rather just say.
Yeah, but, maybe you would everthank you for being scrum master.
(13:49):
Because you're difficult.
Because there's a crime process
of protecting your team,and you're trying to make change.
And change naturally is really hard.
you know, often not thanked for that.
So one of the things that I dotoday is a hand value diary.
So if when I'm a reason I should be seeingG, then I'll put that in there.
Otherwise I,
(14:10):
I press on them
This is my own image.
And so there's a lady called Liz Atkinswho is like the Queen.
agile coaching.
And she created this, I think because ofthese names has not been signed.
It would not be really understoodwhy you necessarily,
you know, getting a role as athletes.
And part of that is, you know,you might run a particular workshop
(14:33):
and as it goes away,you either get any recognition for that or
you might be like,
well, you know, part of the moneythat I've fought today is help people see
and get a bit of claritythrough all the priorities that they now
left that session.
And to get, you know,what we're going to focus on a
and then once A is done in fact someday.
So just yeah, it sounds like small things,but it can be really helpful
(14:56):
and can bring that knowledgethat overwhelm, that stress,
that deep experiencework and that, you know,
we don't have to work like that.
It can be different,though, and that's what drives me.
So although there are lots of thingsthat are challenging,
I think if you can type that, thatand you can mechanize, actually
(15:18):
you'll make a differenceto someone's working life.
And it may mean that's one less personin your organization.
It may mean that one one person is ableto spend more time with their family,
and one personwho just feels less stressed at work.
And I think for me, that'swhat makes the difference.
So what does a typical daylook like for you?
(15:40):
Well,
well,
it makes a little bit.
Yeah.
There's only two full days of the day,roughly the scrum master.
If you've got the scrum framework in placeessentially might be
you, get in at nine.
At 930, you meet with your teamfor 15 minutes, and in that 15 minute
(16:02):
session, you will talk about whatyour plan is for the day.
So, and literally what is your focus
to get us towards the goalthat we've agreed, which would be great.
A great before,but then you get too excited
and is there anything that's stopping youfrom being at to do that?
So these are all things that you addressat the date.
(16:22):
And am I?
There are things stopping them.
The team have tried to unblock Lorraine.
So sticking points
as a scrum also you might say, okay, likeis there anything I can help?
And if there is, is it, you know, it it could be anything.
You need an extra skill in the team.
You know where they mightthey might go forward after your daily
and talk to the relevant people.
(16:44):
They may be reliable. They may be,
you know, at the development team level,whatever it might be.
So you can do that.
Other things that you might do,you are just catching up
with your team on a 1 to 1 basis, like,how are you?
I care
not how are youand why do I you've got XYZ date.
(17:04):
That's a very key difference.
And the other things you might see areaswithin the way that your team works
like for example,maybe you had a situation the week before
when there was a bit of conflictwithin the team,
and they do really know how to to managethat.
You might even start today.
Okay.
Well, I'm going to run a conflictmanagement, or a conflict, workshop.
So that's part of I guess, these sort
(17:27):
of training eventsI might just mention I it's all right
as a scrum master,multiple different hats.
And we talk about these as sort of,scrum master stances.
So you might be a coach one day, a trainerthe next day,
or teachers would say the next dayyou might be a facilitator, you might be,
(17:48):
by various different things.
And so So you might play one of those hatsessentially.
So coming back to the dayin the life of a scrum ball.
So you had your daily discuss in the teamtry to block few things that they can't
unblock, meet with you and meetwith a team member checking how they are.
And you might then start to plananother one of the and the events.
(18:12):
So there's five events in scrum,and one of those
is at the end of kind of your,
your week or the end of your two weeks,
you will havesomething called a retrospective.
And at that point you can lookback and say, what is it that we did?
Well, what didn't we do so welland what can we improve?
(18:34):
And so you'll start to gatherthat information is workshops.
That might be part of your day.
What else you do.
It ends up being quite blocked.
Quite busy, I should say.
You often get quite a few peoplereaching out to you to be like,
oh, I've noticed that we've got thisrandom thing that nobody is looking at.
Can you help with, like, trying to seewhere the best basic is for it to go?
(18:59):
What does it sayin your team or something like that?
Or if you've got other Scrum Mastersin the organization,
you might reach out to themand say you know, we've got this problem.
It seems to go across multiple for teams.
What do we need to do in orderto move forward as a forward?
So it's very much
I guess we've got a good balance of
(19:20):
juggling multiple thingsthat might kind of be thrown your way,
knowing which one to throw back,thereby knowing which ones take away.
