HOW TO BECOME A SCRUM MASTER WITHOUT PRIOR EXPERIENCE

foreign we're just kidding it's not quite Christmas yet we have to have like Thanksgiving and Halloween and all that first right Daniel yes yes all right so of course what's that depending when you're watching this I mean it could be oh you're right it could be but this is an episode of becoming a scrum master and what you're catching is I did not grab any new music so we're using holiday music uh we'll update it later but I'm Ryan Ripley professional scrum trainer with scrum.org co-founder and owner of agile for humans uh yeah this is my good friend Daniel Kemp Daniel uh we have an interesting topic he reached out and uh we've been talking about scrum and other stuff like that for a while and uh thought this might be kind of interesting um what is it like becoming a scrum Master without prior experience right I think this is actually so Daniel it's it's serendipitous that you reached out because this is a question we get in email on Twitter on the YouTube like I sound like an elderly on that YouTube um in the comment section all the time right so yeah I mean we just hear hey I work in a in a different industry I'm in retail I'm in uh in your case Ministry in another case wherever else and but I want to become a scrum master and so I thought maybe we'd start at the beginning of course go ahead and introduce yourself but then sure what I I think the first starting point will be what initially led to your interest in becoming a scrum master from your previous profession does that make sense yeah yeah yeah so I am Daniel Kemp like you said and I became a scrum Master October of last year so when this recording goes out I'm almost approaching a year and through that Journey kind of befriended Ryan and but why why did I choose to be a scrum master so yeah before this I was in the non-profit world was you know doing uh Ministry which involves right working a lot with people and a lot of the scrum Master stances of you know facilitation of coaching of teaching and mentoring and I guess the impetus actually is an interesting one for uh leaving Ministry and becoming a scrum Master is actually uh my wife and I we got pregnant and we desired for uh I guess her to just have that freedom to be at home if she wanted to and so which me meant I needed to find something that provided a little more and so it was like okay maybe project management maybe I could uh go to a software development boot camp and then as I was looking into those things it was like oh I kind of stumbled upon what a scrum Master does and right I fell in love with it I was like I've been doing this facilitation stuff you know we talk about servant leadership all the time and helping people you know basically become the best version of themselves and helping these teams and organizations become the best that they can be oh man it was uh super appealing so that's kind of what started that Journey well and it's a really interesting connection right so you mentioned you know servant leadership and Robert Greenleaf of course I think back in the 1972 um published a paper on servant leadership and of course Jesus Christ was one of greenleaf's examples and so coming from Ministry into a servant leadership role seems like and kind of where I'm going with that it seems like a great fit because I would argue most people come into this role um with experience so when they say Ryan I have no experience I'm not sure what to do it's like well no you have life skills that are probably going to transfer really well if you've been a human being on this planet for X number of years that yeah that are that are probably going to help you now as far as not having technical experience I think that's where a lot of people get nervous and so prior to becoming a scrum Master where was your tech level at like were you a tinkerer a programmer you know what kind of things could you do can you program your VCR or your I guess you don't have a VCR a DVD player or different different generation yeah right uh I would say very minimal right I before this journey I hadn't written one line of code and so and I guess part of this I took a week to did like like a code academy course try to learn as much as I can uh but other than that very minimal I mean making a website in WordPress but that's like you know place you come in with from a from a I hate calling Ministry a profession but I think it is a profession it's a it's a and I mean it in a you know non-profit serving others kind of way but it was no I mean it's your crafter your chosen profession and so you come in with you know really great interpersonal skills the ability to facilitate to mentor to listen I mean a huge part of the history is just staying quiet and letting a person speak which is a really great skill so you've got a lot of what people have traditionally called the soft skills which we need a better term for that but I think it's just being a good human being and having good interpersonal skills um and so you come in with that but not necessarily the technical side of you found that a lack of technical knowledge because you're now a working scrum Master right you have a full-time position as a scrum Master have you found that a lack of technical knowledge has held you back in any way or prevented you from serving a team well uh that's a great question so my experience is initially right so one thing that a scrimmaster has to do is help remove impediments right and if you're not familiar with tech and the software development life cycle and uh you can come into a team and it's just jargon right it's another language and so initially thankfully my boss when he hired me had me actually shadow someone else for a few months and that was super helpful uh and just kind of getting acquainted with I.T and