My Way to Scrum Master
Certification
Why become a Scrum Master?
When you
work as management consultant in areas such as Operations Excellence and
Process Improvement, the interface to IT becomes more and more prevalent. In my
last project at the German Stock Exchange this trend has finally reached me,
someone who was never really overly interested in software development or
anything that had something to do with IT.
At the
stock exchange we improved processes, hence SAP workflows had to be changed and
all sorts of other IT systems that were affected by them. After having
sorted those processes, I got in touch with IT and told them about our desire
to “add things” to the SAP environment and they gave me a change request form
to fill in. A change request form – I have never seen anything like this.
This was a
very useful experience for me, as I realised that whatever we wanted from an
operations point of view needed proper translation into “IT speak”. It’s literally
like translating from one language to another. It gave me an insight into the
minds of programmers and how they see the world. It is very structured, but
also very different.
The rest of
the project remained very IT focused. I had to deal with more change requests
and also with testing and finally implementing our solutions. I realised that I
am actually interested in this kind of work; not so much in programming, but
being the (translating) link between Operations and IT.
One day,
the German Stock Exchange had an internal training session about the Scrum
methodology and I happened to take part. I realised that this was something I
was interested in and put it on the backburner. About one year later or so I
finally became a Scrum Master.
What Kind of Training is
available?
I had a
look to see what’s out there in the market. Ideally, I wanted something cheap
and quick where I could do everything from home; or maybe some course in and
around London.
Classroom
based courses are usually around 2 full days and cost anything in excess of GBP
1000. Some of them had no certification attached, just lectures. Online courses
were less expensive and usually around GBP 800. All prices were net, without
VAT. So basically, when not having a big corporation behind, it is quite an
investment with a certain degree of risk involved, as one doesn’t know what one
gets.
I got in
touch with one training organisation that offered lots of degrees and courses.
I got the sales person on the phone and she offered me an online course for GBP
795 plus VAT. Six weeks later I negotiated her down quite a bit. Bingo, when
she quoted a new and acceptable price, I agreed and the day after I started my
online seminar.
The course
was very good and basically a narrated slide show, with questions in between
and quizzes at the end of each module. I cannot complain, it was all done very
professionally. It took me 2 days to go through the training. But mind you, I
have been a project manager and management consultant for 20 years and this was
not something overly new, hence I did not need too much time to think things
through.
As advice I
can only say, negotiate a training package; and if you have time, like I had,
take this time to get into the better negotiating position. Time works for you!
Training Contents
The
training was delivered in 3 modules. The first module was about the history of
Scrum within Agile, the second module taught Scrum as a methodology, and the
third module was the Scrum methodology applied.
What was
interesting for me, scrum is quite rigid in its application (i.e. daily
meetings, regular review meetings, strict roles and responsibilities for all
people involved, charts, etc) but also quite flexible, because the outcome of
the project is not fixed at the beginning (like when using the waterfall
methodology). And especially me, who has grown up in ‘waterfall’ this was a
really great insight and I can see how and that it works. So yes, I am all
bought in.
I am not
going to say more about training contents, as the Internet is full with this
information.
Exam and Certification
I passed
the exam easily and am now holding my certificate as Scrum Master. I am proud
of that. But I am also happy that I did not pay the full price for it, as this would
have been a rip off for a 2-day online course.
The exam
consisted of (I think) 35 questions and one needed 24 to pass. I was somewhere
in the 30ies. Questions were multiple choice, sometimes tricky, but generally
very fair.
Lessons Learned
My first
thoughts after having completed were: I’ve unknowingly already been a Scrum
Master. Of course I learned something new, as described above, but I have used
major parts of the scrum methodology throughout all my professional life.
When
managing projects I always have short daily review meetings with the same
agenda as a daily scrum meeting. I also implement those daily review meetings with
my clients as part of Lean Management when on any Operations Excellence
project.
The Sprint
methodology is also not new. I call it Gate Management and is more or less
similar. One can only pass from gate to gate after having successfully
completed all tasks. One difference is, sprints are generally of the same time
period, whereas gates can be more flexible.
I have used
something similar to a burn down chart at my first project as management
consultant back in 1997 when measuring achievements and savings in a purchasing
department in Switzerland.
As project
manager I usually take on tasks from and for my consultants to help them
achieve their targets and deadlines. I also coach them regularly and train them
in consulting methods.
But then,
what’s new is the fact that I know now why waterfall doesn’t work. I also
learned the benefits of self-organising teams and many other principles of
Scrum and Agile. I am looking forward to my first experience of fully using
Scrum as methodology.
How to go forward
So where
does this leave me now? The day after I got certified I went online in order to
look for Scrum Master projects. There are actually quite a lot. But as usual,
there are problems; in fact there are two:
1) Everyone
wants a scrum master with tons of completed IT projects; and obviously my
projects only ever touched IT.
2) Everyone
wants an IT expert who understands programming, etc; and obviously my
background is not IT.
But then, I
do feel it was good to have this new competency. I remember when I became a Six
Sigma Black Belt I did not have an immediate Six Sigma project either and it
will probably be similar this time and pay back over time.
Also, I
want to specialise as “translator” from business/operations to IT and lead a
Scrum Team from that side of the coin. I do feel this is a good niche to start
from. The only thing it takes now it to look around and have a bit of luck.