But also you've got the structureof the scrum framework, which is,
tiny workshops, you've got, the final workshops, CDK, you know,
all the requirements that come inand refining that with your team.
(19:42):
You've got your retrospective, which is sois the the learnings are the things.
And then you've got your dailieswhich happen every day.
And then outside of that,you can just focus on
what part of this process they work inand how can I help the team progress up.
So it's really varied.
It is interesting that you mentioned thatan organization might have Scrum Masters.
So in theory in the future,do you think every team in
(20:05):
every organization will have a Scrummaster attached to it?
I don't think I think every teamand organization supporters
and that kind of agile mindset,is that there's various different,
frameworks and processesthat you could use in scrum.
It's just one of those,I think it would be great that
organization, ones that work on complexthings do apply a scrum.
(20:27):
Do apply some sort of agileframework to help you get to that point.
And yeah, it would be greatif it was full of grandmasters
because we're amazing peopleand there's a is different level.
So just I think before I was touching onyou've got, you know, the foundation
scrum master, then you've got level twoand you've got level three.
A lot of people stop at that level twoand you're missing out.
(20:48):
It's really worthcoming to the other levels
because actually it'smore than just setting up
a scrum framework in normalization.
That's easy peasy.
It's when you get to
those more challenging conversations,those, you know, how do I help, like as I,
the team manage, or work through problems
like what tools are there out therethat can help we do that?
(21:12):
You know, have my coached the individualson know getting better at their job.
That might be somethingthat you make as a model.
So yeah, it's really worthworking your way up because
it's like in any role, you may not go
and do a certification or somethingbecause, well, what does that really mean?
You've done the course. Right.
But it is important to keep learningthe scrum master and kind of live by
(21:35):
that idea of, you know, empiricism or,
you know, inspecting, adapting, writing.
So what advice would you give forsomebody looking to become a scrum master?
I would say, do course.
Take in as one. Oh.
And, I, it might be a bit controversial,but doing a coaching course.
So I, I'm also an accredited coach.
(21:58):
So I specialize in ADHDand assertive coaching.
And I found that really helpfulbecause actually coached that
there's a really it's really easy
to give advice to a teambecause if you say you have your ideas.
Yeah.
Beavisand Butt actually to have the training,
(22:19):
the experience of the endto ask questions,
that help people the best always is
not necessarily something you get inyour first class course.
And that's why I would say go. That is
I didn'tsay, try it out in your organization
you don't have to call it scrum.
You can days you can experiment because Iwhat if we met for 15 minutes
(22:44):
and we just kind of aligned onwhat we were going to do
for the day, like, does that work?
Because you'renot going to do your qualification,
then something gets them off the job
and then that just doesn't happenanyway, does it?
Unless you're doing somethingvery vocational. So.
And oh, dinner.
And then I would after two years you can
then do your second level.
(23:05):
I'd recommend doing thathighly recommend doing.
Now, I don't say in between that timelike get into the agile community,
because if you go on LinkedIn,you just tap in like scrum monster.
I've had people reach out to mecompletely randomly being like,
I want to become a Scrum master.I don't know, why.
Would you mind giving me50 minutes of your time?
Do that. Like you can reach out to me.
(23:26):
I'd happily speech peoplebecause I think it's an area that is just
just for this opportunitythat we're not quite grasping.
And because
being a project manager is just really,you know, people know what that is, right?
It's it's a good job. Yeah.
So I do goes to events and then aftera couple of years of the PSM,
(23:49):
the SME
two, I go and see your PSM threethat PSM three very much focuses
a lot more on coaching and how to develop
teams from good to great.
I'd also recommend loads of books.
Per be the key.
One would be So Jeff Sutherland is kindof the creator, the father of scrum.
(24:12):
And he wrote a book called
Twice the Work in Half the Time,which take that with a pinch.
So tightlythat I really dislike the title.
Anyway, really good book.
And because that kind of describes
agile and it's kind of cool.
And how scrum can support you
get into that real iterativeway of developing
(24:36):
products, or developing things.
I'd also recommend another book, by LisaAdkins is actually called Agile Coaching.
But essentially an agile coach is a scrummaster with a bit more experience
and maybe can manage a couple, sorry,maybe can support a couple of other teams.
so I'd recommend reading thatbecause she first of all
(24:58):
you learn about the value chain.
And sorry buddy
Dory, but there's other exercises in therethat can be really helpful
for news grandmasters, I think.
And she writes it so beautifully.
She used to be a project manager.
I think she used to be known as a Bordeauxor something like that.
And then weirdly, I usedI'd actually used to be known like that
because I was like under so much pressureand it just suddenly get stuff done.
