This Product Owner had come from a Marketing Background, and had no experience with Scrum or as a PO. However, the PO was great at facilitation, and listening to the team and stakeholders. People felt heard, and understood by the PO, who was open minded!
The Bad Product Owner: The career-oriented PO
This Product Owner had come from a business background, and was focused on getting a promotion “out of the PO role”. The PO was using Scrumn as a means to further their own career, and that left the Scrum Master and team bitter about the way in which they were treated!
Are you having trouble helping the team work well with their Product Owner? We’ve put together a course to help you work on the collaboration team-product owner. You can find it at bit.ly/coachyourpo. 18 modules, 8+ hours of modules with tools and techniques that you can use to help teams and PO’s collaborate.
About Shahin Sheidaei
Shahin Sheidaei is an Agile, Lean and Success Coach,International Speaker, Transformation Expert, and Entrepreneur.
Shahin is a passionate organizational designer focusing on organizational performance, and is also founder and principal coach at Elevate Change Inc.
In this episode, we explore a difficult topic for many people who want to start their career as a Scrum Master in an industry where they don’t have experience yet. This can be someone who wants to move into IT (listen to Rachel’s great story on this) or someone who already has IT experience, but wants to move into Marketing, Sales, or other industries.
Being Agile, as Scrum Masters, means being able to learn and adapt to whatever life throws at us. And that means that we must be ready to learn new industries, technologies, or even new cultural habits when moving to new industries.
How to start finding the right jobs in a new industry?
Rachel shares her story, of how she moved from a manufacturing background into IT. It was a long journey, but she was deliberate about her goals and learned some important lessons about finding a job in a new industry that she shares with us.
The key lesson is: don’t trust the “application process” that many companies have. Networking with people around you, visit local meetups, participate in the community and get opportunities that way!
We also learn about some great tips to use in every interview you have as a potential hire for a Scrum Master position.
What do I invest in, when seeking a Scrum Master position in another industry?
How to get ready for a job in another industry? That’s a question we explore and share some ideas and tips based on the experience our guests have. The most important lesson is, however, to find a mentor, someone who is familiar with the industry you are in. Maybe offer to help that person in some way first, and slowly learn from them about what matters in that particular industry. When moving industries, we have to start by learning the new cultural norms, the new terminology, and of course, the companies that are likely to hire you! A mentor can help with all of that.
What have you learned about searching for a job as a Scrum Master? Share your lessons learned below in the comments and help your future colleagues get the job they seek!
About Alioscha Chaplits, Rachel Macasek and Daniel Lenhard
Alioscha Chaplits has 20+ years of experience with a large international non-profit organization as a team and project leader, mentor, coach, change agent, etc. Alioscha switched to IT three and half years ago to a QA role and since then. He’s got a great question for us to discuss in this panel discussion episode. We’ll get to that in a second.
Daniel Lenhart never knew what his dream job would be, but now that he is a Scrum Master, he loves it. I studied Biology in university and switched fields to software development. This really showed me the importance of cross-disciplinary learning and looking into new areas of interest.
Rachel Macasek is passionate about individual and team growth. She has fostered an environment of collaboration and continuous improvement in the manufacturing, biotech, and software industries. Currently, Rachel is focused on the power of an individual and recently acquired her Leadership and Performance Coaching certification.
The Agile Online Summit has been on since 2017, and is now in its third edition. From 500 participants in its first year, the AOS 19 will have 3000+ attendees from all over the world, and when you look at the list of speakers, it’s easy to understand why. AOS 19 will have, among others:
Andrew Stellman will talk about the people aspects, and how those affect Agile adoption
Al Shallowly will explore the 3rd decade of Agile, and what it might bring
Rebecca Scott will share her ideas on how teams can improve their connection with other teams
Bob Gallen will speak about Product Ownership
Anantha Natarajan will share lessons from implementing agile in a non-IT organization
Richard Lawerence will share his experience and ideas about Behavior Driven Development
Date and place: October 7th to 11th
This session packed conference will take place online from October 7th to 11th. Beyond the recorded sessions that will be accessible in those dates, there will also be live sessions organized to help you ask direct questions from the participants as well as interact with your fellow conference attendees.
For more details stay tuned to the Agile Online Summit website, where all the sessions are described, and where the information about upcoming live sessions will be added.
A networking opportunity you can enjoy from home or at the office
As any IRL (in-real-life) conference, Agile Online Summit is a networking opportunity, which will help you get to know the speakers as well as other participants. There will be a slack channel available for all who sign-up at this link (NOTE: DISCOUNTED VIP TICKET for Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast fans).
The Slack channel will be the preferred community hang-out area with channels for you to interact with participants from all over the world, but there will also be live sessions where you can ask questions directly from the speakers. Sign-up for the conference to know when those sessions take place (NOTE: Tickets are FREE for live attendance, purchase the VIP ticket for life-time access to the talks).
About Tom Henricksen
Tom Henricksen is a technical professional and coach. After working for many years as a developer, Scrum Master, and manager he has made a lot of mistakes and wants to help others achieve their goals. Tom has a passion for sharing wisdom with other agilists.
Tom is the founder and host of the Agile Online Summit.
How to deliver on time and eliminate scope creep
By scoping projects around outcomes and impacts, not requirements!
Get the Product Owner Booklet!
Avoid scope creep!
And learn to scope projects around impacts and outcomes, not requirements!
Get These Valuable Lessons Today!
Down-to-earth, hard-earned Scrum Masters lessons and the Tips from the Trenches e-book table of contents, delivered by email
Enter e-mail to download a clickable PO Cheat Sheet
This handy Coach Your PO cheat-sheet includes questions to help you define the problem, and links to handy, easy techniques to help you coach your Product Owner
Enter e-mail to download a clickable PO Cheat Sheet
This handy Coach Your PO cheat-sheet includes questions to help you define the problem, and links to handy, easy techniques to help you coach your Product Owner
Enter e-mail to download a checklist to help your PO manage their time
This simple checklist and calendar handout, with a coaching article will help you define the minimum enagement your PO must have with the team
Enter e-mail to download a checklist to help your PO manage their time
This simple checklist and calendar handout, with a coaching article will help you define the minimum enagement your PO must have with the team
Internal Conference
Checklist
Internal Conference
Checklist
Download a detailed How-To to help measure success for your team
Motivate your team with the right metrics, and the right way to visualize and track them. Marcus presents a detailed How-To document based on his experience at The Bungsu Hospital
Download a detailed How-To to help measure success for your team
Read about Visualization and
TRANSFORM
The way your team works
A moving story of how work at the Bungsu Hospital was transformed by a simple tool that you can use to help your team.
Read about Visualization and
TRANSFORM
The way your team works
Are you having trouble helping the team work well with their Product Owner? We’ve put together a course to help you work on the collaboration team-product owner. You can find it at bit.ly/coachyourpo. 18 modules, 8+ hours of modules with tools and techniques that you can use to help teams and PO’s collaborate.
Shahin Sheidaei is an Agile, Lean and Success Coach,International Speaker, Transformation Expert, and Entrepreneur.
Alioscha Chaplits
Daniel Lenhart
Rachel Macasek
Tom Henricksen is a technical professional and coach. After working for many years as a developer, Scrum Master, and manager he has made a lot of mistakes and wants to help others achieve their goals. Tom has a passion for sharing wisdom with other agilists.