I am a Scrum Master. What now?

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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.

Freelance vs Employment

It is "in between project time" again and I am looking for something new. To get me started, I think I should use my blog again, as type of self-coaching tool, where I would sit and write about my steps in the process to look for a new job or project. 

One of the problems I have faced so far is: What on earth do I actually want? Headhunters call and tell me about some job they have and then ask whether I like it. I would say "yes" or "no" but in the end, I feel I am missing a list of things I should look out for more categorically rather than imagining I could do something or not. 

The first step today is to think about freelancing vs employment. What do I want? 


THOUGHTS ON FREELANCING:

I have been freelancing for the last few years and for me it works pretty well. I would be hired for a project and these assignments can last from a few weeks to a few years. I like freelancing, as it gives me lots of flexibility which I appreciate so highly. It also allows me to do my voluntary job whenever I want to do it and not necessarily on a weekend (I am not allowed to write about my voluntary job but I mentioned it on my blog somewhere. Let's say it involves the terms "law and order"). 

Recently, I started to wonder whether I should go back to employment, as there are also negative sides to freelancing: It is not so much those few weeks or months in between projects, it is also that one reaches a glass ceiling and the jobs out there for freelancers can all be a bit "basic" at times. Lucky me, mine were good so far, but I know what's out there. I am ready for more in my life and feel I need to push my career a bit more. Nonetheless, I would still go ahead with freelancing and projects as I find it satisfying and rewarding to help my clients to be successful. 

Typically, these are the areas where I would see myself working in:

- Management Consultant/Project Manager/Programme Manager/Project Director/PMO for a consultancy company that specialises in operational excellence, efficiency and performance improvements, coaching, change management, manufacturing and supply chain.
- The same as above, but contracting directly to the end-client rather than through a consultancy company.

Freelance heaven would be, if I had a list of all sorts of clients who I could call or who would call regularly for shorter assignments and keep me busy. 


THOUGHTS ON EMPLOYMENT:

Employment is a different beast. Even though flexibility seems gone, this does not mean that I would enter a life of boredom and being restricted to the daily treadmill. Employment is still an essential way to climb up the career ladder and put more long-term meaning into one's work life, rather than hunting from project to project. 

What would I like to consider where I could use my skills the best? That would be of course any position where one is needed who can detect causes of all sorts of problems arising in companies and deal with them effectively. I can imagine this to be a board or "reporting to board" position, possibly in Operations. 

It would be an industry job, somewhere manufacturing or supply chain. Or in the internal consulting branch of a major international player that is looking to strengthen their continuous improvement efforts. 

I am a bit hesitant to work for another consultancy company. Somehow I have done that during the first few years in my life and it feels I have done it enough. I would not like to rule it out though, as I could possibly like a Regional Operations Director role or anything similar to that. 

Last week I met a headhunter who is looking for 2 positions: The one is for a company that looks to get outsource contracts from the national security industry and the other one is one of the major international property services companies. For the first I am interesting because of my voluntary job AND my knowledge of performance improvement, for the latter only my consulting knowledge would be of advantage as I would come in to ask all the right and difficult questions which would then enable them to think "improvement and change". 

What I like about these 2, those are completely new areas for me. I never worked in either, the security nor building industry. What a challenge to tackle!


EXPERIENCE AS FREELANCER:

If my conclusion is that in the end I should possibly consider another full-time position, would that mean I have to automatically say freelancing was not worth doing? Absolutely not! One learns so many essential skills as freelancer; the best thing for me is that I know I can rely on myself and can do it all alone. I learned to ask for business and find opportunities, as in the old days I always expected work would be there for me one way or another. I am responsible for whatever I am doing and there is no organisation in which I could hide and wait till the storm is over. These are all extremely good skills and I am very proud of having them.  

In the end, freelance work or employment, it does not really matter. Once I commit to an assignment or job I do it full-heartedly. So yes, let's get this job hunt going and see what I will come up with.

New Project in Derbyshire

My blog entries have become rather "limited" in the last few months, but I am on a new project now and obviously cannot give out any information about it. One thing though, it is a supply chain excellence project where the focus lies on procurement as the core process with all the other neighbouring process around which need looking at.

For a change the project is in the UK and not abroad; in fact, it is in Derbyshire where I am spending most of my time these days. Nice area, extremely nice people, and a very challenging project.

Once I have a bit more time I shall come back and write about a subject more in detail.

Otto Bock - Final Thoughts

This is the last picture which I have from the project. So, this is also the last entry about Otto Bock. That's actually me in the hotel gym. The hotel was great. We did have good team building events there.

After all, and apart from those special "happenings", and even they were quite good in terms of learning experience, it was a great project. The client was satisfied, the core team was good, the location was nice, I learned a lot, and it formed me as project manager. So far it was my biggest single project, and also my most complex one. It was easy at times, sometimes very difficult, sometimes I wanted to quit my job. Overall, I loved it. And I feel privileged that I was able to be the manager of it.