(25:18):
And so you read through that journeyand it's, it's.
Yeah, it's very insightful.
Nice.
So read lots join age opportunities and.
do pub masseuse So what are some common
pitfalls or mistakesthat niche grandmasters fall into?
Being the receptionist
for the team or the secretary.
(25:39):
Yeah.
So they might be like,we set up all the meetings,
all the events, taking notesand chasing tickets.
That is g job.
Don't do it booking meetings for people.
The whole idea is for youto help your team.
They self-managing.
You want to make yourself, not needed for the team.
Because the thing is,you're not needed for team.
(26:00):
You can go out and do really cool thingswith the organization so you can act
as that change agent of,you know, well, that, okay, I was working
the C-suite to be able to be like,yeah, you can do this too.
You're a team.We can do things differently.
Here are the values.
Here is it's neat.
So the idea is for themnot to rely on you.
And you see that all the time. The other
(26:22):
thing I
see quite a lot is, I'mprobably going to get a little bit of like
pushback on this, but mandating,all of scrum in its framework,
which is a very good idea,and at the end is good.
But sometimes people just aren'tready for that, and that's okay.
And if you come in, they'rejust ripping out all of their processes
(26:45):
and then just doing a,a blueprint of scrum.
They get really annoyed with that because
and I know that they've done itlike as a scrum monster.
So try and avoid that and tryand just experiment just as scrum does.
Just as you know, the whole mindset,agile, being experimental
and being yeah, I could change is
(27:05):
I might just experiment with how this iswhat and like be ready to be better.
So I still commit to that.
you don't need to have, like,a university degree, and I'm a scrum also,
and I think it could probably come outand just do it.
And I guessI think that's kind of the beauty of it.
Yeah.
You know whatthe other thing that I'd say, is
(27:27):
it's actually helpful not to
be an expert in the particular thingthat has you tell a thing.
So, for example,
sometimes you get develop,
programmers, who meet into from most.
Well, and that's really great.
But the problem is, if you've gotsome sort of expertise and knowledge in
(27:47):
something, is that you more inclinedto be like, you should do it this way.
And yeah, maybe I should,and maybe that would be great.
But again, that's. Yeah, that's that.
It doesn't matter.
Let's startand mess up in the face as you.
And actually I suppose a so to comfortto kind of the scrum master work,
what you should beleery of is exactly that.
(28:09):
Okay.
So easy and actually I'm seeinga little bit of myself at the moment
be kind of drawn into the problemsand the issues that are going on.
And actually there are timeswhere that could be helpful, but be very,
self-aware of peanuts
judges apart from and be like,okay, I get it.
(28:31):
But making me to focus on this,but let's kind of take a step back.
Is yours.
See that?
Does he having done you know all of that so and so
so I think that could bethat you can really use that into that.
The cool brilliant.
Well thank youso much for your time today.
Thank you so much. Hi.
(28:51):
Thanks again to Helen for their time.
For more information on becoming a ScrumMaster, head to prospect stacked UK.
If you enjoyed the episode, feel freeto leave us a review on Apple or Spotify.
For a full length videoversion of the episode,
make sure to check out our YouTubechannel @Future You Pod.
Thank you as always for listeningand good luck on your journey to future you.
Hello and welcome back to Future You.
The podcast brought to youby graduate careers experts prospects.
I'm your host, Emily Slade.
And in this episode,I chat to Helen about being a scrum master
so I'm Helen Garcia,and I'm a scrum master.
Amazing. What is a scrum master?
Yeah, quite a common questionthat we get asked because obviously,
(00:21):
if you're an engineer or somethinglike that, it kind of comes to mind.
You know, what it is,but a scrum master, essentially
is a personwho works within a development team.
And they are,
sort of responsible and accountablefor supporting the team
with their processes to become moreefficient and effective with them.
(00:42):
But what I like to add to
the role is also looking after the peopleand their well being.
An example of that might be thatmaybe you’re having a team meeting
and it's all a little bit chaotic.
Nobody knows what's the priorityand how things are getting done.
As a scrum master, you might go in there,you might observe a few things
and sort of call out,
you know, if we get to work on something,what would be the highest priority
(01:03):
in this situation?
And really help the, the teamkind of see the woods through the trees.
So essentially the scrum master role fallswithin a framework called scrum.
And that framework is, is a wayto support organisations to become
more agile.
So when I talk about agile,it's about being, flexible to change.
So I would like to give the example of,the pandemic.
(01:29):
So organisations that kept on doingthe same thing over and over
and over again.
