January 23, 2025 • 41 mins
In this Scrum.org Community Podcast episode, our host Dave West speaks with Bilal Alawiye, Agile Coach Lead at Sanofi’s Accelerator, and Stephen Sykes, co-founder of Scrum Match. Bilal shares how Sanofi’s Accelerator transformed its approach to Scrum Mastery. The discussion highlights challenges like mechanical Scrum and the evolving role of Scrum Masters in fostering a product-focused culture, making their contributions transparent, and addressing business complexities. They explore how Sanofi’s Accelerator partnered with Scrum Match to enhance Scrum Master recruitment, emphasizing the importance of domain knowledge, product orientation, and value delivery.
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Lindsay Velecina (00:00):
Music. Welcome to the scrum.org community
(00:04):
podcast, a podcast from the homeof Scrum. In this podcast, we
feature professional scrumtrainers and other scrum
practitioners sharing theirstories and experiences to help
learn from the experience ofothers. We hope you enjoy this
episode.
Dave West (00:20):
Hello and welcome to the scrum.org community podcast.
I'm your host, Dave West CEOhere@scrum.org in this episode,
we're going to explore howtoday's market views scrum
mastery and talk about how wegot here. We'll unpack some
common pitfalls, such as blindapplication of the framework
mechanical Scrum, a failure tothink beyond the team and the
(00:42):
impact of the lack of domainknowledge on the role. Joining
us. We're very, very luckytoday. Listeners joining us.
Today, we have Bala Alawi froman Agile Coach lead at Sanofi
digital accelerator. He's goingto share what they're doing at
Sanofi and how they found greatScrum Masters. We're also lucky
(01:07):
to have Stephen Sykes, cofounder of Scrum match, who
worked with Sanofi in solvingthis problem. Welcome to the
podcast, gentlemen. Thank
Stephen Sykes (01:17):
you very much.
Pleasure to be here. Thank youfor the invite, Dave.
Bilal Alawiye (01:21):
Thank you, Dave, happy to be here with you guys
to have this nice little chat.
Dave West (01:25):
Yeah, it's gonna, it's gonna be fun, because it is
a hot topic in certainly in ourcommunity. So it's great that
you're, you're here. Sotogether, we're going to discuss
how partnering with Scrum matchSmash, which is hard to say on a
Monday morning, Scrum match,enabled Sanofi to recruit great,
true Scrum Masters. Then I thinkwe're going to talk a little bit
(01:48):
about how Scrum Masters succeedin their role, from fostering a
product oriented culture anddelivering meaningful results
every sprint to mastering domainknowledge. So before we sort of
go into the whole scrum masterhiring them that you know, the
situation that was causingSanofi some challenges. Can we
(02:09):
provide our listeners with alittle bit of context? So,
Villa, do you want to start andtalk a little bit about Scrum at
Sanofi?
Bilal Alawiye (02:17):
Yeah, sure. So you know, the journey with
agility and and Scrum is not newin Sanofi, you know, right? So
we, we probably have startedthis path, probably maybe five
or six years ago, across theentire board, but it wasn't
until, you know, recently, in2022 where we created what we
(02:37):
call the accelerator, which iskind of was a new way of working
and applying also agility inSanofi, which where we really
started to dive much more intoscrum so we have an entity about
121 30 people working actuallyphysically on different
strategic products. And duringthat time, we actually hired and
(03:01):
worked with a lot of Scrummaster this is where, really we
started seeing how Scrum is ableto provide great results, or
not, on the field. Or as before,Scrum was much more a reference
for the company, but we haven'treally seen it on the ground,
how it how it behaves. That's anutshell how the journey
(03:22):
started. Agility and Scrum iskind of known, but accelerator
was actually the real ground ofwork where we saw scrum mastery
happening in life.
Dave West (03:30):
Yeah. And, you know, we, I talked to a lot of
pharmaceutical and biotechorganizations that are the
impact of digital on theirenterprise has really grown the
amount of Scrum that's beingused there as organizations sort
of wrestle with the complexitythat Digital Plus, obviously
(03:51):
medicine and Life Sciences isalso very complex and that
combination. So it's reallyinteresting the journey that
you're on at Santa Fe So,Stephen, what about this scrum
match?
Stephen Sykes (04:03):
Well, we started about a year ago, and before we
started the company, we we had apremise or a hypothesis, and the
hypothesis was, out of all theScrum Masters that are out
there, how many are actuallydelivering real, real value to
to users and the organizationsthat they work for, and we we
(04:25):
run a few experiments where I'mlucky enough to be able to help
my clients select scrum ScrumMasters, and we hire Scrum
Masters ourselves, and wequickly saw that through the
hundreds of candidates that Wesee applying for jobs, a small
percentage of those are actuallythe people who know, who know
(04:46):
Scrum and can apply scrum inpractice. And then the question
was, well, if we can see that,do employers see that? So do
employers know what quality ofcandidate that they're getting
when. When they're hiring, arethey asking the right questions?
Do they know what to look forwhen they're hiring a scrum
master? And we saw a gap in themarket where, well, the majority
(05:10):
of people who work for for scrummatch are professional scrum
traders through scrum.org Youknow, we have expertise in that
area. Maybe we can help, we canhelp companies find the best
Scrum Masters there in themarket. So that's how that's how
we started. We started with ahypothesis, and luckily, over
400 candidate reviews later, ourhypothesis being proven correct.
Dave West (05:33):
Yes, it is something that that I see a lot.
Obviously, I talk to a few ScrumMasters. Being the CEO of
scrum.org they seem to find me,particularly when I'm traveling,
you know, undercover, and talkto me. And it is there is a vast
difference in terms of skills,and that can be a real challenge
for scrum adoption andorganization. No insult to the
(05:55):
to these unskilled ScrumMasters. It's not their fault
you don't know what you don'tknow until you don't know it,
right? But the reality is thatcan undermine scrum so. So let's
lean into how did we get here?
Why aren't Scrum Masters? Solet's start with a fundamental
question that I think manylisteners are wrestling with, if
they're Scrum Masters or ifthey're working in organizations
(06:17):
doing agility, why aren't ScrumMasters seen as valuable in some
organizations? Why, you know,and how does it connect to this
skill thing? So I don't know.
Blah, you are in a hugelysuccessful, amazing, biotech,
pharmaceutical healthorganization that's, you know,
(06:40):
trying to solve some of theworst diseases in the world,
right? Why is scrum mastery? Youknow, how does it fit in? How's
it seen inside Sanofi?
Bilal Alawiye (06:50):
So, yeah, that's a great question, because, you
know, it has been a very longjourney and a very, you know, it
was full of ups and downs. Yougoing back to your question
about, How did we get there, andthe perception, and when we
first started the accelerator,it wasn't a very easy ride. You
(07:11):
have to remember, we have thepressure also to, you know,
deliver stuff. We have also alot of promises to to keep, in
terms of success in terms ofsustainability, and at the at
the same time, we want thoseSCRUM masters to be able to be
successful. So the way westarted, it was kind of very
(07:32):
bumpy, because we startedrecruiting in a way where it was
very just focused on mechanicalScrum. Shall I say, it's just
okay, do you know how to do, howto perform, or how to do, to
apply practices, or to aretrospective or daily? The
first interviews were kind ofmuch more towards that, and we
(07:52):
quickly realized that the valuewas not there at all. So it took
us a lot of back and forth, testand learn to realize that first
of all, the the role of thescrum master was not at all
clear. And also, the personthat's coming in, they kind of
thought it was an easy ride. SoI'll just have to do a daily in
a retrospective. There you go.
I'm a scrum master. That's it.
(08:13):
So it kind of took us on alittle, you know, surprise at
the beginning, and then after afew, a few back and forth, we
start realizing that, hey, theinterviews were actually not
kind of working, and thesepeople don't understand the
level of commitment andinvestment they have to put in,
and the skill set they have toalso understand and the business
(08:35):
in order to be successful, whichwasn't giving them a favor,
because the perception Frommanagement was starting to
become, hey, I mean, okay, wejust hire them to do some stuff
to deliver. So there wasn't alot of expectation on that. It
wasn't until we started changinga bit our recruitment, our
perspective on that, that westart seeing different results.
So
Stephen Sykes (08:55):
let me jump into, oh, sorry, Steven,
Dave West (08:58):
yeah. Jump in. I was going to literally do exactly
what you're about to do. I wasgoing to ask you your
Stephen Sykes (09:03):
perspective.
Thank you, David. Apologies forjumping in, but I just wanted to
jump in on last point and goingback to scrum.org, central
mission, look, at the end of theday, we're here to deliver
value. And it was very clear tothe clients that I that I speak
to, that there were a lot ofcompanies that just weren't
seeing the value delivered inregards to the investment they
returned. And then they have toquestion, okay, well, what?
