What is a scrum master?: How to get certified

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

Participants

Emily Slade - podcast producer and host, 杨贵妃传媒
Helen Garcia - scrum master

Transcript

Emily Slade: Hello and welcome back to Future You, the podcast brought to you by graduate careers experts 杨贵妃传媒. I'm your host, Emily Slade and in this episode I speak to Helen about being a scrum master.

Helen Garcia: So I'm Helen Garcia and I'm a scrum master.聽聽

Emily Slade: Amazing. What is a scrum master?聽

Helen Garcia: Yeah, quite a common question that we get asked because obviously, if you're an engineer or something like that, it kind of comes to mind that you know what it is. The scrum master essentially is a person who works within a development team, and they are sort of responsible and accountable for supporting the team with their processes to become more efficient and effective with them. But what I like to add to the role is also looking after the people as well and their wellbeing. An example of that might be that maybe you're having a team meeting and it's all a little bit chaotic that maybe knows what's the priority and 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. We're gonna work on something. What would be the highest priority in this situation and really help the team kind of see the woods through the trees. So essentially the scrum master role falls within a framework called scrum and that framework is a way to support organisations, become more agile and so when I talk about agile, it's about being flexible to change. So I always like to give the example of the pandemic, so organisations that kept on doing the same thing over and over and over again. Unfortunately, quite a lot of them didn't really survive, but those organisations that went from coal manufacturers to, you know, ventilator manufacturers, then they thrived and survived. They never planned to do that. They didn't necessarily. Maybe they didn't want to, but they did something to support the value that the customers needed at that time. So that's what I mean when I talk about kind of agile and agile, we talk about it as a, as a mindset because it's a culture thing rather than a process thing. So that's where scrum comes in.聽

Emily Slade: OK. As a scrum master, do you tend to be part of a company, or do you tend to be somebody that they bring in from outside?聽

Helen Garcia: So you could be contracted into a team, but the idea would be that you would work with that team for a long period of time, because to be able to understand. The process and how people kind of tick, you need to be. You need a bit more I guess. Inside you can't just kind of be dropped in and dropped out part of the time. It doesn't matter if you're a contractor or if you're you're a full time employee, but as long as you're there for an amount of time that's going to be able to be supportive of the product. And get to know the people and not just be sort of air dropped in and change a whole bunch of things without having to be understanding and that can work for any industry. So it's very popular. Within the tech industry, so developing, you know, platforms or whatever it is online and they're going. To sound like really oddly only no. But actually scrumming itself or becoming more agile can be in the construction industry. It can be anywhere, and it's just less popular at the moment. And I think that's something that we need. Really need to grow because. Essentially, you know, if you go to, I don't know, you're building a. A railway. And there's something that 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, OK, maybe we 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 as a scrum master, you can help sort of reflect.聽

Emily Slade: Okay, let鈥檚 go right back to the beginning. What was your educational journey?聽聽

Helen Garcia: OK, 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 said, you know, I went to do that. I realised that it wasn't my passion at all and they didn't want to do it anymore. So I actually dropped out of uni and I applied for all the jobs under the sun and the job that I ended up getting was a commission, a possessions planner for the railway, which basically meant me blocking all the lines to Birmingham for maintenance work. So I was really loved. And that introduced me to more project work. So I moved into a project manager role and I did project management for. I don't know, maybe six, maybe 10 years something like that and after a while I realised that I was like super stressed out all the time and I was like this is a whole of a role like surely this isn't right and it should be the way that we're living. And I noticed that actually I was making a lot of the decisions that. I had people around me that would be better off making those decisions. I had experts that were working for me in so funnily enough, my wife actually did a scrum master course randomly and we had a lot of debates at home saying no, you know, project management, a linear way of doing things for complexity is so much better and you've got a plan and you need to stick to that. And she was like, no, you know, wouldn't it be better just to be more flexible and like, you know, as you learn, grow and then change and decide. So what I did is I spent a lot of time in work trying to prove that that wasn't the right way of doing things by doing it. It. Turned out that it was really great. And I was like. Wow, actually my stress is a little bit lower and people enjoy coming to work because they're enabled to make decisions or empowered to do things differently. And actually we started to deliver things a lot quicker because we were being flexible. Change. We weren't just stuck with the Gantt chart. That and I just want to be really clear waterfall kind of linear project management is great for really simple tasks because you make a plan and you deliver it by that plan because you know what's gonna happen for more complex tasks, you need to be flexible. So yeah, and then I started. I went on my first grandmaster course. I think that was about 8 years ago now. And and my eyes were kind of opened. I was like, this is amazing. And it's also fun. And that's really important to me in my working life.聽