Unfortunately, quite a lot of themdidn't survive.
But those organisationsthat went from car manufacturers to now,
ventilator manufacturers,then they thrived and survived.
They never planned to do that necessarily.
Maybe they didn't want to, butthey did something to support the value
(01:49):
that the customers needed at that time.
So that's what I mean,when I talk about kind of agile and agile.
You talk about it as a, as a mindsetbecause it's a culture thing.
Rather than a process thing.
So, that’s where scrum comes in., Okay,and as a scrum master, you tend to be part
of a company or do you tend to be somebodythat they bring in from outside?
(02:10):
So you could be contracted into a team.
But the idea would be that you would workwith that team for a long period of time,
because to be ableto understand the process
and how people kind of tick,you need to be you need a a bit more,
I guess, insight you can't just kind of bedropped in, dropped out.
And I think part of the time,
it doesn't matter if you were a contractoror if you you're a full time employee.
(02:34):
As long as you're therefor an amount of time,
it's going to be ableto be supportive of the product
and get to know the peopleand not just be sort of airdropped in
and change a whole bunch of thingswithout having a real understanding.
And that can work for any industry.
So it's very popularwithin the tech industry.
So developing or,you know, platforms or whatever
(02:56):
it is online,I sound like a really old lady, ‘online’.
Actually, scrum in itselfor becoming more agile
can be in the construction industry.
It can be anywhere,it's just less popular at the moment.
And I think that's somethingthat we need, really need to grow.
Because essentially, you know,if you go to, I don’t know, you’re
building a railway
(03:17):
and there's somethingthat doesn't go quite right
and you need to block the line,you need to be flexible
to change at that point, you need to say,okay maybe you can't do this bit there.
But in order to get closer to our goal,we could do, I don’t know, XYZ.
That's the
sort of thing that that as a scrum masteryou can help reflect.
Right back to the beginning.
What was your educational journey like.
(03:38):
Okay.
So you want the honest one?
So I went to university.
I started off at university.
And I had a passion for architecture,and I went to university to do that.
I realised, it wasn't my passion,and I didn't want to do it anymore.
I actually dropped out of uniand I applied
(04:00):
for all the jobs under the sun,and the job that I ended up getting was
possessions planner for the railway.
Which basically meant
blocking all the lines from Londonto Birmingham, for maintenance work.
So I was really loved.
That introduced me to more project work.
So I moved into a project manager role.
(04:22):
And I did project managementfor, I don't know, maybe
ten years, something like that.
And after a while I realised I was, like,super stressed out all the time.
I was like, this is a horrible role, like,surely this isn't right.
And shouldn’t be the way that i’m living.
And I noticed that actually,I was making a lot of the decisions that
(04:43):
I had people around me that would bebetter off making those decisions.
I had experts that were working for me.
And so, funnily enough, my wife actuallydid a scrum master course, randomly.
And we had a lot of debates at homesaying, no, you know, project management,
a linear way of doing thingsfor complexity is so much better.
You got a planand you need to stick to that plan.
(05:04):
And she was like, no, you know, wouldn’tit be better just to be more flexible
and like, you know, as you learn, growand then change and decide.
So what I did isI spend a lot of time in work trying
to prove that that wasn't the right wayof doing things by doing it that way.
Turned out that it was really great.
And I was like, wow, actually,my stress is a little bit lower.
(05:26):
People enjoy coming to workbecause they're enabled
to make decisions, they’reempowered to do things differently.
And actually,we started to deliver things a lot quicker
because we were being flexible to change,
we weren’tjust stuck with the Gantt chart.
And I just want to be really clear,
waterfallkind of linear project management
is great for really simple tasks,because you make a plan
(05:48):
and you deliver it by that planbecause you know what's going to happen.
For more complex tasks,you need to be flexible.
So yeah, and then I startedI went on my first scrum master course.
I think that was abouteight years ago now.
And, and my eyes were kind of opened,I thought, this is amazing
and it's also fun, and that's reallyimportant to me in my working life. Why.
(06:12):
So when you say a course,was that something run by university?
Was it like workshops in, like what?
What do you mean by course?
Yeah.
So, it was run by a training organisation.
So there's a couple of different waysthat you can,
I suppose, start to understandwhat a scrum master does.
And that's, ScrumAlliance is an organisation
(06:36):
and Scrum.orgSo Scrum Alliance is very UK based
Scrum.org is US based.
So if you go to the ScrumAlliance webpage, there are loads of
trainers in there.
And I will tell you which trainerI had, because he’s amazing.
So I went with PaulGoddard and Geoff Watts.