(09:27):
What's the, what's the reasonfor that? And a lot of it is
what Bilal has to say aboutexpectation management, right? A
lot of people thought they couldjust, you know, facilitate a few
meetings. But in fact, whenwe're talking about the
accountabilities of a scrummaster, they're accountable for
the effectiveness of a scrumteam, right? And what are teams
(09:47):
expected to do? Teams areexpected to deliver, be it
either a scrum team or a sportsteam or any level of team, the
goal is always deliver. Anddeliver. Well, so then we, then
we have to look about, well,okay, what kind of qualities are
we looking for when we're hiringor recruiting a scrum master,
(10:08):
and do do we have thosequalities in the candidates that
are applying for these jobs? AndI think that the market
significantly changed from nowand 10 years ago. Maybe Dave,
you want to jump in about whatthat looked like, what you've
seen in your kind of an area.
But I think that there's athere's a there's a there's
(10:28):
definitely been a market shiftin regards to what companies
expect from Scrum Masters,rightly so, given the amount of
investment that they'reinvesting in Scrum and Agile
transformations.
Dave West (10:41):
Yeah, I think that what's really interesting from
my perspective, and, you know,and I'll, I'll come back to, I
think it's really interestingthat the change that you saw at
Santa Fe in terms of yourappreciation of the importance
of the role, but that what we'vegone through in terms of the
industry is we had a bunch ofproject managers. We then
(11:01):
started doing Scrum. A lot ofpeople became Scrum Masters,
either from a technical or froma project management
perspective. They tried to notdo anything different that other
than the, you know, the processof Scrum. And I think it's very
clear that the change to Scrumis more than just a process
change. It's a fundamentalchange in terms of
(11:22):
accountability and role andimportance and where you fit
and, and it's complicated tonavigate, right? I mean, that's
the bottom line, and, and Ithink that that what you're
doing together is, is navigatingthat in a, in a, in a in a more
effective way, which I think isreally interesting. So, so, so
(11:44):
what happened at Santa Fe yourealize this, you know, you've
got this, this change that'sneeded yours. You started
talking to Stephen and Scrummatch. What happened next?
Bilal Alawiye (11:58):
Yeah, so, so, just before jumping into the
very nice discovery of Scrummatch that I want to actually
highlight you said somethingthere which is really
interesting is that, in terms ofaccountabilities, a lot of the
Scrum Masters were just goinginto this role with one very
narrow perspective, which isprocess or fix some stuff in
(12:23):
terms of process. But actuallywhat we did at the exterior, the
first thing we did, and it mightseem very, very naive or very,
you know, weird, but I kind oflike she did a lot of good
things, is we changed thejargon, so we try to abide much
more with with the scrum valuesand principles, and we try to
(12:43):
start understanding the role ofa coach, because and and the
better, the best way we did thatis by highlighting that we're
like sports coaches. And asports coach when they work with
a team, they need to navigatedifferent angles and different
perspectives. So the same waythe scrum master, they have to
uphold for some of the principleof Scrum, but they also have to
(13:04):
see the dimensions of a producttechnical mastery. They have to
see organization as a whole.
They have to have goodnegotiation skills. They
probably have to also work onteam dynamics. They probably
have to also shift theirpostures depending on the
context. So the first thing wedid is that stop seeing yourself
as just a person who applieswant to practice but try to see
yourself as you're coaching ateam to win a game. And that
(13:25):
actually started shifting theentire perspective. Now the
second we did is that weactually started understanding
what was going wrong with ourrecruitment. Why were it not
working? And by interviewingsome people actually, one of
them actually told us somethingthat kind of highlighted is
that, well, I signed up just todo a daily and retrospective.
(13:46):
This is what I grew upunderstanding, what a scrum
master is, especially here inFrance. So this led us to start
under investigating what can bea better recruitment. And I
landed on Stefan's scrum match.
It was basically, I think, waspart of a forum or a community
on Slack, and we started seeinga bit. And the first thing that
(14:06):
I saw that was reallyinteresting, that Stefan put was
the maturity model that scrummatch has done, which is just a
very nice way of seeing if thatwhat a scrum master can do on
which level, for level one, theycan do this, and level two, they
can do that. And that, byitself, gave me a better
perspective on how to evaluate.
And then, from then on, wecontacted each other, and I
(14:28):
guess the rest is history,right? Give it to you. Stefan,
to elaborate.
Stephen Sykes (14:35):
Thank you. Bilal, absolutely. We have a pretty,
pretty good history from fromnow, but the way we work is, if
your client is looking for ascrum master like like Sanofi,
we go through a review process,and during this review process
that somebody has to fill out aprofile online, depending on the
what they fill in their profile,we'll select them to go through
(14:56):
a review with at least two ScrumMasters, where we'll go. Through
a 90 minute call where we'll asklots of questions and case some
case study questions, and reallykind of drill into not just the
theory of Scrum, but moreimportantly, the practice of
Scrum, and their actualunderstanding of how you apply
(15:16):
practice, right? So whatscrum.org does really well is
making sure that people have theability to understand Scrum,
Scrum theory, and when they goout into the world, is when you
really find out whether they'reable to apply what they've
learned into practice. Andthat's where we that's where we
where we fit in, is what we testa little bit about, okay,
(15:37):
they've been in the job for Xamount of years. How have you
applied your learning inpractice? What results have you
achieved? What methods did youuse? And again, every only a
very tiny portion of the reviewprocess has anything to do with
theory, but it's all about whatdid you do? How did you do it?
Have you done this before? Andcan you push yourself and do
(16:01):
bigger things in the future, andthat's the review. That's the
review process. And we're luckyenough, we've had good success
with Sanofi. But I suppose onething I before we go on to a
different topic, I just want toshare a couple of insights,
because at this stage, we've, asI've said, the start, we've
reviewed about 400 candidates sofar, and about 38% of the people
(16:25):
that we review don't even comeonto our platform because they
don't have fundamental scrumknowledge, right? So that's
quite it's a pretty damningindictment that people who call
themselves Scrum Masters, about40% of which will find it
difficult to explain what Scrumis, never mind actually applying
(16:45):
it. And there you see that theproblem with the market in
itself that you have a largemarket of people, people, Scrum
mastery is a well, well paidjob, but a large percentage of
those, those people don'tunderstand scrum fully and don't
know how to apply it. And it'sour our jobs, I think, is to
kind of make sure that wehighlight which SCRUM masters
(17:08):
can really deliver value,because that's what we're here
for. If we're not deliveringvalue, we shouldn't really be
calling ourselves Scrum Mastersin the first place.
Dave West (17:16):
No, I think it sort of reminds me a little bit of in
the early 2000s where everybody,everybody was a web developer,
right? And there was this momentin probably 2000 and what two
one, when the everybody wasrealized that they weren't web
developers. They could cut andpaste, yeah, they could use
(17:39):
WordPress, but that does notmake you a web developer. And
there was this re sort of likerestructuring of the market and
and I think we're at a verysimilar place with with Scrum
Master. And I think really youknow that we are at this change
in terms of these deliveryleaders inside organizations,
(18:01):
which ultimately what a scrummaster is, you know, a delivery
leader, a person thatconcentrates on that. And I
think that that's really, reallyinteresting, that that we're at
that point, and not a surprise,really, you know, in the last
510, years, we've been, youknow, growing in popularity and
importance, and now I think it'ssort of sort of gone mainstream.
(18:23):
So I'd love to pull you as I'vegot you here, and I think this
is a really interesting story. Ireally want to sort of pull back
on what should Scrum Mastersreally be good at? What are
those telltale signals thatthere's a good scrum master
versus a not so good lessexperience. Let's not use any
(18:44):
negative words, because they'reprobably awesome human beings,
but they just just haven't quitegot the skills to be awesome at
a company like Santa Fe so canwe sort of like, what should
Scrum Masters, you know? What istheir focus? What is the things
that that are interesting. Idon't know who wants to answer
that. Yeah. I
Bilal Alawiye (19:04):
can start maybe from the Sanofi perspective.
Yeah, we can give it anotherother ideas. One of the things
I've seen that a lot of I don'twant to let's say bad Scrum
Masters, or mechanical scrummaster do not grasp is the
understanding of the businessand the domain, which is
(19:27):
something a lot of Scrum Mastersstruggled for a long time, where
they say, Well, I'm not I'm nothere. I'm not involved with the
team, so I'm not supposed toknow. They can figure it out.