Otto Bock - Dirty Laundry - 3

Also in December I was accused of sexual harrassment. This coincided with the mobbing issue. Only this time the gossip started on board level as one board director of my company wanted to prove that consultants got sexually harrassed on projects. There is more to it, but I shall keep that non-public.

Well, "my victim" was as shocked as I was when we heard about that. It was a big thing. I cannot even tell anyone how devastated I was in those days. We had an idea - it was Christmas and we had a picture taken of the whole team; we created a special Otto Bock Team Christmas Card which we then sent around to "Proudfoot Worldwide", which means, thousands of recipients within the company got our Christmas wishes showing all of us happily next to each other.

That was such a relief when we sent that card out. And of course, that whole sexual harrassment thing was off the table.

I am wondering if I should delete this story, but then these things happen too and talking openly about it won't hurt.

Otto Bock - Dirty Laundry - 2

My biggest problem was that I, as the most inexperienced PM, had to take on all those experienced ones, since their projects ran out and my company needed a place for them to work. Of course, the whole problem with "status" suddenly appeared. Some did have a huge problem to report into me.

One of them wanted my job and he started to gossip around that I would mob my team and suppress them and that I would not manage my client appropriately. He did not succeed, but his performance was outrageously bad. He was the most unmotivated person I have ever had on any of my projects. I tried to get rid of him, but one would not let me. Thank God, Tilia helped him in his area and she made up for his deficiancies. Tilia was great!!!

He also wanted to move to the US where he had a child. He was depressed about that, too. A short time after the project he was killed in an accident at a petrol station.

I hope his soul will rest in peace. He clearly did not lead a happy and fulfilled life.

Otto Bock - Dirty Laundry - 1

Personally, the worst which happened to me were some of my colleagues. This project at times seemed to be like the cheap version of Dynasty or Dallas with so much backstabbing, intrigues, etc.

I am not mentioning any names, but this happened (Remember Sue Ellen from Dallas?):

One of my consultants turned out to be too interested in staying at the hotel bar in the evenings, and was not able to run his workshops in the morning with participants travelling from all over Germany. He had a good standing with the client and I was sort of relying on him. I covered up for him within my company, but also with the client. I would never ever do this again. Lesson learned!

There were a few more of those in my life to come actually. At least they never cancelled workshops but did their work.

Otto Bock - My Role as PM, Technical Experience

I just described, throughout the month, my technical experience. I learned so much. I especially benefited from supply chain management (production and planning), the balanced scorecard, and OTP with all those processes.

I was extremely lucky that this project was a "wall-to-wall" project, which means we did it all, the whole company. Gaining insight into that was extremely valuable, too.

And I learned a lot from all those other consultants on the project. Some, like Klaus, Edgar or Bernd, were specialists in their areas. I got my personal coaching sessions there.

The balanced scorecard was good since we did it really after the "scorecard bible" and not some Proudfoot-ised version.

It was absolutely great.

Otto Bock - My Role as PM cont'd

Things which don't kill you, only make you stronger!
This saying is so applicable when it comes to that project. I cannot even tell how much I learned - technically, personally, managerially and from a project management point of view.

Let's start with project management. Every week we had 2 TWNW Meetings, one with local directors and one with the 3 Cs (CFO, COO, CRO), who were our "top clients". In the local TWNW I let every area present something from the last few weeks. So, one week it was production, then sales, etc... It was the first time in company history that communication across interfaces was encouraged. I think those meetings were a big successs.

Then, internally with my consultants, I had "daily" reviews, which happened twice a week, and continuous one-to-ones with everyone. This sometimes also included the task forces.

The most important thing one has to do as PM is to communicate, even though it is pretty tough to do so and one needs to be disciplined.

My communication matrix had the following links: my company's headquarter in London, the office in Frankfurt, my director (who came about once or twice a week), my top clients, the directors, the worker's council, my consultants, the task forces, and of course every other one who wanted to talk to me.

Otto Bock - My Birthday

I have a few nice pics of me at my birthday. It was quite a surprise, even with some live music. ;-)

It was my 32nd birthday.

Otto Bock - My Role as PM

If you followed my blog so far, you know that I have only managed a project so far, and that was the Delicatessen producer Beeck, that sales enhancement project which lasted for 12 weeks and comprised of 24 manweeks. Basically, that was nothing compared to Otto Bock. The latter had about 250 manweeks and lasted for about a year.

The savings potential there was huge. I think I have already written about that.

So, there I was, this brandnew PM who had to manage the biggest project at that time. And the reason why it was me, I was the only native German speaker available.

In the aftermath, and even though I am glad I did it, but from a client point of view, this is a but unfair. Such a huge and important has deserved a more experienced PM.

One thing is for sure, in this project I learned to swim!!!

Otto Bock - The Analysis (1)

As usual, before a project starts we were tasked to do an analysis. They told me I was the designated project manager as I was the only one available who was a German native speaker. The project was supposed to be massive. I remember I was thrilled, scared, and excited at the same time.