So Geoff isn't doing the traininganymore, but Paul definitely is,
(06:58):
and he's just brings everything to life.
So there's no PowerPoint.
That is the best thing about it.
It's all practical, and,there's loads of breakouts.
Yeah. So I did that first Scrum course.
And I was like, wow,this makes a whole level sense.
And it actually tooka lot of pressure off me.
So I was a project manager.
You are,you know, responsible for saying things.
(07:20):
But essentially it's time,you know, scope and budget, isn't it?
Whereas with if you put a scrum
hat on the most important thingabout your delivery is quality.
So, oftenif you're delivering to a deadline,
the quality drops and dropsand drops, doesn't it?
And the it gets more and more expansive,you put more and more people on it
(07:42):
and you kind of end up deliveringsomething that's a bit mediocre.
Whereas if we work in more agileway, the, the quality is our driver.
Like, we want to be able to deliverthe best quality thing.
And so if that means that what you want iswe we do it in
small batches, we know that we're alwaysgoing to be delivering to top quality.
And that was a real eye opener to me.
(08:04):
And I also realized as a scrum master,
I don't have to be likecompletely responsible
for absolutely everything on the team,my team, our responsible and accountable.
It actually talks about accountability.
It is accountablefor delivering the quality of the work.
And I know this sounds really basicand very simple,
(08:25):
but you just don't get that in in projectdriven teams that are more waterfall.
So that was yeah, that was great.
So I did that cause, I then startedto play a lot within the teams I was in.
So I was like, I'm up, you know,because they talk about never say
agile and organizationbecause it's that swear word.
We the actual oh,we don't want to Keegan's idea
(08:47):
because that means you just be changingnew requirements.
In which, I mean, that's really not case.
So I started to experiment,with an organization.
He was a, for an organizationthat I was working with at the time.
And after a couple of years, I could do,the next part of my score on mastery.
So it's called, I think it's called,
advanced scrum master in the scrumalights, and in scrum,
(09:08):
the old gets called professional scrummaster to, And they're very similar.
And actually what I, I will call outis that from my experience having done
scrum the org things and ScrumAlliance things, is the Scrum Alliance
really support the coaching thembehavior side of things.
So I think that's really, really importantbecause at the values,
(09:31):
looks at behaviors, looks at,
you know, how you can help a teamwithout telling them what to do.
from a scrum to all perspective,they definitely look at the the values.
They look at allthose foundational pieces. But
but it is, it's
very much focused on the process of scrumfrom my experience of training.
so I think for so people listening,if you're, you know, more people oriented
(09:54):
about Gary scrum lines,if you're more kind of process
now let's goand that's warranted and guidance combo.
Right.
What kind of personwould make a good scrum master.
Someone that's able to listenbefore this week and advise someone
that cares about people and someonethat's able to be fairly levelheaded.
(10:14):
So in the scrum master role,you will be bombarded from many different
angles and not only just from your team,but everybody.
I mean, I've worked with CC people,so you're you're dealing with
lots of different charactersand lots of different power dynamics.
So you need to be able to listenand be levelheaded.
(10:36):
Now that didn't defamation comes in first.
I was like the opposite of that.
Anything like that was so
yeah, so I think that's important.
I'll definitely help you.
Let me run you, Jim.
And, I think anybody who is willingto experiment and learn
and accept that actually their ideais never going to be the best idea.
(10:59):
That's all you really need.
Because that's what you're there for.
You can make a suggestion.So you work, but it's a whole team.
A nah, you know what, aand that is not what we want to do, right?
Then be going insane.
Actually, that's what we're going to do,
because you need to be ableto step back and say, you know what?
Even if I even if I know you,their idea is not
is going to fail,does it for let them fail because boy,
(11:21):
by failing your learning, and you're building character
and you building a team to like,get together and be like, you know what?
This stinker. Right?
And they're goingto do something different.
And I think he's a to accept Dex I think.
Yeah, you're it's always the best. Cool.
You what would you say is
(11:43):
the most challenging partof being a scrum master?
Everything.
He stands out
over people.
So I guess it's like, iswe focused on product team.
So if you're building a product,I mean, it's not always,
but it's the building productwas something then.
It's hugely complex.
But for me, my my product is the people.
(12:04):
And everybody is different.
But it's the hardest thing.
And coming back to that pointof like the different power
dynamics it's, it can be really draining.
As a scrum master,you kind of show up in a space or so
if I sort of build,you're kind of battery charger.
So you go in and you know,you need to be very happy
(12:25):
if everybody's really driving the thinga bit rubbish, like
you'd be the one being like,come on, we can do this.