I'm just here to, you know, helpout if there's some conflicts,
or I'm just a time box. But inreality, this is one of the
biggest indicators that the teamsees in scrum master. Imagine a
(19:49):
new scrum master coming to ateam, and they're trying to
smell you like dogs, like, Who'sthis? So for me, like one of the
first thing that they're gonnaprobably. Think, make sure they
can I probably pay attention tois, Are you understanding what
we're going through? Do youunderstand the problems we have
before we talk about flow orteam dynamics or delivery
(20:14):
optimization and CICD orwhatever you want to talk but
before, do you understand, likein Sanofi, we are very much
sensitive about you understandclinical data. Do you understand
regulatory environments? Do youunderstand the level of
complexity when working on theon the US market versus the
European markets? Do youunderstand the molecule pipeline
journeys that we have in ourcompany, before you start just
(20:37):
addressing anything? So I'lljust stop here and just have
this one. I'll give it to you,Stefan, but this one really
marked my my attention when Iwas in central
Stephen Sykes (20:47):
fields. So I won't even take it like even a
step back to what, because Iagree with everything Bilal
says. But I think if you're ascrum master and you're not
delivering a working productevery sprint, you have no other
problem deliver working product,product every sprint. And even a
large amount of Scrum teams thatI see out in the wild can't do
(21:07):
that, right? So I think theminimum expectations as a scrum
master is you need to be ableyour team needs to be able to
deliver working increments,working software every sprint,
and then, then, then you canbuild out from there. But
there's, that's your first kindof minimum expectation we need
to have. Expectation. We need tohave working product, working
software. And to hit home on onBilal point about about product
(21:30):
is, oftentimes SCRUM masters aregoing to be working in teams
where the person who is calledthe product owner, product owner
might have never touched scrumin the first place, and it's our
job to make sure that theyunderstand, that that that
person understands how to applyScrum, where scrum fits in. But
that also means the scrum masterhas to know about product. What
(21:51):
is this product? Who is thisproduct? Cater to. Cater. Cater
to. How often can we get ourproduct actually into the hands
of users and like, close thefeedback loop. How many, how
many clients have you all seenthat where you know they say
that they're actually doingScrum but they actually never
interact with an actual user,right? And then going to, just
(22:12):
to hit bilal's point is, I, thething that I often see is Scrum
Masters tend to limit themselvesto the team. They don't, they
don't look outside the team, anddon't look at the whole product
right from beginning to end. Howdid this product come? Come to
here, what blockers do we haveafter passes this team, where is
flow blocked in the product inthe process? How do we reduce
(22:36):
that kind of stuff? I come tothink that, like you know, Scrum
is here to deliver value, butalso, as practitioners and agile
practitioners, we need to have atoolbox of skills that we can
use with with clients to helpsolve their solve their
problems. Because scrum isn't apanacea. It's not going to solve
all your problems. It's justgoing to show you what problems
(22:59):
that you have to try to solve,right? And as a scrum master,
you need to have a good toolboxof other, other other things,
whether it be Kanban, whether itbe design thinking, whether it
whether it be technicalknowledge. Technical knowledge
you you can't rely on, on scrumalone. You need to have, you
need to develop like like, anyskills with it, football. You
(23:20):
develop skills in certain areas.
How do I talk with management?
Right? And I think that'ssomething fundamentally SCRUM
masters have been really bad atover the last years, is to
demonstrate the value thatthey've had brought to
organizations. What have Iachieved, and what was the
result of
Bilal Alawiye (23:38):
that? Probably, sorry, I just want to add
probably to your point, Stefan,you're talking about product. I
would probably say product slashsystem, because it's also a
system thinking issue. Is thatokay to understand your
organization? How manydependents Do you have? A lot of
the times also, we've, we atSanofi have started working in
teams where some scrum masterdidn't actually understand the
(24:01):
ecosystem surroundingsurrounding that product or that
team, and then we expect them toactually deliver value. So I
agree with you, the product partand the system part is a huge
one. And actually be able todeliver frequently is one of
those symptoms. I would actuallywe at Sanofi, we try to
ethically do one more go beyondthe delivery and much more about
(24:25):
learning. So we're trying tocome up with a way. How can we
measure sort of feedback loops,by not just delivering
frequently, but usage andlearning after that. Because, in
a way, we try to define agilityas faster learning and a complex
adaptive system. So that means,if I can just make my team learn
faster, de facto, there will beactually improvement in the
(24:47):
business, and also for theuser's problems.
Stephen Sykes (24:48):
And Dave, before I know you want to jump in, but
two seconds I have. There's onepoint I think that also Scrum
Masters. A lot of Scrum Masters,I would say 80% of the people
that I've gone through reviewswith tend to for. Get and that's
about discovery and productproduct discovery, right?
There's a lot of we talked aboutScrum Masters and delivery
managers. And I kind of, youknow, I kind of like feel a bit
(25:12):
uneasy about that, because theDiscover delivery is only half
the battle, right? And discoveryis a large part of part of the
battle. Unfortunately, not manyScrum Masters out there help
product owners focus onDiscovery just as much as
delivery. But over to you, Dave,
Dave West (25:29):
yeah, it's interesting, from my experience,
a really good delivery managercares deeply about the stuff
that's being delivered. Youknow, it's not just because it's
not just the they're not justthe post person, you know,
delivering the parcel from A toB. They've got to make sure the
parcel lands, and because if itdoesn't, then they ain't going
(25:54):
to get paid long term. I meanthat that is and the partnership
with product ownership iscrucial. In 2020 we changed the
scrum guide to reflect thatwhere, historically, a scrum
master was accountable for threethings, you know, the team, the
product owner and helping youknow the organization do Scrum
(26:15):
the relationship with the atthat point, we used to call it
usable increment was verytenuous, and ultimately we made
the changes to sort of bringthat together, and how a Scrum
Master does it, whether it's,you know, 500 years of you know,
pharmaceutical knowledge intheir head, or whether it's less
(26:36):
of that, but a real Passion forcustomers and for outcomes and
and the like, or whether it's,you know, their experience with
design thinking or systemsthinking, whatever that and it
depends on, obviously, context,I think it, it makes a huge
difference. But so that you'retalking a little bit gentlemen
(26:58):
about product culture versusproject culture. That's the
smell that I kind of got, isthat something that resonates
with you
Bilal Alawiye (27:09):
absolutely, absolutely, even at Sanofi, like
even our CDO, is deeply investedinto going into that mindset of
outcome based cultures andproduct culture, where it's not
just delivering stuff. We'remuch more interested in solving
a user's problem and de factohaving a business impact. But in
(27:31):
our in our case in Sanofi, wealso have been hit with the
output being such a long timewhere everything is just check
boxes, I delivered this ordelivered that. So the
accelerator was a very coolopportunity to harp on the fact
that it has to be outcomeoriented. What is changing
behavior? We're much morefocusing on what will people be
(27:54):
doing differently and how, andhow will that impact the
business and and when I firstgoing back to Stefan's work with
Scrum match, one of the thingsthat was interesting when we had
our first talk, me and Stefanwas about that topic in per se,
precisely, which is productculture and helping product
owners, because we're alsosometimes challenged having
(28:15):
product owners who don't know towhat extent they should be
shaping their product as well.
So with the same problems thatpatterns that patterns that we
see with Scrum Masters, we canalso sometimes see them with
product owners. So yes, shortanswer to your to your question.
Dave, absolutely, productculture is a must, and it's
actually rooted in our culture,
Dave West (28:34):
and I haven't actually heard it articulated
quite as well as this, which is,you know, I think, pretty
awesome the that Scrum Mastersreally are creating the
environment for product thinkingto gain traction. Product owners
haven't got the invite that theyexecute in the environment, and
it's a it's a hard job. I'm moreon the product side and less on
(28:55):
the scrum master side. I I'm notgood at dealing with messy
environments would be a good wayto describe it. I like things
nice and ordered. So I'm not agreat Scrum Master. I'm a better
product product person. And sothe product owner has a lot of,
you know, they're thinking aboutvalue, whether it's, you know,
(29:17):
current value or unknown value.
They're look they're looking atthe network in terms of
customers, stakeholders,managing all of those to ensure
the environment, though, forthat to succeed, has to be
created by somebody or a groupof people. And scrum master is
the only I mean, there's nobodyelse that really worries about
it, right? I mean, it's it.
(29:39):
You've got to have somebodycaring about that. And I think
what you described is thischange agent element of the
project to product culture,which is really, really
exciting. Stefan, you've talkedto hundreds of candidates. Is
that something that's top ofmind for these people?
Stephen Sykes (29:59):
The honest answer? Is for the people who
get onto our platform, yes, butfor a lot of people, no, right?
And then going back to like,swinging around full circle to
allow point is, when we gothrough a review with our Scrum
Masters, we have an expectationin regards to what kind of
knowledge should they have, anda lot of that also includes, how
(30:20):
do I help my product owner getvalue from the product that
they're actually creating?