software and product Discovery and delivery and all that jazz and uh so that helped out a lot and initially I thought I had to learn everything and that was overwhelming uh and then I was uh significantly helped and encouraged hey you don't need to learn everything and so finding that balance of okay what do I need to know and uh kind of at a high level I don't need to be able to get into the weeds but being able to track with the conversation so that you know you know like you said listening well and so that you can follow up with those questions and so that you know uh what actions you can take to help serve and help your team move forward yeah I mean it sounds like you're talking about you know what do I need to know for the next few Sprints and not trying to cram Everything In It's almost like you're not doing a big upfront education plan here it's really just hey the next three Sprints we're going to be looking at x y and z I need to go check out what that's about make good connections with the People Who oversee that stuff and and I think that's a great way I think that's how you survive the first year I'm gonna do just enough to understand where I can be effective and over a a career that technical knowledge builds right yes absolutely yeah and I've found that to be the case you know even coming up on a year looking back at where I was a year ago so so with that said where would you say your core Focus has been this first year as you've worked as a scrum master and you're serving teams like what have you really tried to over index on to emphasize as you've started in in I mean started you're certainly well on your way but as you continue down this journey like what's the emphasis or the focus that is a good question I think well for me I had months of you know the job search right where I had time to learn all all the theory and take the scrum.org courses and read the books and Etc and watch the videos uh but then learning to translate that to Executives or team members who have none of that training right and uh and I think similarly learning the technical side so that I know what those impediments are like hey our builds take forever or deployment isn't automated Etc and say okay who do I need to talk to figuring out all the different you know people and stakeholders and Gathering all that data doing even data analysis I didn't even expect basic data analysis skills to be something that a scrum master has to do but if there's not transparency in that data well you got to make that data transparent so that you have that data to communicate to those stakeholders so you can make a case for your team and advocate for them that hey we need Improvement here or we need this impediment addressed so those are a few things that come to mind yeah I mean that's I mean those are really good things to be concerned about as a scrum master so you're not directing the team it doesn't sound like you were trying to make dramatic changes it sounds like you went in looking to serve first right not surprising giving your background so make sure that their impediments were clear that you showed yourself to be effective and that probably built some trust and but and gave you some some would you say it gave you currency to be able to make a suggestion here and there once you prove that you were there to work with them and to help them yeah and I think especially with one of my teams I'm I'm with two right now um uh building that trust you know meeting with uh the team members on an individual level just hearing from their perspective hey what's troubling the team uh what are the issues you guys are facing walk me through you know uh what you what we own you know what are our goals Etc and uh super helpful in communicating and displaying hey I'm here to help so yeah I think that's a really great stance to take and it's it's not surprising that you have been able to get into a good role stay successful in that role with that kind of mindset and attitude I want to talk about the the Preparatory time um yeah beforehand so you're you're transitioning out of ministry you're in that job search and in the meantime you mentioned the scrum.org courses so we put you through I mean you spent way more time with Todd and I than any human being on the planet should um and I'm trying to think through um you did the professional scrum Master professional scrum product owner professional film with kanban I think you did did you do Pally and pal ebm as well I did yes yeah so I mean you went through almost the game uh psm2 I think you did um You probably haven't the new facilitation course is new we'll have to see if we get like another day with you but um so I mean you went through the the scrum.org catalog basically with Todd and I um and while well I'm just curious right what kind of and I'm not this is not a fishing for compliments so don't start anyway yeah yeah we're not I'm not looking for that it's really like as you think about using those courses as prep pluses minuses Pros cons helpful not helpful like what stands out as you think about going through the gamut of theory and now that you're in the job like what really what prepped you and what didn't and and what would you recommend to others uh yeah in terms of specifically learning I think the courses were Beyond helpful you know I still sometimes reference I go back to you know those classrooms in scrum.org and look at those mural boards and it's like okay yeah that'd be an awesome exercise or oh I need to maybe do this with my product owner for example so uh highly recommend uh whether it's agile for humans or any other trainers totally agree uh but also uh Beyond just the courses uh you know reading books for example I mean there's tons of Articles out there I'm Eileen more toward the books uh and then I I actually