How are we going to do this?
Who knows, let's work it out.
But we can do it.
And there are definitelydays I don't feel like that.
And that's really hard.
Yeah. To be able to coming.
But what I would say, it's like anythingmy mum used to say to me, like,
(12:47):
even if you come out of thereand you feel a bit rubbish,
like put on a smileand always like fake it to your mate.
And I think that Kenny works in this roleand as well,
like you always come out being like,you know what?
But that was actually a good day.
Yeah, it was really difficult,
but it was a good daySo yeah, the people are very challenging.
And I think part ofthat is because you're not a manager
(13:07):
like and that's your EQ
for me that's a beautiful role.
So if you are the sort of personthat wants to go up the ranks
and manage people,this is definitely not the role for you.
Because you don't manage anybody,you've got to insolence without any power.
And that's very difficult.
(13:27):
Yeah, but you could justchoose not to listen to you. So
you got to be very sort of hard skinned, to be, you know, again, that doesn't.
That's okay.
And I've done my best job.
It's also a thankless job.
I think what's on my dayis, I'd rather just say.
Yeah, but, maybe you would everthank you for being scrum master.
(13:49):
Because you're difficult.
Because there's a crime process
of protecting your team,and you're trying to make change.
And change naturally is really hard.
you know, often not thanked for that.
So one of the things that I dotoday is a hand value diary.
So if when I'm a reason I should be seeingG, then I'll put that in there.
Otherwise I,
(14:10):
I press on them
This is my own image.
And so there's a lady called Liz Atkinswho is like the Queen.
agile coaching.
And she created this, I think because ofthese names has not been signed.
It would not be really understoodwhy you necessarily,
you know, getting a role as athletes.
And part of that is, you know,you might run a particular workshop
(14:33):
and as it goes away,you either get any recognition for that or
you might be like,
well, you know, part of the moneythat I've fought today is help people see
and get a bit of claritythrough all the priorities that they now
left that session.
And to get, you know,what we're going to focus on a
and then once A is done in fact someday.
So just yeah, it sounds like small things,but it can be really helpful
(14:56):
and can bring that knowledgethat overwhelm, that stress,
that deep experiencework and that, you know,
we don't have to work like that.
It can be different,though, and that's what drives me.
So although there are lots of thingsthat are challenging,
I think if you can type that, thatand you can mechanize, actually
(15:18):
you'll make a differenceto someone's working life.
And it may mean that's one less personin your organization.
It may mean that one one person is ableto spend more time with their family,
and one personwho just feels less stressed at work.
And I think for me, that'swhat makes the difference.
So what does a typical daylook like for you?
(15:40):
Well,
well,
it makes a little bit.
Yeah.
There's only two full days of the day,roughly the scrum master.
If you've got the scrum framework in placeessentially might be
you, get in at nine.
At 930, you meet with your teamfor 15 minutes, and in that 15 minute
(16:02):
session, you will talk about whatyour plan is for the day.
So, and literally what is your focus
to get us towards the goalthat we've agreed, which would be great.
A great before,but then you get too excited
and is there anything that's stopping youfrom being at to do that?
So these are all things that you addressat the date.
(16:22):
And am I?
There are things stopping them.
The team have tried to unblock Lorraine.
So sticking points
as a scrum also you might say, okay, likeis there anything I can help?
And if there is, is it, you know, it it could be anything.
You need an extra skill in the team.
You know where they mightthey might go forward after your daily
and talk to the relevant people.
(16:44):
They may be reliable. They may be,
you know, at the development team level,whatever it might be.
So you can do that.
Other things that you might do,you are just catching up
with your team on a 1 to 1 basis, like,how are you?
I care
not how are youand why do I you've got XYZ date.
(17:04):
That's a very key difference.
And the other things you might see areaswithin the way that your team works
like for example,maybe you had a situation the week before
when there was a bit of conflictwithin the team,
and they do really know how to to managethat.
You might even start today.
Okay.
Well, I'm going to run a conflictmanagement, or a conflict, workshop.
So that's part of I guess, these sort
(17:27):
of training eventsI might just mention I it's all right
as a scrum master,multiple different hats.
And we talk about these as sort of,scrum master stances.
So you might be a coach one day, a trainerthe next day,
or teachers would say the next dayyou might be a facilitator, you might be,
(17:48):
by various different things.
And so So you might play one of those hatsessentially.
So coming back to the dayin the life of a scrum ball.
So you had your daily discuss in the teamtry to block few things that they can't
unblock, meet with you and meetwith a team member checking how they are.