Right? We're not expecting SCRUMmasters to become product
owners. Maybe that they won't dothat in the future, but you got
to think about actualbusinesses. A product owner is
somebody who's been working inthe business, has lots of
domain, domain knowledge, knowshow the business works. They
probably don't care about,quote, Scrum or on Scrum, it's
(30:42):
up to the scrum master to try toput the pieces of the puzzle
together, right? And use thatdomain knowledge, domain
knowledge and expertise in howdo we get answers quicker? Blaz
point, how do we learn quicker?
And how do we put what we learnback into the product and back
into users hand, so we candevelop a better product, right?
(31:04):
And it, I, it's, it's, it's whenyou, when you see SCRUM masters
who are totally focused onthings like crazy, things like
velocity, or the Mickey thoumost things that don't really
have importance, when you can beputting your time and investment
(31:28):
elsewhere into making sure thatyour product success success,
and a lot of that time, and weshould say that to any Scrum
Masters out there, is you shouldbe spending lots of time helping
your product owner thinkingabout the value that your
product is generating. If youdon't know the value that your
product's generating, you bettermake that transparent. And
(31:48):
likewise, the Scrum Mastersthemselves. You can apply the
same you can apply the sameprinciple. If you can't explain
the value that you as a scrummaster, are generating, it'll be
very quick before your companyrealizes maybe you don't have
value at all, so make your valuetransparent. Before I was a
Scrum Master, I worked inbanking, and I remember when my
(32:10):
first manager said says, youknow, you can't manage what you
don't measure right? And makesure that everything that you
have is measurable so you can.
And there's lots of great ScrumMasters out there who probably
just do a bad job atcommunicating that the value
that they bring, right, so thatmy hint to Scrum Masters out
there is communicate the value,the value that you have brought,
(32:31):
that your product has brought,help your product owner
communicate that value. Andthose are all skills that you
can learn right in regards towhat areas, whether you touched
on it, Dave, without mentionevidence based, evidence based
management or other areas. Youknow,
Bilal Alawiye (32:50):
probably, by the way, one of those questions we
asked a lot during recruitmentwas tell me about the last
product you were part of, andwhat were the success criterias.
And most of the time, theresponses were very basic.
Sometimes just okay, we have agood NPS or something like that,
but it wasn't really, we didn'tfeel the depth of someone
(33:13):
understanding the health of aproduct and where what they have
been doing really. And so that'salso sometimes good indicators
when we're doing therecruitment, the interviews, to
seeing if that Scrum Master hasreally invested time in working
on the product or
Dave West (33:26):
not. Yeah, I think it's funny. I got a video this
morning from from a scrum masterwho'd put a better together that
literally, with their productowner, they were walking down a
corridor. You know, it's amillennial thing. I don't
totally get it, but it wasawesome, because they're both
good singers, and they werebetter together. Do we do? And I
(33:48):
it was, it was quite funny. Andthey said, you know, they said,
This is how we think thepartnership needs to be, and we
you should spend more timeemphasizing that, and it's
something we don't spend a lotof time emphasizing. We spend a
lot of time talking about theseparate, you know,
accountabilities and butultimately, it's their marriage,
their synergy, that drivesvalue. And if I can't, as a
(34:13):
scrum master, answer that simplequestion that you said, what
value is my product delivering?
Then ultimately, how can Iensure the delivery happens
effectively? I think that it's afundamental. It is a
fundamental, alright, so we tryto keep these podcasts,
unfortunately short. You, wecould, I could listen to you
(34:35):
too, all day. You've, you know,you've taught me more. I just
like, I've learned so much fromyou. So thank you for attending
the time. But before, ourlisteners love a little the last
thing. So I, you know, maybethere's a scrum master listening
now, and maybe they're, youknow, maybe their company is
hasn't appreciated the value ofScrum mastery and the. Scrum
(34:58):
master accountability, and maybethey're looking for another job.
What do you think, if it, what'sthe one thing they need to
concentrate on, you know, interms of developing a skill that
makes them more employable?
Would you say Stefan? You Youknow, you've spoken to many at
scrum match. What would be thatone thing? Is it? That product
(35:20):
thing, is it the, you know,understanding product outcomes.
What? What is that? One thing
Stephen Sykes (35:26):
make value transparent and a really kind of
easy, easy way to do this. I'm abig fan of evidence based,
evidence based management,management, no direct plug, but
we really love it here at scrummatch is to kind of sit down and
work out what makes my productsuccessful. And if your product
is successful, your team isgoing to be successful and make
(35:47):
and you need to make sure thatpeople know about it, right? If
you're if your head of productor your CTO doesn't know that
your product's kicking ass, thenyou have a problem. So make
progress. Make your productsuccesses, transparent, that
Dave West (36:04):
sounds, that sounds awesome, definitely something
that, at the very least, itmakes you feel happier when you
go home from work if you've, ifyou've done that, blah, what?
What do you think? What would bethe one thing that you would
advise this Scrum Master? I'mkind
Bilal Alawiye (36:18):
of jealous, because Stefan stole my line
actually is big fundamental, butI would if, along with
transparency, invest time andunderstanding your company's
problems, invest timeunderstanding what's going on,
that will probably help You askbetter questions, and maybe it's
(36:42):
my favorite skill, because I'm avery scientific person. You were
talking about measurement, Dave,I think sometimes one skill that
can help a lot of Scrum Mastersbe explicit. Sometimes we say we
want to improve x, it's sovague, improve what, by how
much, by who, at what time.
Where are we now, there arethings we can do just very
easily, just being morescientific, just ask more
(37:02):
specific questions that willactually trigger more interest
with your teams and yourcompany. So I think that can go
along with transparency as
Dave West (37:11):
well. Oh, love empiricism, love scientific
method, love hypothesis drivendevelopment. They just, you
know, a product guy, that's whatresonates with me, Stefan, I
know you. We can't keep youquiet, you know. But Stefan,
what?
Stephen Sykes (37:27):
Well, I forgot what I was about to say. I like
you. I lost, I lost, I lost, Ilost my focus. Yeah, I think, I
think I've said enough and thentalked a lot. But thank you very
much, Dave for having us both onto talk about Sanofi and talking
about scrumm match.
Dave West (37:45):
It was an absolute pleasure. It, I mean, I have to
bring AI into it now, just for asecond, because it wouldn't be a
podcast today without talkingabout it. But what you two have
talked about is AI is changingthe landscape in terms of what
skills really are. You know, ifI want to run a retrospective, I
(38:06):
can just ask copilot, and it canplan it for me. I don't need
that skill. But the thing itcan't do is empathize with
customers or teams. It can'tunderstand outcomes. It can't
really clearly connect to thevalue proposition in a way that
you're describing and and Ithink if Scrum Masters have
(38:27):
those skills, then, you know, inthis age of llms and AI, I think
it accelerates them to that nextlevel of leadership and really
helps them make a difference inan organization like Sanofi or
any company. So what you twohave talked about today has is
just, yeah, I think it's sorelevant in this modern job
(38:50):
landscape,
Bilal Alawiye (38:52):
and hopefully it will stay, will never be,
probably replaced by a machineas much as a machine can
probably make it more productiveand help you see a lot of good
stuff. But we've seen that whatyou were talking about, Dave,
connection, empathy, asking theright questions. I mean, all of
those are still very humanfiber, way a human fiber
perspective. So I think it's,it's, it's cool to say that,
(39:15):
yes, AI helps us a lot. But thisjob obviously has also a
different level that still needsa human to human interaction.
Dave West (39:24):
Exactly. You said it perfectly. It's sort of staying
relevant for the future scrummaster. Who knew? But it really,
I think it really is so. Thankyou, gentlemen, for taking the
time today and being part ofthis, this podcast series. Thank
Stephen Sykes (39:42):
you. Thank you very much, Dave, thank you so we
Dave West (39:45):
were that was a really awesome podcast, wasn't
it? We were joined by BalaAlawi, Agile coach, lead atson
office digital acceleratorprogram, and Stephen Sykes, co
founder of scrummac. And theywere talking about the role of
Scrum Master, some of thechallenges that they saw at
Sanofi, and how, ultimately, theimportance of really
(40:09):
understanding what theaccountability is. And it's much
bigger than mechanical Scrum.
It's much bigger than runningthe events. It's much bigger
than than knowing just whatprofessional Scrum is, etc. It's
something much larger than thatand and I think it was really,
really interesting, particularlythe relationship between scrum
master and product owner and theimportance of value and the
(40:31):
importance of measuring value toreally get that delivery
capability delivering at fullspeed. Super interesting podcast
today. Thank you for listening.