Emily Slade: Yeah. Yeah. So when you say, of course, is that something run by the university? Is it like workshops in a like what? What do you mean by course?聽

Helen Garcia: Yeah. So I it was run by a training organisation, so there's a couple of different ways. Is that you can, I suppose start to understand what scrum master does, and that's a Scrum Alliance is an organisation and the Scrum.org. So Scrum Alliance is very UK-based, Scrum.org is US-based. So if you go to the Scrum Alliance web page there are loads of trainers there, and I鈥檒l tell you which trainer聽I had because he's amazing. So I went. With Paul Goddard and Geoff Watts, so Geoff isn't doing the training more, but Paul definitely is and he's just brings a new life. There's no PowerPoint. That is the best. Yeah, it's all practical and there's loads of breakout rooms. Yeah. So I did that for the scrum master course, and I was like, wow, this makes a whole load of sense. And it actually took a lot of pressure off me. And so as. A project manager you. Are you know responsible for so many different things? 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 thing in your delivery is the quality. So often if you're delivering to a dead like a deadline, the quality sort of drops and drops and drops, doesn't it? And it the IT gets more and more expensive. If you put more and more people on it and you kind of end up delivering something a bit mediocre. Whereas if we work in a more agile way, the. The quality is our driver like we want to be able to deliver the best quality thing and so if that means that what you want is we, we do it in small batches, we know that we're always going to be delivering to the top quality and that was a real eye opener to me. And I also realised as a scrum master. I don't have to be, like, completely responsible for absolutely everything on the team. My team are responsible and accountable. It actually talks about. Is accountable for delivering the quality of the work, and I know this sounds really basic and really simple, but you just don't get that in project driven teams that are more waterfall. So that was, yeah, that was great. So I did that course and I then started to play a lot within the teams that I was in. So I was like, I'm not going to because. Never say agile an organisation because it's like a swear word, yeah.聽

Emily Slade: Okay聽

Helen Garcia: People are like, oh God, we don't want to do things agile, because that means you'll just be changing your requirements all the time, and that's really not the case. And so I started to experiment with an organisation. He was a farm organisation that I was working with at the time and after a couple of years I could do the next step out of my scrum mastery. So it's called. I think it's called advanced scrum master in the Scrum Alliance and in Scrum.org gets called professional scrum master 2 and they're very similar. And actually, what I'll I will call out is that from my experience having done Scrum, org things and Scrum Alliance things is a Scrum Alliance really. Support the coaching and behaviours side of things, so I think that's really, really important. Looks at the values, looks at behaviours, looks at you know how you can help a team without telling them what to do from a Scrum.org perspective. They definitely look at the the values they look at. All those foundational pieces. But. But it is. It's very much focused on kind of the process of scrum. From my experience of training. So I think for sort of people listening if. You're. You know more people oriented. I'll go with Scrum Alliance if you're more kind of process and analytical and that sort of orientated then go down the. Scrum.org route.聽

Emily Slade: 聽What kind of person would make a good scrum master? 聽

Helen Garcia: Someone that's able to listen before they speak and advise someone that cares. About people and someone that's able to be fairly level headed. 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, you're dealing with lots of different characters and lots of different power dynamics, so you need to be able to. Listen and be level headed now. That didn't definitely didn't come to me at first. I was like the opposite of everything like that. So yeah, so. I think that's important. That'll definitely. Help you move on your journey. I think anybody who is willing to experiment and learn and accept that actually their idea is never going to be best. Dear, that's all you really need, because that's what you're there for. You can make a suggestion. So something would work, but if the whole team are like now, you know what, Helen? That is not what we want to do. Don't then be going in and saying, actually, that's what we're going to do, because you need to be able to step back and say, you know what? Even if I even if I know their idea is not is going to fail because I've seen it for. Let them fail because by failing, you're learning and and you're building character. You're building a team to, like, get together and be like, you know what with this didn't go right. And we're going to do something different. And I think he needs to be able to accept that. And again is quite difficult. Yeah, because. Your idea is always the best idea, right? Yeah. So yeah, 聽