And you might then start to plananother one of the and the events.
(18:12):
So there's five events in scrum,and one of those
is at the end of kind of your,
your week or the end of your two weeks,
you will havesomething called a retrospective.
And at that point you can lookback and say, what is it that we did?
Well, what didn't we do so welland what can we improve?
(18:34):
And so you'll start to gatherthat information is workshops.
That might be part of your day.
What else you do.
It ends up being quite blocked.
Quite busy, I should say.
You often get quite a few peoplereaching out to you to be like,
oh, I've noticed that we've got thisrandom thing that nobody is looking at.
Can you help with, like, trying to seewhere the best basic is for it to go?
(18:59):
What does it sayin your team or something like that?
Or if you've got other Scrum Mastersin the organization,
you might reach out to themand say you know, we've got this problem.
It seems to go across multiple for teams.
What do we need to do in orderto move forward as a forward?
So it's very much
I guess we've got a good balance of
(19:20):
juggling multiple thingsthat might kind of be thrown your way,
knowing which one to throw back,thereby knowing which ones take away.
But also you've got the structureof the scrum framework, which is,
tiny workshops, you've got, the final workshops, CDK, you know,
all the requirements that come inand refining that with your team.
(19:42):
You've got your retrospective, which is sois the the learnings are the things.
And then you've got your dailieswhich happen every day.
And then outside of that,you can just focus on
what part of this process they work inand how can I help the team progress up.
So it's really varied.
It is interesting that you mentioned thatan organization might have Scrum Masters.
So in theory in the future,do you think every team in
(20:05):
every organization will have a Scrummaster attached to it?
I don't think I think every teamand organization supporters
and that kind of agile mindset,is that there's various different,
frameworks and processesthat you could use in scrum.
It's just one of those,I think it would be great that
organization, ones that work on complexthings do apply a scrum.
(20:27):
Do apply some sort of agileframework to help you get to that point.
And yeah, it would be greatif it was full of grandmasters
because we're amazing peopleand there's a is different level.
So just I think before I was touching onyou've got, you know, the foundation
scrum master, then you've got level twoand you've got level three.
A lot of people stop at that level twoand you're missing out.
(20:48):
It's really worthcoming to the other levels
because actually it'smore than just setting up
a scrum framework in normalization.
That's easy peasy.
It's when you get to
those more challenging conversations,those, you know, how do I help, like as I,
the team manage, or work through problems
like what tools are there out therethat can help we do that?
(21:12):
You know, have my coached the individualson know getting better at their job.
That might be somethingthat you make as a model.
So yeah, it's really worthworking your way up because
it's like in any role, you may not go
and do a certification or somethingbecause, well, what does that really mean?
You've done the course. Right.
But it is important to keep learningthe scrum master and kind of live by
(21:35):
that idea of, you know, empiricism or,
you know, inspecting, adapting, writing.
So what advice would you give forsomebody looking to become a scrum master?
I would say, do course.
Take in as one. Oh.
And, I, it might be a bit controversial,but doing a coaching course.
So I, I'm also an accredited coach.
(21:58):
So I specialize in ADHDand assertive coaching.
And I found that really helpfulbecause actually coached that
there's a really it's really easy
to give advice to a teambecause if you say you have your ideas.
Yeah.
Beavisand Butt actually to have the training,
(22:19):
the experience of the endto ask questions,
that help people the best always is
not necessarily something you get inyour first class course.
And that's why I would say go. That is
I didn'tsay, try it out in your organization
you don't have to call it scrum.
You can days you can experiment because Iwhat if we met for 15 minutes
(22:44):
and we just kind of aligned onwhat we were going to do
for the day, like, does that work?
Because you'renot going to do your qualification,
then something gets them off the job
and then that just doesn't happenanyway, does it?
Unless you're doing somethingvery vocational. So.
And oh, dinner.
And then I would after two years you can
then do your second level.
(23:05):
I'd recommend doing thathighly recommend doing.
Now, I don't say in between that timelike get into the agile community,
because if you go on LinkedIn,you just tap in like scrum monster.
I've had people reach out to mecompletely randomly being like,
I want to become a Scrum master.I don't know, why.
Would you mind giving me50 minutes of your time?
Do that. Like you can reach out to me.
(23:26):
I'd happily speech peoplebecause I think it's an area that is just
just for this opportunitythat we're not quite grasping.
And because
being a project manager is just really,you know, people know what that is, right?
It's it's a good job. Yeah.