Spending the time out of yourbusy day to listen to the
scrum.or community podcast. Ifyou liked what you heard, please
(40:51):
subscribe, share with friends,and, of course, come back and
listen to some more. I'm luckyenough to have a variety of
guests talking about everythingin the area of professional
Scrum Product thinking and ofcourse, agile, thank you,
everybody and Scrum on you.
Music. Welcome to the scrum.org community
(00:04):
podcast, a podcast from the homeof Scrum. In this podcast, we
feature professional scrumtrainers and other scrum
practitioners sharing theirstories and experiences to help
learn from the experience ofothers. We hope you enjoy this
episode.
Dave West (00:20):
Hello and welcome to the scrum.org community podcast.
I'm your host, Dave West CEOhere@scrum.org in this episode,
we're going to explore howtoday's market views scrum
mastery and talk about how wegot here. We'll unpack some
common pitfalls, such as blindapplication of the framework
mechanical Scrum, a failure tothink beyond the team and the
(00:42):
impact of the lack of domainknowledge on the role. Joining
us. We're very, very luckytoday. Listeners joining us.
Today, we have Bala Alawi froman Agile Coach lead at Sanofi
digital accelerator. He's goingto share what they're doing at
Sanofi and how they found greatScrum Masters. We're also lucky
(01:07):
to have Stephen Sykes, cofounder of Scrum match, who
worked with Sanofi in solvingthis problem. Welcome to the
podcast, gentlemen. Thank
Stephen Sykes (01:17):
you very much.
Pleasure to be here. Thank youfor the invite, Dave.
Bilal Alawiye (01:21):
Thank you, Dave, happy to be here with you guys
to have this nice little chat.
Dave West (01:25):
Yeah, it's gonna, it's gonna be fun, because it is
a hot topic in certainly in ourcommunity. So it's great that
you're, you're here. Sotogether, we're going to discuss
how partnering with Scrum matchSmash, which is hard to say on a
Monday morning, Scrum match,enabled Sanofi to recruit great,
true Scrum Masters. Then I thinkwe're going to talk a little bit
(01:48):
about how Scrum Masters succeedin their role, from fostering a
product oriented culture anddelivering meaningful results
every sprint to mastering domainknowledge. So before we sort of
go into the whole scrum masterhiring them that you know, the
situation that was causingSanofi some challenges. Can we
(02:09):
provide our listeners with alittle bit of context? So,
Villa, do you want to start andtalk a little bit about Scrum at
Sanofi?
Bilal Alawiye (02:17):
Yeah, sure. So you know, the journey with
agility and and Scrum is not newin Sanofi, you know, right? So
we, we probably have startedthis path, probably maybe five
or six years ago, across theentire board, but it wasn't
until, you know, recently, in2022 where we created what we
(02:37):
call the accelerator, which iskind of was a new way of working
and applying also agility inSanofi, which where we really
started to dive much more intoscrum so we have an entity about
121 30 people working actuallyphysically on different
strategic products. And duringthat time, we actually hired and
(03:01):
worked with a lot of Scrummaster this is where, really we
started seeing how Scrum is ableto provide great results, or
not, on the field. Or as before,Scrum was much more a reference
for the company, but we haven'treally seen it on the ground,
how it how it behaves. That's anutshell how the journey
(03:22):
started. Agility and Scrum iskind of known, but accelerator
was actually the real ground ofwork where we saw scrum mastery
happening in life.
Dave West (03:30):
Yeah. And, you know, we, I talked to a lot of
pharmaceutical and biotechorganizations that are the
impact of digital on theirenterprise has really grown the
amount of Scrum that's beingused there as organizations sort
of wrestle with the complexitythat Digital Plus, obviously
(03:51):
medicine and Life Sciences isalso very complex and that
combination. So it's reallyinteresting the journey that
you're on at Santa Fe So,Stephen, what about this scrum
match?
Stephen Sykes (04:03):
Well, we started about a year ago, and before we
started the company, we we had apremise or a hypothesis, and the
hypothesis was, out of all theScrum Masters that are out
there, how many are actuallydelivering real, real value to
to users and the organizationsthat they work for, and we we
(04:25):
run a few experiments where I'mlucky enough to be able to help
my clients select scrum ScrumMasters, and we hire Scrum
Masters ourselves, and wequickly saw that through the
hundreds of candidates that Wesee applying for jobs, a small
percentage of those are actuallythe people who know, who know
(04:46):
Scrum and can apply scrum inpractice. And then the question
was, well, if we can see that,do employers see that? So do
employers know what quality ofcandidate that they're getting
when. When they're hiring, arethey asking the right questions?
Do they know what to look forwhen they're hiring a scrum
master? And we saw a gap in themarket where, well, the majority
(05:10):
of people who work for for scrummatch are professional scrum
traders through scrum.org Youknow, we have expertise in that
area. Maybe we can help, we canhelp companies find the best
Scrum Masters there in themarket. So that's how that's how
we started. We started with ahypothesis, and luckily, over
400 candidate reviews later, ourhypothesis being proven correct.
Dave West (05:33):
Yes, it is something that that I see a lot.
Obviously, I talk to a few ScrumMasters. Being the CEO of
scrum.org they seem to find me,particularly when I'm traveling,
you know, undercover, and talkto me. And it is there is a vast
difference in terms of skills,and that can be a real challenge
for scrum adoption andorganization. No insult to the
(05:55):
to these unskilled ScrumMasters. It's not their fault
you don't know what you don'tknow until you don't know it,
right? But the reality is thatcan undermine scrum so. So let's
lean into how did we get here?
Why aren't Scrum Masters? Solet's start with a fundamental
question that I think manylisteners are wrestling with, if
they're Scrum Masters or ifthey're working in organizations
(06:17):
doing agility, why aren't ScrumMasters seen as valuable in some
organizations? Why, you know,and how does it connect to this
skill thing? So I don't know.
Blah, you are in a hugelysuccessful, amazing, biotech,
pharmaceutical healthorganization that's, you know,
(06:40):
trying to solve some of theworst diseases in the world,
right? Why is scrum mastery? Youknow, how does it fit in? How's
it seen inside Sanofi?
Bilal Alawiye (06:50):
So, yeah, that's a great question, because, you
know, it has been a very longjourney and a very, you know, it
was full of ups and downs. Yougoing back to your question
about, How did we get there, andthe perception, and when we
first started the accelerator,it wasn't a very easy ride. You
(07:11):
have to remember, we have thepressure also to, you know,
deliver stuff. We have also alot of promises to to keep, in
terms of success in terms ofsustainability, and at the at
the same time, we want thoseSCRUM masters to be able to be
successful. So the way westarted, it was kind of very
(07:32):
bumpy, because we startedrecruiting in a way where it was
very just focused on mechanicalScrum. Shall I say, it's just
okay, do you know how to do, howto perform, or how to do, to
apply practices, or to aretrospective or daily? The
first interviews were kind ofmuch more towards that, and we
(07:52):
quickly realized that the valuewas not there at all. So it took
us a lot of back and forth, testand learn to realize that first
of all, the the role of thescrum master was not at all
clear. And also, the personthat's coming in, they kind of
thought it was an easy ride. SoI'll just have to do a daily in
a retrospective. There you go.
I'm a scrum master. That's it.
(08:13):
So it kind of took us on alittle, you know, surprise at
the beginning, and then after afew, a few back and forth, we
start realizing that, hey, theinterviews were actually not
kind of working, and thesepeople don't understand the
level of commitment andinvestment they have to put in,
and the skill set they have toalso understand and the business
(08:35):
in order to be successful, whichwasn't giving them a favor,
because the perception Frommanagement was starting to
become, hey, I mean, okay, wejust hire them to do some stuff
to deliver. So there wasn't alot of expectation on that. It
wasn't until we started changinga bit our recruitment, our
perspective on that, that westart seeing different results.
So
Stephen Sykes (08:55):
let me jump into, oh, sorry, Steven,
Dave West (08:58):
yeah. Jump in. I was going to literally do exactly
what you're about to do. I wasgoing to ask you your
Stephen Sykes (09:03):
perspective.
Thank you, David. Apologies forjumping in, but I just wanted to
jump in on last point and goingback to scrum.org, central
mission, look, at the end of theday, we're here to deliver
value. And it was very clear tothe clients that I that I speak
to, that there were a lot ofcompanies that just weren't
seeing the value delivered inregards to the investment they
returned. And then they have toquestion, okay, well, what?
