How Scrum Changed My Life

What did you want to be when you grew up? How about when you started your first job? What was the vision you had for your future? Is it still the same?

Recently someone asked me what my ambitions were when I started my first job. My answer: I wanted to be the CEO. I didn’t mind of what, but I knew I wanted to succeed. I was highly ambitious, and to me climbing the corporate ladder all the way to the top was the very definition of that success.

And now? Well a while ago I made a conscious choice to side step the corporate ladder and focus on coaching, and now I’ve taken a pay cut to work in a smaller, less corporate environment.

How did this happen? Well in my case Scrum happened.

A Week in the Life of a Scrum Coach

Recently someone asked me what ScrumMasters actually do. They didn’t mean it negatively, they were just seeking to understand a fairly misunderstood role. I thought about this, and I feel that maybe if a few ScrumMasters or coaches could blog about what they actually do on a day to day basis it might help make the role easier to understand.

I also think some ScrumMasters get off easy. Their teams don’t hold them accountable for doing what they really should be doing, because the teams don’t really understand what it is their ScrumMaster should be doing. So I’ve decided to blog about a week in my work life as a Scrum coach. I can’t blog about a week in the life of a ScrumMaster because I’m not doing that, but I think the coach role is similar, and maybe this post will inspire others to blog about a week in their life.

Understanding Coaching

As mentioned in my previous post, the deep dive workshop with Lyssa Adkins at the Orlando Gathering was a huge learning experience for me, and so I want to share some of the learning and insights I had in the session. Besides being an agilist, Lyssa is also a Co-Active Coach, and a lot of the skills she taught are professional coaching skills which are also applicable to agile coaches or ScrumMasters.