The analysis was hell on earth. All of the consultants and I just hated it. Every day we slaved away for about 20 hours - DILOs, Brown Papers, interviews, and further studies, studies, studies... It was all not very well organised and we were never asked for our opinion and just had to deliver studies to feed the analyst.

Good news was, it was a strong team building exercise for us consultants. We stuck together and endured. The consultants told me I'd be a good PM running the show and they hoped I'd get it. At that time I was not overly sure if I wanted it anymore....

Salmon, Shrimps and Krautsalad (6)

And then, finally, after the management system was ready to go and the managers trained and trainers and coaches we needed to tour the country (all 4 sales regions) and train, train, train...

And I must say, the area sales managers did all an extremely good job. I was rather impressed.

Salmon, Shrimps and Krautsalad (5)

So, using skills methodology we would not train the sales representatives ourselves, but we left that for the area managers to do. We trained those area managers though in how to train their employees.

So, staying within the methodology, the TTTs were for us to train the area managers as trainers (Train the Trainer), whereas the area managers trained their staff in TTE sessions (Train the Employee).

After the training we designed coaching sessions where the area sales managers were tasked to go randomly on tour with their staff and give coaching. TTCs were the Train the Coaches sessions in which we trained the area managers in how to coach, and in CTCs we coached them in their coaching effort. This system was waterproof.

Salmon, Shrimps and Krautsalad (4)

Proudfoot had a standardised training programme for selling skills of which I got the manual. We had to adapt it to the client’s needs and that took us ages. We realised that the Proudfoot manual was far too elaborate for the client. So we did lots of work to tweak it and transform it into a “tailor-made” one. Well, no need to reinvent the wheel, but here we really had to sort of reinvent it.

I must say, our training programme which we finally got together was absolutely fabulous and extremely specific to the client’s needs. The role plays were all about selling salad, the language was adapted to their business, and everything was salad!

This was a very skills project. And please refer to an earlier entry where I explained skills programmes. I implemented exactly one of those. We had TTTs, TTEs, TTCs and CTCs. Anyway, something like that anyway. ;-)

Salmon, Shrimps and Krautsalad (3)

We also needed to implement daily/weekly review meetings with the sales force. The 4 area sales managers of Germany needed a single system for managing their sales force and we implemented that. We created agendas of what to talk about, how to link sales to the weekly figures and reports, etc.

We even got rankings of who were the best sellers with the highest margins for the company. One of the area managers was our task force, Uwe Kossatz, who was responsible for the east German market. Another task force was Michael Gebauer, a Hamburg based marketing manager. The 4 of us were an extremely good team and we were pretty efficient with the programme.

Salmon, Shrimps and Krautsalad (2)

Unfortunately, I have lost all documentation about that project and in fact, about most projects, so I must rely on my brains for details. I remember we did a brown paper session and figured out their main problems in their processes. But apart from those process inefficiencies, which were actually a missing management system for the company, we were tasked with the training programme regarding selling skills. On the picture is my colleague Emmanuel Quentin.

Management system was easy. The client did not have an idea about their margins of their products, just a rough one which were money makers and which were not. The most selling product was “krautsalat”, which is very German and means something like cabbage salad. They sold tons of that stuff, but hardly got any money back. On the other, products like crab salad, which was hardly sold, delivered a very high margin. So, we needed to create a management information system which first highlighted high margin products per area and which second reported on single sales efforts of sales staff so that high margin selling was manageable.

Salmon, Shrimps and Krautsalad (1)

After the Christmas holidays 2000/2001 I got a phone call that there was a project for me which I would have to manage. The project was a little extension of an existing one. The latter was a manufacturing project in Osnabrück and mine would be an extension towards their sales department and that was in Hamburg, also in Germany.

The client produced delicatessen salads and sold them mainly to department stores and gourmet palaces. Their sales force needed “selling techniques” and a common approach to sell salad. I was excited. But as said, it was a very small project, only 24 manweeks, which means 2 people for 12 weeks. The project started mid January till mid April.

I must admit I have forgotten the savings commitment we had with the client. Bearing in mind that the project cost around 300,000 euros, I would expect the savings to be around 900,000 but I don’t know anymore.

IMR

IMR, the company I worked for, was a pretty small niche consultancy based in France with a few main markets for which they had regional offices and consultants. There was obviously the Parisian Headquarters, but there were also offices in Manchester, Frankfurt and Madrid.

The company belonged to 2 owners in the US, but the US part of the business was very small and neglectable. There were 4 German project managers working for them, lots of French ones (as this was the core market), and a handful of Brits, plus some Spaniards.

It was then that I decided to step up as project manager and ask the European Head of Operations what his thoughts on my ideas were. I did not have to sell myself a lot, he only replied "Yes, of course. The next available project will be yours..."

I did not have to wait for a long time.