(09:27):
What's the, what's the reasonfor that? And a lot of it is
what Bilal has to say aboutexpectation management, right? A
lot of people thought they couldjust, you know, facilitate a few
meetings. But in fact, whenwe're talking about the
accountabilities of a scrummaster, they're accountable for
the effectiveness of a scrumteam, right? And what are teams
(09:47):
expected to do? Teams areexpected to deliver, be it
either a scrum team or a sportsteam or any level of team, the
goal is always deliver. Anddeliver. Well, so then we, then
we have to look about, well,okay, what kind of qualities are
we looking for when we're hiringor recruiting a scrum master,
(10:08):
and do do we have thosequalities in the candidates that
are applying for these jobs? AndI think that the market
significantly changed from nowand 10 years ago. Maybe Dave,
you want to jump in about whatthat looked like, what you've
seen in your kind of an area.
But I think that there's athere's a there's a there's
(10:28):
definitely been a market shiftin regards to what companies
expect from Scrum Masters,rightly so, given the amount of
investment that they'reinvesting in Scrum and Agile
transformations.
Dave West (10:41):
Yeah, I think that what's really interesting from
my perspective, and, you know,and I'll, I'll come back to, I
think it's really interestingthat the change that you saw at
Santa Fe in terms of yourappreciation of the importance
of the role, but that what we'vegone through in terms of the
industry is we had a bunch ofproject managers. We then
(11:01):
started doing Scrum. A lot ofpeople became Scrum Masters,
either from a technical or froma project management
perspective. They tried to notdo anything different that other
than the, you know, the processof Scrum. And I think it's very
clear that the change to Scrumis more than just a process
change. It's a fundamentalchange in terms of
(11:22):
accountability and role andimportance and where you fit
and, and it's complicated tonavigate, right? I mean, that's
the bottom line, and, and Ithink that that what you're
doing together is, is navigatingthat in a, in a, in a in a more
effective way, which I think isreally interesting. So, so, so
(11:44):
what happened at Santa Fe yourealize this, you know, you've
got this, this change that'sneeded yours. You started
talking to Stephen and Scrummatch. What happened next?
Bilal Alawiye (11:58):
Yeah, so, so, just before jumping into the
very nice discovery of Scrummatch that I want to actually
highlight you said somethingthere which is really
interesting is that, in terms ofaccountabilities, a lot of the
Scrum Masters were just goinginto this role with one very
narrow perspective, which isprocess or fix some stuff in
(12:23):
terms of process. But actuallywhat we did at the exterior, the
first thing we did, and it mightseem very, very naive or very,
you know, weird, but I kind oflike she did a lot of good
things, is we changed thejargon, so we try to abide much
more with with the scrum valuesand principles, and we try to
(12:43):
start understanding the role ofa coach, because and and the
better, the best way we did thatis by highlighting that we're
like sports coaches. And asports coach when they work with
a team, they need to navigatedifferent angles and different
perspectives. So the same waythe scrum master, they have to
uphold for some of the principleof Scrum, but they also have to
(13:04):
see the dimensions of a producttechnical mastery. They have to
see organization as a whole.
They have to have goodnegotiation skills. They
probably have to also work onteam dynamics. They probably
have to also shift theirpostures depending on the
context. So the first thing wedid is that stop seeing yourself
as just a person who applieswant to practice but try to see
yourself as you're coaching ateam to win a game. And that
(13:25):
actually started shifting theentire perspective. Now the
second we did is that weactually started understanding
what was going wrong with ourrecruitment. Why were it not
working? And by interviewingsome people actually, one of
them actually told us somethingthat kind of highlighted is
that, well, I signed up just todo a daily and retrospective.
(13:46):
This is what I grew upunderstanding, what a scrum
master is, especially here inFrance. So this led us to start
under investigating what can bea better recruitment. And I
landed on Stefan's scrum match.
It was basically, I think, waspart of a forum or a community
on Slack, and we started seeinga bit. And the first thing that
(14:06):
I saw that was reallyinteresting, that Stefan put was
the maturity model that scrummatch has done, which is just a
very nice way of seeing if thatwhat a scrum master can do on
which level, for level one, theycan do this, and level two, they
can do that. And that, byitself, gave me a better
perspective on how to evaluate.
And then, from then on, wecontacted each other, and I
(14:28):
guess the rest is history,right? Give it to you. Stefan,
to elaborate.
Stephen Sykes (14:35):
Thank you. Bilal, absolutely. We have a pretty,
pretty good history from fromnow, but the way we work is, if
your client is looking for ascrum master like like Sanofi,
we go through a review process,and during this review process
that somebody has to fill out aprofile online, depending on the
what they fill in their profile,we'll select them to go through
(14:56):
a review with at least two ScrumMasters, where we'll go. Through
a 90 minute call where we'll asklots of questions and case some
case study questions, and reallykind of drill into not just the
theory of Scrum, but moreimportantly, the practice of
Scrum, and their actualunderstanding of how you apply
(15:16):
practice, right? So whatscrum.org does really well is
making sure that people have theability to understand Scrum,
Scrum theory, and when they goout into the world, is when you
really find out whether they'reable to apply what they've
learned into practice. Andthat's where we that's where we
where we fit in, is what we testa little bit about, okay,
(15:37):
they've been in the job for Xamount of years. How have you
applied your learning inpractice? What results have you
achieved? What methods did youuse? And again, every only a
very tiny portion of the reviewprocess has anything to do with
theory, but it's all about whatdid you do? How did you do it?
Have you done this before? Andcan you push yourself and do
(16:01):
bigger things in the future, andthat's the review. That's the
review process. And we're luckyenough, we've had good success
with Sanofi. But I suppose onething I before we go on to a
different topic, I just want toshare a couple of insights,
because at this stage, we've, asI've said, the start, we've
reviewed about 400 candidates sofar, and about 38% of the people
(16:25):
that we review don't even comeonto our platform because they
don't have fundamental scrumknowledge, right? So that's
quite it's a pretty damningindictment that people who call
themselves Scrum Masters, about40% of which will find it
difficult to explain what Scrumis, never mind actually applying
(16:45):
it. And there you see that theproblem with the market in
itself that you have a largemarket of people, people, Scrum
mastery is a well, well paidjob, but a large percentage of
those, those people don'tunderstand scrum fully and don't
know how to apply it. And it'sour our jobs, I think, is to
kind of make sure that wehighlight which SCRUM masters
(17:08):
can really deliver value,because that's what we're here
for. If we're not deliveringvalue, we shouldn't really be
calling ourselves Scrum Mastersin the first place.
Dave West (17:16):
No, I think it sort of reminds me a little bit of in
the early 2000s where everybody,everybody was a web developer,
right? And there was this momentin probably 2000 and what two
one, when the everybody wasrealized that they weren't web
developers. They could cut andpaste, yeah, they could use
(17:39):
WordPress, but that does notmake you a web developer. And
there was this re sort of likerestructuring of the market and
and I think we're at a verysimilar place with with Scrum
Master. And I think really youknow that we are at this change
in terms of these deliveryleaders inside organizations,
(18:01):
which ultimately what a scrummaster is, you know, a delivery
leader, a person thatconcentrates on that. And I
think that that's really, reallyinteresting, that that we're at
that point, and not a surprise,really, you know, in the last
510, years, we've been, youknow, growing in popularity and
importance, and now I think it'ssort of sort of gone mainstream.
(18:23):
So I'd love to pull you as I'vegot you here, and I think this
is a really interesting story. Ireally want to sort of pull back
on what should Scrum Mastersreally be good at? What are
those telltale signals thatthere's a good scrum master
versus a not so good lessexperience. Let's not use any
(18:44):
negative words, because they'reprobably awesome human beings,
but they just just haven't quitegot the skills to be awesome at
a company like Santa Fe so canwe sort of like, what should
Scrum Masters, you know? What istheir focus? What is the things
that that are interesting. Idon't know who wants to answer
that. Yeah. I
Bilal Alawiye (19:04):
can start maybe from the Sanofi perspective.
Yeah, we can give it anotherother ideas. One of the things
I've seen that a lot of I don'twant to let's say bad Scrum
Masters, or mechanical scrummaster do not grasp is the
understanding of the businessand the domain, which is
(19:27):
something a lot of Scrum Mastersstruggled for a long time, where
they say, Well, I'm not I'm nothere. I'm not involved with the
team, so I'm not supposed toknow. They can figure it out.