Emily Slade: What would you say is the most challenging part of being a scrum master?聽

Helen Garcia: Everything. The people. So I think it's funny. Because we focus on product team, so if you're building a product, I mean it's not always product teams. If you're building a product with something, then it's usually complex. But for me, my my product is the people and everybody is different. That is the hardest thing and and coming back to that point of like the different power dynamics, it's it can be really draining as a scrum master you kind of show up. And I suppose. I sort of. Sorry. Thought about an image? You're kind of a battery charger, so you go in and you know you need to be fairly upbeat. If everybody is really drained and feeling a bit rubbish like you need to 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 definitely days. I. Don't feel like that? And that's really hard. Yeah. To be able to come in. But what I would say it's like anything my mum needs to say to me, like, even if you come out of food and you feel a bit rubbish like, put on a smile and almost like fake it till you make it,聽and I think that kind of works in this role as well. It's like you always. Come out being. Like you know what? Like that was actually a good day. Yeah, it was really difficult, but it was a good day. So yeah, the people were very challenging. And I think part of that is because you're not a manager like and that's really key. The. For me, that's the beauty of the role. So if you are the sort of person that 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 influence without. Any power and that's very difficult because people can just choose not to listen to you. So you've got to be fairly sort of hard skinned to be, you know again. That doesn't. That's OK. And I've done my best job. It's also a thankless job. I think most is I. Maybe it's that awful, but I'd rather just say it over. It out there. Nobody will ever thank you for being a scrum master because you're difficult because you're looking and process. You're protecting your team and you're trying to make change and change naturally is really hard. You're often not thanked for that. So one of the things that I do actually is I have a value diary. So if for whatever reason I should be seeing thank you, then I'll pop it in there. Otherwise I will. This sounds really sad, but it's like rewarding the value dies are great and this is not my own invention, so there's a lady called Lisa Adkins, who is like the Queen of Agile coaching, and she created this, I think, because of these things of not being thanked or not being really understood why you necessarily, you know, giving your role basically. And and part of that is, you know, you might run a particular. Workshop and if he goes away, you don't get any recognition for that or anything like that and you might be like, OK, well, you know, part of the value that I've thought today is help people see and get a bit of clarity through all the priorities that they're now left that session and thought, yeah, you know what, we're going to focus on A and then once a is done, you can focus on D so just. Yeah, it sounds like small things, but it could be really helpful and it can be like lower that overwhelming that stress that people experience at work and that. You know, we really don't have to work like that. It can be different. And that's what drives me. So although there are a lot of things that are challenging, I think if you can cope with that and you can recognise actually. You'll make a difference to someone's working life and you met. It may mean that's one less person being your organisation. It may mean that's one person who's able to spend more time with their family and one person who just feels less stressed at work. And I think for me that's what makes the difference.聽

Emily Slade: What does a typical day look like for you?