wrote my own articles to just help in that learning process I even I even made a YouTube channel myself and tried to just explain the scrum guide uh just so I could you know learn it more and work on communicating it and uh so that's really smart right so when you take the material that you attended you know that you learned in a class or from a book or from an article and you start expressing it in your own terms you're internalizing it um I can't tell you how many times we've worked with potential trainers or people transitioning from other careers like yourself who we've said look you've got to come up with the elevator pitch for 100 different scrum topics and you've got to have it in your head and ready to go when a CEO asks you a question you got to go know what to say to her when the CFO asks you a question you need to know what to say to him like you've got to have you know those context-specific pitches ready to go and if and it's got to sound good and it's got to sound like you know what you're talking about it's got to be internalized and then your voice and in your language and your words and um I think people who fail to do that struggle because it just sounds like what Todd and I said as opposed to what you actually think know and believe sure you know it goes from parenting to understanding incompetence and wisdom and it's such a crucial step but that's a lot of work right it is yeah and oftentimes you know as you're watching your daily scrum videos I mean that's kind of the first step in learning is yeah uh just kind of repeating uh what you hear from others but then kind of really sitting down and writing an article or making a video uh really forces you to yeah think well in your and your daily scrum is practice for Todd and I I mean we don't have every answer at the tip of our tongue and so when a lot of questions come in we're practicing too we're like oh what do I think about that and some of the videos we'll start somewhere tangent about silly stuff and then land somewhere else that we weren't expecting and it next time we answer the question a little better so I I think that's a great there are people on the YouTube channel who will actually post a comment and say Here's how I would answer this they listen to our answer and then they either say you guys are idiots or I love that answer or they usually refine it and then they've got that little snippet and they can use that forever and I think it's such a great practice so all right so the preparation going through the the course catalog sounds like it was good I know you visited other trainers and other tracks and you took other courses and um and I and I'm sure those were all beneficial as well so it sounds like a lot of reading a lot of uh self-reflection and internalization a lot of Education um some books I I mean I again I'm not you don't have to mention our book I'm not fishing but like if you had some if you were talking to someone else in your position who's coming from um a similar or even different background and it was like hey here's three books you got to read as you're going down that path what would those be that is a good question um so actually the books that were recommended to me were the non-scrum books the non-agile books kind of the I guess uh as a friend slash Mentor talk to me about them this is kind of the secret sauce of agile and a few of those I think you've mentioned some of them on your podcast one one was drive by Daniel pink uh kind of understanding intrinsic and extrinsic motivation another was uh turn the ship around yes yeah I highly recommend agile leadership and then uh five dysfunctions of a team uh which is yeah so yeah those are three great choices um and it really leans into you know Drive talks about that motivational aspect and and helping people understand kind of why they do what they do the turn the ship around that leadership through intention and actually self-organization and self-management is huge in there yeah yes and then the the last one the five just functions it's just how to be observant and what to look for I'd imagine those pop out all the time now it's like someone says yellow Volkswagen then you're driving down the street and everything's a yellow Volkswagen right it's but it's because you're attuned to it and you're paying attention yeah that was very specific yellow Bolton but I'll be out I'll be on the lookout you know yeah check it out um or Massachusetts license plates or you know someone says something then that's all you see but uh that's really awesome so three great books classes helped sounds like you did a lot uh and this is one that I think gets missed a lot you did a lot of reps on your own a lot of writing a lot of yeah your videos are very good um we'll I'll link to them in in this show so people can check them out and just a lot of um or I won't I mean you're laughing no no you can't no well I was what I mean but what I want people to see is that yeah you can go to a class and yeah you can read a book and yeah you can listen to the podcasts and the videos and and that's all great but if you're not sitting at home by yourself with a pad pad of paper and a pen that's how old I am paper and Pen right legal pad and just think what does this mean to me and how does this work it's really hard to get there and so the reps are just as important and what I mean by reps is the repetition of of thinking through and putting in I think Cal Newport has a great book on this deep thinking is that the book excellent book um okay somewhere back there but it's um it's it's deep no it's deep work is the book oh that book yeah totally changed my mind well it's flying through our the Seminary we attend like wild Power fire through the PHD Department right they're all recommending it um but it's um it's all about actually