I'm just here to, you know, helpout if there's some conflicts,
or I'm just a time box. But inreality, this is one of the
biggest indicators that the teamsees in scrum master. Imagine a
(19:49):
new scrum master coming to ateam, and they're trying to
smell you like dogs, like, Who'sthis? So for me, like one of the
first thing that they're gonnaprobably. Think, make sure they
can I probably pay attention tois, Are you understanding what
we're going through? Do youunderstand the problems we have
before we talk about flow orteam dynamics or delivery
(20:14):
optimization and CICD orwhatever you want to talk but
before, do you understand, likein Sanofi, we are very much
sensitive about you understandclinical data. Do you understand
regulatory environments? Do youunderstand the level of
complexity when working on theon the US market versus the
European markets? Do youunderstand the molecule pipeline
journeys that we have in ourcompany, before you start just
(20:37):
addressing anything? So I'lljust stop here and just have
this one. I'll give it to you,Stefan, but this one really
marked my my attention when Iwas in central
Stephen Sykes (20:47):
fields. So I won't even take it like even a
step back to what, because Iagree with everything Bilal
says. But I think if you're ascrum master and you're not
delivering a working productevery sprint, you have no other
problem deliver working product,product every sprint. And even a
large amount of Scrum teams thatI see out in the wild can't do
(21:07):
that, right? So I think theminimum expectations as a scrum
master is you need to be ableyour team needs to be able to
deliver working increments,working software every sprint,
and then, then, then you canbuild out from there. But
there's, that's your first kindof minimum expectation we need
to have. Expectation. We need tohave working product, working
software. And to hit home on onBilal point about about product
(21:30):
is, oftentimes SCRUM masters aregoing to be working in teams
where the person who is calledthe product owner, product owner
might have never touched scrumin the first place, and it's our
job to make sure that theyunderstand, that that that
person understands how to applyScrum, where scrum fits in. But
that also means the scrum masterhas to know about product. What
(21:51):
is this product? Who is thisproduct? Cater to. Cater. Cater
to. How often can we get ourproduct actually into the hands
of users and like, close thefeedback loop. How many, how
many clients have you all seenthat where you know they say
that they're actually doingScrum but they actually never
interact with an actual user,right? And then going to, just
(22:12):
to hit bilal's point is, I, thething that I often see is Scrum
Masters tend to limit themselvesto the team. They don't, they
don't look outside the team, anddon't look at the whole product
right from beginning to end. Howdid this product come? Come to
here, what blockers do we haveafter passes this team, where is
flow blocked in the product inthe process? How do we reduce
(22:36):
that kind of stuff? I come tothink that, like you know, Scrum
is here to deliver value, butalso, as practitioners and agile
practitioners, we need to have atoolbox of skills that we can
use with with clients to helpsolve their solve their
problems. Because scrum isn't apanacea. It's not going to solve
all your problems. It's justgoing to show you what problems
(22:59):
that you have to try to solve,right? And as a scrum master,
you need to have a good toolboxof other, other other things,
whether it be Kanban, whether itbe design thinking, whether it
whether it be technicalknowledge. Technical knowledge
you you can't rely on, on scrumalone. You need to have, you
need to develop like like, anyskills with it, football. You
(23:20):
develop skills in certain areas.
How do I talk with management?
Right? And I think that'ssomething fundamentally SCRUM
masters have been really bad atover the last years, is to
demonstrate the value thatthey've had brought to
organizations. What have Iachieved, and what was the
result of
Bilal Alawiye (23:38):
that? Probably, sorry, I just want to add
probably to your point, Stefan,you're talking about product. I
would probably say product slashsystem, because it's also a
system thinking issue. Is thatokay to understand your
organization? How manydependents Do you have? A lot of
the times also, we've, we atSanofi have started working in
teams where some scrum masterdidn't actually understand the
(24:01):
ecosystem surroundingsurrounding that product or that
team, and then we expect them toactually deliver value. So I
agree with you, the product partand the system part is a huge
one. And actually be able todeliver frequently is one of
those symptoms. I would actuallywe at Sanofi, we try to
ethically do one more go beyondthe delivery and much more about
(24:25):
learning. So we're trying tocome up with a way. How can we
measure sort of feedback loops,by not just delivering
frequently, but usage andlearning after that. Because, in
a way, we try to define agilityas faster learning and a complex
adaptive system. So that means,if I can just make my team learn
faster, de facto, there will beactually improvement in the
(24:47):
business, and also for theuser's problems.
Stephen Sykes (24:48):
And Dave, before I know you want to jump in, but
two seconds I have. There's onepoint I think that also Scrum
Masters. A lot of Scrum Masters,I would say 80% of the people
that I've gone through reviewswith tend to for. Get and that's
about discovery and productproduct discovery, right?
There's a lot of we talked aboutScrum Masters and delivery
managers. And I kind of, youknow, I kind of like feel a bit
(25:12):
uneasy about that, because theDiscover delivery is only half
the battle, right? And discoveryis a large part of part of the
battle. Unfortunately, not manyScrum Masters out there help
product owners focus onDiscovery just as much as
delivery. But over to you, Dave,
Dave West (25:29):
yeah, it's interesting, from my experience,
a really good delivery managercares deeply about the stuff
that's being delivered. Youknow, it's not just because it's
not just the they're not justthe post person, you know,
delivering the parcel from A toB. They've got to make sure the
parcel lands, and because if itdoesn't, then they ain't going
(25:54):
to get paid long term. I meanthat that is and the partnership
with product ownership iscrucial. In 2020 we changed the
scrum guide to reflect thatwhere, historically, a scrum
master was accountable for threethings, you know, the team, the
product owner and helping youknow the organization do Scrum
(26:15):
the relationship with the atthat point, we used to call it
usable increment was verytenuous, and ultimately we made
the changes to sort of bringthat together, and how a Scrum
Master does it, whether it's,you know, 500 years of you know,
pharmaceutical knowledge intheir head, or whether it's less
(26:36):
of that, but a real Passion forcustomers and for outcomes and
and the like, or whether it's,you know, their experience with
design thinking or systemsthinking, whatever that and it
depends on, obviously, context,I think it, it makes a huge
difference. But so that you'retalking a little bit gentlemen
(26:58):
about product culture versusproject culture. That's the
smell that I kind of got, isthat something that resonates
with you
Bilal Alawiye (27:09):
absolutely, absolutely, even at Sanofi, like
even our CDO, is deeply investedinto going into that mindset of
outcome based cultures andproduct culture, where it's not
just delivering stuff. We'remuch more interested in solving
a user's problem and de factohaving a business impact. But in
(27:31):
our in our case in Sanofi, wealso have been hit with the
output being such a long timewhere everything is just check
boxes, I delivered this ordelivered that. So the
accelerator was a very coolopportunity to harp on the fact
that it has to be outcomeoriented. What is changing
behavior? We're much morefocusing on what will people be
(27:54):
doing differently and how, andhow will that impact the
business and and when I firstgoing back to Stefan's work with
Scrum match, one of the thingsthat was interesting when we had
our first talk, me and Stefanwas about that topic in per se,
precisely, which is productculture and helping product
owners, because we're alsosometimes challenged having
(28:15):
product owners who don't know towhat extent they should be
shaping their product as well.
So with the same problems thatpatterns that patterns that we
see with Scrum Masters, we canalso sometimes see them with
product owners. So yes, shortanswer to your to your question.
Dave, absolutely, productculture is a must, and it's
actually rooted in our culture,
Dave West (28:34):
and I haven't actually heard it articulated
quite as well as this, which is,you know, I think, pretty
awesome the that Scrum Mastersreally are creating the
environment for product thinkingto gain traction. Product owners
haven't got the invite that theyexecute in the environment, and
it's a it's a hard job. I'm moreon the product side and less on
(28:55):
the scrum master side. I I'm notgood at dealing with messy
environments would be a good wayto describe it. I like things
nice and ordered. So I'm not agreat Scrum Master. I'm a better
product product person. And sothe product owner has a lot of,
you know, they're thinking aboutvalue, whether it's, you know,
(29:17):
current value or unknown value.
They're look they're looking atthe network in terms of
customers, stakeholders,managing all of those to ensure
the environment, though, forthat to succeed, has to be
created by somebody or a groupof people. And scrum master is
the only I mean, there's nobodyelse that really worries about
it, right? I mean, it's it.
(29:39):
You've got to have somebodycaring about that. And I think
what you described is thischange agent element of the
project to product culture,which is really, really
exciting. Stefan, you've talkedto hundreds of candidates. Is
that something that's top ofmind for these people?
Stephen Sykes (29:59):
The honest answer? Is for the people who
get onto our platform, yes, butfor a lot of people, no, right?
And then going back to like,swinging around full circle to
allow point is, when we gothrough a review with our Scrum
Masters, we have an expectationin regards to what kind of
knowledge should they have, anda lot of that also includes, how
(30:20):
do I help my product owner getvalue from the product that
they're actually creating?
Right? We're not expecting SCRUMmasters to become product
owners. Maybe that they won't dothat in the future, but you got
to think about actualbusinesses. A product owner is
somebody who's been working inthe business, has lots of
domain, domain knowledge, knowshow the business works. They
probably don't care about,quote, Scrum or on Scrum, it's
(30:42):
up to the scrum master to try toput the pieces of the puzzle
together, right? And use thatdomain knowledge, domain
knowledge and expertise in howdo we get answers quicker? Blaz
point, how do we learn quicker?