So I do goes to events and then aftera couple of years of the PSM,
(23:49):
the SME
two, I go and see your PSM threethat PSM three very much focuses
a lot more on coaching and how to develop
teams from good to great.
I'd also recommend loads of books.
Per be the key.
One would be So Jeff Sutherland is kindof the creator, the father of scrum.
(24:12):
And he wrote a book called
Twice the Work in Half the Time,which take that with a pinch.
So tightlythat I really dislike the title.
Anyway, really good book.
And because that kind of describes
agile and it's kind of cool.
And how scrum can support you
get into that real iterativeway of developing
(24:36):
products, or developing things.
I'd also recommend another book, by LisaAdkins is actually called Agile Coaching.
But essentially an agile coach is a scrummaster with a bit more experience
and maybe can manage a couple, sorry,maybe can support a couple of other teams.
so I'd recommend reading thatbecause she first of all
(24:58):
you learn about the value chain.
And sorry buddy
Dory, but there's other exercises in therethat can be really helpful
for news grandmasters, I think.
And she writes it so beautifully.
She used to be a project manager.
I think she used to be known as a Bordeauxor something like that.
And then weirdly, I usedI'd actually used to be known like that
because I was like under so much pressureand it just suddenly get stuff done.
(25:18):
And so you read through that journeyand it's, it's.
Yeah, it's very insightful.
Nice.
So read lots join age opportunities and.
do pub masseuse So what are some common
pitfalls or mistakesthat niche grandmasters fall into?
Being the receptionist
for the team or the secretary.
(25:39):
Yeah.
So they might be like,we set up all the meetings,
all the events, taking notesand chasing tickets.
That is g job.
Don't do it booking meetings for people.
The whole idea is for youto help your team.
They self-managing.
You want to make yourself, not needed for the team.
Because the thing is,you're not needed for team.
(26:00):
You can go out and do really cool thingswith the organization so you can act
as that change agent of,you know, well, that, okay, I was working
the C-suite to be able to be like,yeah, you can do this too.
You're a team.We can do things differently.
Here are the values.
Here is it's neat.
So the idea is for themnot to rely on you.
And you see that all the time. The other
(26:22):
thing I
see quite a lot is, I'mprobably going to get a little bit of like
pushback on this, but mandating,all of scrum in its framework,
which is a very good idea,and at the end is good.
But sometimes people just aren'tready for that, and that's okay.
And if you come in, they'rejust ripping out all of their processes
(26:45):
and then just doing a,a blueprint of scrum.
They get really annoyed with that because
and I know that they've done itlike as a scrum monster.
So try and avoid that and tryand just experiment just as scrum does.
Just as you know, the whole mindset,agile, being experimental
and being yeah, I could change is
(27:05):
I might just experiment with how this iswhat and like be ready to be better.
So I still commit to that.
you don't need to have, like,a university degree, and I'm a scrum also,
and I think it could probably come outand just do it.
And I guessI think that's kind of the beauty of it.
Yeah.
You know whatthe other thing that I'd say, is
(27:27):
it's actually helpful not to
be an expert in the particular thingthat has you tell a thing.
So, for example,
sometimes you get develop,
programmers, who meet into from most.
Well, and that's really great.
But the problem is, if you've gotsome sort of expertise and knowledge in
(27:47):
something, is that you more inclinedto be like, you should do it this way.
And yeah, maybe I should,and maybe that would be great.
But again, that's. Yeah, that's that.
It doesn't matter.
Let's startand mess up in the face as you.
And actually I suppose a so to comfortto kind of the scrum master work,
what you should beleery of is exactly that.
(28:09):
Okay.
So easy and actually I'm seeinga little bit of myself at the moment
be kind of drawn into the problemsand the issues that are going on.
And actually there are timeswhere that could be helpful, but be very,
self-aware of peanuts
judges apart from and be like,okay, I get it.
(28:31):
But making me to focus on this,but let's kind of take a step back.
Is yours.
See that?
Does he having done you know all of that so and so
so I think that could bethat you can really use that into that.
The cool brilliant.
Well thank youso much for your time today.
Thank you so much. Hi.
(28:51):
Thanks again to Helen for their time.
For more information on becoming a ScrumMaster, head to prospect stacked UK.
If you enjoyed the episode, feel freeto leave us a review on Apple or Spotify.
For a full length videoversion of the episode,
make sure to check out our YouTubechannel @Future You Pod.
Thank you as always for listeningand good luck on your journey to future you.
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and current events with intelligence and humor. From the border crisis, to the madness of cancel culture and far-left missteps, Clay and Buck guide listeners through the latest headlines and hot topics with fun and entertaining conversations and opinions.