Helen Garcia:聽 So the day life of the scrum master, if you've got the scrum framework in place, essentially might be. You get in at 9. At 9:30, you'll meet with your team for 15 minutes. And in that 15 minute session, you will talk about what your plan is for the day. So and literally what is your focus to get us towards the goal that we have agreed which? We would agree, agree before another week we would get to ex wizard and is there anything that's stopping you from being able to do that? So these are might be this all things that you address at the day and where there are things stopping and the team have tried to unblock their in sort of sticking points as a scrum master you might say OK like is there anything I can help and if there is is it. You know. It could be anything you need an extra skill in the team. You need whatever you might be. You might go off after your after your daily and talk to the relevant people. They may be really high up, they may be. You know at the development team level, whatever it might be, so you're going to do that other things that you might do are just catching up with your team on one to one basis, like how? For you. I care not. How are you? And by the way, you've got XYZ to do. That's a very clear difference. And the other things you might see areas within the way that your team works, like for example, maybe you had a situation the week before where there was a bit of conflict within the team and they didn't really know how to to manage that. You might then start to say, OK, well, I'm going to run a conflict management. Or a conflict workshop. So that's part of, I guess, the sort of training, if that's, I might just mention if it's alright as a scrum master you wear multiple. Hats and and we talk about these as sort of scrum master stances, so you might be a coach one day, a trainer the next day or a teacher to say the next day. You might be a facilitator. You might be various different things and so. So you might. You'll play one of those hats, essentially. So coming back to the day in the life of a scrum master, you had your daily discuss from the team, tried to unblock few things that they can't. Unblock meet with your. Meet with the team member checking how. They are and. You might then start to plan another one of the the events, 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. And you will have something called a retrospective. And at that point you'll kind of look back and say, what is it that we did? Well, what didn't we do so well and what can we improve? And so you'll start to gather that information, plan those workshops that might be part of your day, trying to think what else you do. It ends up being quite blocked. Quite busy, I should say. You often get quite a few people reaching out to you to be like. Ohh, I've noticed that we've got this random thing that nobody is looking at. Can you help with? Like trying to source where the best place it is for it to go. Like does it say in your team or something like that? Or if you've got other Scrum masters in the organisation you might reach out to them and say you know we've got this problem. It seems to go across. Most good for teams. What do we need to do in order to move it forward or pass it forward? So it's very much. I guess you've got a good balance of juggling multiple things that might kind of be thrown your way. Knowing which one to throw back their way, knowing which one to take away. But also you've got the structure of the scrum framework which is planning workshops. You've got the final workshop. So looking at, you know, all the. Requirements that are coming in and refining that with your team. You've got your retrospective, which is sort of the learning side of things and then you've got your dailies, which happen every day and then outside of that you. Can just focus. Some. What part of this process isn't really working and how can I help the team progress that? It's really varied.

Emily Slade: It is interesting that you mentioned that an organisation might have scrum masters, so in theory in the future, do you think every team in every organisation will have a scrum master attached to it?

Helen Garcia: I don't think I don't think every team and organisation so part of that kind of agile mindset is that there's various different. Frameworks and processes that you could choose, and the scrum is just one of those. I think it would be great that organisations that work on complex things do apply as scrum do, apply some sort of agile framework to help with. To that point. And yeah, it would be great if it was full of Scrum masters because we were amazing people and there's various different levels. So just I think before I was touching on, you've got, you know, the foundations from master and then you got Level 2 and you got Level 3. A lot of people stop at that Level 2 and you're really missing out. It's really worth going to the other levels because. Actually, it's more than just setting. A scrum framework in an organisation that's easy peasy. It's when you get to those more challenging conversations, those you know. How do I help? Like I say, the team manage or work through problems like what tools are there out there that can help me do that? And you know, how can I coach the individuals on? You know, getting better at their job. That might be something you meet with someone on. So yeah, it's really worth working your way up because. It's like in any role you may not go and do a certification in something because, well, what does that really mean? You've done a course, right? But it is important to keep learning as grandmaster and kind of live by that idea of, you know, empiricism of, you know, inspecting, adapting and growing.

Emily Slade: So what advice would you give for somebody looking to become a scrum master?