And how do we put what we learnback into the product and back
into users hand, so we candevelop a better product, right?
(31:04):
And it, I, it's, it's, it's whenyou, when you see SCRUM masters
who are totally focused onthings like crazy, things like
velocity, or the Mickey thoumost things that don't really
have importance, when you can beputting your time and investment
(31:28):
elsewhere into making sure thatyour product success success,
and a lot of that time, and weshould say that to any Scrum
Masters out there, is you shouldbe spending lots of time helping
your product owner thinkingabout the value that your
product is generating. If youdon't know the value that your
product's generating, you bettermake that transparent. And
(31:48):
likewise, the Scrum Mastersthemselves. You can apply the
same you can apply the sameprinciple. If you can't explain
the value that you as a scrummaster, are generating, it'll be
very quick before your companyrealizes maybe you don't have
value at all, so make your valuetransparent. Before I was a
Scrum Master, I worked inbanking, and I remember when my
(32:10):
first manager said says, youknow, you can't manage what you
don't measure right? And makesure that everything that you
have is measurable so you can.
And there's lots of great ScrumMasters out there who probably
just do a bad job atcommunicating that the value
that they bring, right, so thatmy hint to Scrum Masters out
there is communicate the value,the value that you have brought,
(32:31):
that your product has brought,help your product owner
communicate that value. Andthose are all skills that you
can learn right in regards towhat areas, whether you touched
on it, Dave, without mentionevidence based, evidence based
management or other areas. Youknow,
Bilal Alawiye (32:50):
probably, by the way, one of those questions we
asked a lot during recruitmentwas tell me about the last
product you were part of, andwhat were the success criterias.
And most of the time, theresponses were very basic.
Sometimes just okay, we have agood NPS or something like that,
but it wasn't really, we didn'tfeel the depth of someone
(33:13):
understanding the health of aproduct and where what they have
been doing really. And so that'salso sometimes good indicators
when we're doing therecruitment, the interviews, to
seeing if that Scrum Master hasreally invested time in working
on the product or
Dave West (33:26):
not. Yeah, I think it's funny. I got a video this
morning from from a scrum masterwho'd put a better together that
literally, with their productowner, they were walking down a
corridor. You know, it's amillennial thing. I don't
totally get it, but it wasawesome, because they're both
good singers, and they werebetter together. Do we do? And I
(33:48):
it was, it was quite funny. Andthey said, you know, they said,
This is how we think thepartnership needs to be, and we
you should spend more timeemphasizing that, and it's
something we don't spend a lotof time emphasizing. We spend a
lot of time talking about theseparate, you know,
accountabilities and butultimately, it's their marriage,
their synergy, that drivesvalue. And if I can't, as a
(34:13):
scrum master, answer that simplequestion that you said, what
value is my product delivering?
Then ultimately, how can Iensure the delivery happens
effectively? I think that it's afundamental. It is a
fundamental, alright, so we tryto keep these podcasts,
unfortunately short. You, wecould, I could listen to you
(34:35):
too, all day. You've, you know,you've taught me more. I just
like, I've learned so much fromyou. So thank you for attending
the time. But before, ourlisteners love a little the last
thing. So I, you know, maybethere's a scrum master listening
now, and maybe they're, youknow, maybe their company is
hasn't appreciated the value ofScrum mastery and the. Scrum
(34:58):
master accountability, and maybethey're looking for another job.
What do you think, if it, what'sthe one thing they need to
concentrate on, you know, interms of developing a skill that
makes them more employable?
Would you say Stefan? You Youknow, you've spoken to many at
scrum match. What would be thatone thing? Is it? That product
(35:20):
thing, is it the, you know,understanding product outcomes.
What? What is that? One thing
Stephen Sykes (35:26):
make value transparent and a really kind of
easy, easy way to do this. I'm abig fan of evidence based,
evidence based management,management, no direct plug, but
we really love it here at scrummatch is to kind of sit down and
work out what makes my productsuccessful. And if your product
is successful, your team isgoing to be successful and make
(35:47):
and you need to make sure thatpeople know about it, right? If
you're if your head of productor your CTO doesn't know that
your product's kicking ass, thenyou have a problem. So make
progress. Make your productsuccesses, transparent, that
Dave West (36:04):
sounds, that sounds awesome, definitely something
that, at the very least, itmakes you feel happier when you
go home from work if you've, ifyou've done that, blah, what?
What do you think? What would bethe one thing that you would
advise this Scrum Master? I'mkind
Bilal Alawiye (36:18):
of jealous, because Stefan stole my line
actually is big fundamental, butI would if, along with
transparency, invest time andunderstanding your company's
problems, invest timeunderstanding what's going on,
that will probably help You askbetter questions, and maybe it's
(36:42):
my favorite skill, because I'm avery scientific person. You were
talking about measurement, Dave,I think sometimes one skill that
can help a lot of Scrum Mastersbe explicit. Sometimes we say we
want to improve x, it's sovague, improve what, by how
much, by who, at what time.
Where are we now, there arethings we can do just very
easily, just being morescientific, just ask more
(37:02):
specific questions that willactually trigger more interest
with your teams and yourcompany. So I think that can go
along with transparency as
Dave West (37:11):
well. Oh, love empiricism, love scientific
method, love hypothesis drivendevelopment. They just, you
know, a product guy, that's whatresonates with me, Stefan, I
know you. We can't keep youquiet, you know. But Stefan,
what?
Stephen Sykes (37:27):
Well, I forgot what I was about to say. I like
you. I lost, I lost, I lost, Ilost my focus. Yeah, I think, I
think I've said enough and thentalked a lot. But thank you very
much, Dave for having us both onto talk about Sanofi and talking
about scrumm match.
Dave West (37:45):
It was an absolute pleasure. It, I mean, I have to
bring AI into it now, just for asecond, because it wouldn't be a
podcast today without talkingabout it. But what you two have
talked about is AI is changingthe landscape in terms of what
skills really are. You know, ifI want to run a retrospective, I
(38:06):
can just ask copilot, and it canplan it for me. I don't need
that skill. But the thing itcan't do is empathize with
customers or teams. It can'tunderstand outcomes. It can't
really clearly connect to thevalue proposition in a way that
you're describing and and Ithink if Scrum Masters have
(38:27):
those skills, then, you know, inthis age of llms and AI, I think
it accelerates them to that nextlevel of leadership and really
helps them make a difference inan organization like Sanofi or
any company. So what you twohave talked about today has is
just, yeah, I think it's sorelevant in this modern job
(38:50):
landscape,
Bilal Alawiye (38:52):
and hopefully it will stay, will never be,
probably replaced by a machineas much as a machine can
probably make it more productiveand help you see a lot of good
stuff. But we've seen that whatyou were talking about, Dave,
connection, empathy, asking theright questions. I mean, all of
those are still very humanfiber, way a human fiber
perspective. So I think it's,it's, it's cool to say that,
(39:15):
yes, AI helps us a lot. But thisjob obviously has also a
different level that still needsa human to human interaction.
Dave West (39:24):
Exactly. You said it perfectly. It's sort of staying
relevant for the future scrummaster. Who knew? But it really,
I think it really is so. Thankyou, gentlemen, for taking the
time today and being part ofthis, this podcast series. Thank
Stephen Sykes (39:42):
you. Thank you very much, Dave, thank you so we
Dave West (39:45):
were that was a really awesome podcast, wasn't
it? We were joined by BalaAlawi, Agile coach, lead atson
office digital acceleratorprogram, and Stephen Sykes, co
founder of scrummac. And theywere talking about the role of
Scrum Master, some of thechallenges that they saw at
Sanofi, and how, ultimately, theimportance of really
(40:09):
understanding what theaccountability is. And it's much
bigger than mechanical Scrum.
It's much bigger than runningthe events. It's much bigger
than than knowing just whatprofessional Scrum is, etc. It's
something much larger than thatand and I think it was really,
really interesting, particularlythe relationship between scrum
master and product owner and theimportance of value and the
(40:31):
importance of measuring value toreally get that delivery
capability delivering at fullspeed. Super interesting podcast
today. Thank you for listening.
Spending the time out of yourbusy day to listen to the
scrum.or community podcast. Ifyou liked what you heard, please
(40:51):
subscribe, share with friends,and, of course, come back and
listen to some more. I'm luckyenough to have a variety of
guests talking about everythingin the area of professional
Scrum Product thinking and ofcourse, agile, thank you,
everybody and Scrum on you.
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