putting brain power behind ideas and sustaining that brain power and going deeper than service ideas yeah amazing book and I think people who do the work like what Daniel has done you know attending courses reading books but then turn around and has done deep work whether he knew it or not on these topics those are the ones that we typically when we're when we're willing to mentor and work with people those are the ones who have sustainable careers yeah right yeah yeah that's cool all right we're hitting that 20 minute Mark and that's where people start shutting it off and so I just I the final question I'm going to leave it as open right so if someone were to now come to you and say well hey Daniel you've had a lot of people step in whether it's Ryan and Todd or other trainers or other friends or mentors or advisors but now it's your turn right so now it's your turn to help somebody uh move forward like what's the what's the initial piece of advice that you would give like all right you've got to do X to get you know the first step of a thousand if they want to get out of one career and move into this one what do you think that would be uh can I give a few steps yeah I can try to be quick uh well obviously the learning and the Deep work and you know the writing and you know even making videos yourself is uh highly important uh I think finding a mentor right I was uh very blessed to you know I attended a agile my local agile Meetup and found a mentor there and you know just hearing his stories of you know how he brought change to organizations and you know and he was an Enterprise housing coach and um oh that oh Fancy Fancy Fancy yeah you give a shout out if you want up to you uh his name's Darren Darren Terrell I think Aaron's a there is a friend of the show I know yeah I know Darren very well yeah so uh very helpful I'm very grateful for his influence in my life um I think also having interview practice and helping people uh give you feedback on your interviews right if you want to become a scrum Master you're going to have to interview and so like you said kind of having those elevator pitches ready and just practicing those and practicing those with people who actually hire people so even if they're not familiar with the scrum Master role right I hope my wife's uncle and my uncle and you know other family members who you know uh have a lot of experience hiring people just hey can you interview me and that was super helpful cool uh and then obviously working on that working connecting with people you know all that stuff on LinkedIn as well you gotta spread out your network as much as you can yeah your your next job your first job whatever it is is probably going to come from from your network not a cold call or a resume just getting shipped in through a site right yep and so I agree yeah networking part is essential and so what what you might have heard in Daniel's answer is uh getting connected in your local agile user group is huge uh practicing your craft right really doing the Deep work to understand what it is that you'd like to do practicing interviews interviewing is a skill right and it's one that you can improve you learn to be concise learn to ask good questions um but then uh yeah I think that all has translated into um a successful move uh into this field to where you're actually effective knowledgeable uh and building a body of work and some wisdom that if you continue is probably going to serve you well for as long as you choose to do this type of work definitely cool well Daniel we appreciate it how can people reach you if they want to ask you more questions if they want to bombard you with the one true way uh we can put my LinkedIn in the show notes and and your phone number will appear below phone number email social security number yeah very cool all right so we appreciate you coming on sharing this like I said this is a huge question that a lot of people have how do you move into this space I think uh you've given people some really interesting Avenues to explore in some good places to start so we appreciate you coming on and uh we hope you have further success congratulations on the new child we hope you and your wife are doing great and uh yeah hopefully we get to talk again soon yes awesome thanks for having me Ryan sure all right everybody be sure to like And subscribe check out the socials we're very big we're popular we're famous on Twitter Facebook and Linkedin uh not really uh still haven't figured out Instagram but I'm working on it uh like And subscribe so you never miss an episode leave your questions and comments below your questions and comments might turn into future guests or videos some videos speaking of that are going to pop up it's our free framework course our free ebm course how can you pass up on free take the free courses go get your certification and conquer the world like Daniel did so merch is going to pop up get yourself an agile for humans hoodie it'll look good on you you deserve it uh this is Ryan Ripley saying uh becoming a scrum it's scrum Master is possible we're going to give you some advice stick with us we'll keep more of these coming but until next time scrum on and be well

Channel: Agile for Humans

Views: 26,762

Keywords: Scrum Master, scrum, agile, scrum master training, professional scrum master, professional scrum, todd miller, scrum master certification, scrum framework, scrum values, agile for humans, scrum master facilitator, scrum team, ryan ripley, scrum master interview questions, scrum master day in the life, scrum master roles and responsibilities, scrum master for beginners, scrum master resume, scrum master interview, how to become scrum master without experience

Id: NO1wE-K5VwE

Length: 25min 29sec (1529 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 19 2022