Helen Garcia: I would say do the course. Do the PMS one. I recommend again, it might be a bit controversial, but doing a coaching course and so I I'm also an accredited coach and so I specialise in ADHD and assertive coach. And. I found that really helpful because. Actually coat that. There's a really it's really easy to give advice to a team because like I say, you have your ideas. You have this, but actually to have the training, the experience of the and to ask questions that help people progress forward is not necessarily something that you'd get in your first and last course. And that's why I always say. Go up the tears and I don't say try it out in your organisation. You don't have to call it Scrum. You don't have to call in dailies but you can experiment because say. What if we met? For 15 minutes and we just kind of aligned on. What we're going to do. For the day, like, does that work? Because you're not going to do your qualification, then suddenly gets from master job and that just doesn't happen. Anyway, does it unless you're. Doing something very vocational so. I would do that and then. I would after two years. You can then do your second level. I'd recommend doing that. Highly recommend doing that. I'd also in between that time like get into the agile community, because if if you go on LinkedIn you just tap in like Scrum master. I've had people reach out to me completely randomly being like I want to become a strong master. I don't know why would you mind giving me 15 minutes of your time? Do that like you can reach out to me. I would happily speak to people because I think it's. An area that is just. Just. Filler. Opportunity that 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 those two things and then after a couple of years after you done your PSM. PSM 2 I'd go on to your PSM three that PSM three very much focuses a lot more on coaching and how to develop teams from good to great. And I'd also recommend loads of books, probably the key one would be. So Geoff Sutherland is kind of the creator, the father of Scrum and he wrote a book called Twice the Work in half the time, which take that with a pinch of salt off because it died. Leanna. I really just like the title anyway. Really good book. And because that kind of describes. Agile and it's kind of core and how scum can support you get into that real. Iterative way of developing things. I'd also recommend another book by Lisa Adkins. It's actually called Agile coaching, but essentially an agile coach is a scrum master 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 that because she. First of all, you'll learn about the value tree and and sorry, value diary, but there's other exercises in there that can be really helpful for new scrummasters I think. And she's right. It's so beautifully because she used to be a project manager. I think she used to be known as a bulldog or something like that. And weirdly, I used. I actually used to be known like that because I was like under so much pressure, it just and get stuff done. And so you read through that journey and it's it's. Yeah, it's very insightful. Nice. Some. So read lots, join our job communities and do a couple of searches.聽

Emily Slade: So, what are some common pitfalls or mistakes that new scrum masters fall into?聽

Helen Garcia: Being the receptionist for the team. Or the secretary. Yeah. So they might be like we've set up all the meetings, all the events, taking notes and chasing tickets. That isn't your job. Don't do it. Booking meetings, people. The whole idea is for you to help your team be self managing. You wanna make yourself not needed for the. Because as soon as you're not needed for the team, you can go out and do really cool things with the organisation so you can act as that change agent of you. Know what that? Like sales working with 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 as things. So the idea is for them not to rely on you and you see that all the time the other. Thing that I see quite a lot is probably going to get a little bit of like push back 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't ready for that, and that's OK if you come in there. Just ripping out all of their processes and then just doing. A blueprint of scrum. People get really annoyed with that because and I know that because I've done it like as a news grandmaster. So try and avoid that and try and just experiment. Just as Scrum does. And just as you know, the whole mindset of agiles being experimental and being, you know, open to change is I might just experiment with how does this work and might be ready to leave it. So I sort of come back to that. You don't need to have like a university degree or anything to become as grandmaster, and I think you could probably come out and just do it. And I guess I think that's. Kind of the beauty. Of it. Yeah. You know what the. Other thing that I'd say is. It's actually helpful not to be an expert in the particular thing that the person Nutella thing. So for example. Sometimes you get developer programmers and who move into us from master role and. It's really great, but the problem is if you've got some sort of expertise or knowledge in. Something is that you're more inclined to be like you should do it this way. And yeah, maybe they should. And maybe that would be great. But again, that's yeah, that's that it. It doesn't matter. Let people experiment unless you're put in the business or the quality of risk. And actually I. Suppose. So to come back to kind of the scrum master or what? What you should be vary of is exactly that. Like it's so easy and actually I'm seeing it a little bit in myself at the moment to be kind of worn in to. The problems and the issues that are going on and actually there are times where that could be helpful but be very. Self aware of being able to drag yourself and be like okay, I get it, but maybe we need to focus on this. But let's kind of take a step back because you're sort of that calm. Supposed to be that calm person. Have you heard on that, you know, all of that sort of stuff? So I think. That could be that you can really easily get into that, yeah.聽

Emily Slade: Cool. Brilliant. Well, thank you so much for your time today.聽

Helen Garcia: Thank you so much for having me. It's been such a pleasure to meet you.聽

Emily Slade: Thanks again to Helen for their time. For more information on becoming a scrum master head to 杨贵妃传媒.ac.uk. For a full-length video version of this episode , check out our YouTube channel @future you pod. If you enjoyed the episode, feel free to leave us a review on Apple or Spotify.聽Thank you as always for listening and good luck on your journey to future you.

Notes on transcript

This transcript was produced using a combination of automated software and human transcribers and may contain errors. The audio version is definitive and should be checked before quoting.

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