Professional Scrum Trainer Spotlight - Souleymane Thiongane

Lindsay Velecina: 0:03

Welcome to the scrum.org community podcast, a podcast from the home of Scrum. In this podcast we feature professional scrum trainers and other scrum practitioners sharing their stories and experiences to help learn from the experience of others. We hope you enjoy this episode.

Dave West: 0:20

Hello and welcome to the scrum.org community podcast. I'm your host, Dave West CEO here@scrum.org. Today's podcast is going to be focused on the journey one of our amazing professional scrum trainers PSATs. Pst is licensed deliver our training all over the world and, and they have a unique perspective and often a unique journey to to this license. We're very fortunate to that today to have Solomon Chang, a PST joining us to share his journey and is a ha moments during this journey. So welcome to the podcast. Solomon, thank

Souleymane Thiongane: 1:00

you for this invitation there. And thank you to the whole scrum that org and stuff. So my name is Solomon and I'm living in a different location, as you mentioned. So my, my native country is Senegal, so a little country in West Africa. Currently I'm based in Morocco. I'm living there since two years now. And from time to time, I will need to travel to my client which is based in Europe in Brussels. So yeah, this is Solomon and I'm very happy to and excited to be there. Wow,

Dave West: 1:30

you're sort of have have passport, have professional scrum license will travel, you're getting into a lot of interesting places. And I'd love to lean into some of that. Some of that sort of knowledge and that experience in after we've, after we talked a bit about your journey to that where you're at at the moment, because obviously every country, every culture, every situation, how they do Scrum is a little bit different, which is which is really interesting. But But before we do talk about that, let's some make sure our listeners have an idea of your background. You know, tell me a little bit about your background and when you came upon Scrum.

Souleymane Thiongane: 2:09

Yeah, very interesting question. So, my background, I am a software developer. I mean, my early journey of my career I was developing software web software is, first of all, before starting to build Android applications with small teams I was, in which I was, let's say, team leads. That's how we were calling our position that that moment, until one day, we were facing difficulties when we're dealing with our clients and their requirements, because things were changing a lot. And they were they were complaining about how we were delivering them the products and the services. So my manager, but then in 2015 told me something like Philemon, we need to find out a way to improve how we dealing with our customer, because this approach is not working at all. So I started to you know, look for some methods or some things that can help us, you know, improve our way of work. That's the way I found screw. You know, in YouTube, I started to learn about it. And yeah, we started to implement it. Not that's professionals club I know today as a PSD, but a version of Scrum I was using before and that I improved, you know along the way. But it was very helpful for us because it at least helped us, you know, increase our ability to adapt to change, increase our customer satisfaction and increase our ability to deliver value to our customer. So when we did that experimentation with the framework, it was a success. And the company started to invest a little more on that, until we had a huge division back in 2019. They had a huge dividend that we're delivering all the digital product that that company wanted in his transformation journey. Yeah. And after that, this was in the telecom industry. It was my first meaning the first industry in which I worked. I worked on different other industries after that, because when I left I started my own company to do coaching services, consulting services and training mainly to different other companies and industries. I worked in an event industry, I worked in the retail industry in a bank as well. It was a very interesting one. One of the things that interested me a lot in that company that we were working not only with IT teams but we're working with different other teams like marketing teams, because they were doing the transformation of the business. So it was very challenging and interesting to see scrum with people that are not you know, it guys very interesting challenges. And now I'm in a new industry again in the manufacturing automotive industry with Toyota in Belgium Toyota Motor in Europe since a couple of months a very interesting one as well, because we trying to see you know, Toyota and you know, DPS and and how they inspect I'd many other companies to improve their way of working. So trying to see the link between that TPS and Agile and Scrum and they have similarity, meaning things they can, you know, share each other. So try to see that the link is something that I'm really excited about. And yeah, that's where scrum brought me since I started to learn about Wow,

Dave West: 5:21

well, that's a that's a that's a hell of a journey. And, you know, we're going in lots of different places, lots of different industries. Do you think, you know, I'd love your take on this? I mean, lots of different companies, right? And lots of different industries. Do you think there's a lot different about how they implement Scrum? Or and what are those differences? If they if there are? Or do you think it's very, very similar? What's your take on that? Solomon?

Souleymane Thiongane: 5:50

Yes, I do think that they are approximatively, all facing the same challenges regarding how they are implementing Scrum, or meeting the challenges they may face when implementing a child or Scrum, they are all the same, I don't think that it's related to the company. Because I can say that the same issues we were facing when you were dealing with a window in a telecom industry, for instance, we will at some moment, we will want we will wanting to have, you know, the more involvement of because when we were starting doing our Scrum, we will in what we can call our bubble, we can say that we are an Agile team deliberating. But we know that company is not working like that we have multiple teams that are working all together. So if you're working in a different way, which is not the same with the others, you will face issues once in the time. So one of the main challenges we faced was involvement of first of all leadership to you know, to help us you know, drive that change, to drive that change by giving the example themselves. And this is something I found like a pattern in all the companies in both in which I will, because maybe they had an understanding of Scrum and agility. They thought that you know, Scrum is of simple and easy to implement framework. And they read the SERPs read the scrum guide. And they start, you know, leading the change by what they understood. But this is some, for instance, just an example, to give an example one pattern we can see in different industries. Another thing is, for instance, the capacity or ability to adapt to change, they are also facing the same difficulty to meet the customer requirements. So yeah, I don't think that this is agnostic. This is related to any specific industry, by the way, it can apply as I told previously to it, company companies or companies that are not related to that at all, like marketing people.

Dave West: 7:49

Yeah, in fact, you know, one of the most interesting case studies I worked on in 2023 was Gillette, and their new exfoliating male razor, they, they have software elements in that program was incredibly small. But the, but they use Scrum very effectively. I think that's a message. So there's more things that bring these these organizations together than actually makes them apart. Okay, so, tell me a little bit about your experience with professional Scrum. So you were doing Scrum in the telco company, you then you know, after you've tried it across multiple teams doing it, you got that experience, you thought, hey, I got some unique skills here. I can share this with more companies, more organizations, and you went self employed. Tell me when you discovered professional Scrum and the work we're doing here@scrum.org Yes,

Souleymane Thiongane: 8:43

I discovered professional scrum not that long, let's say five years ago. Not more than that year, because as I told you, previously, meaning, I wasn't learning about Scrum from different sources, but what I read about professional scrum in scrum.org, I found that you know, the resources I was finding there and the people even I was finding the, the quality of the resources was at a different level. And I started to understand what meaning that professional Scrum is, compared to what we can call the mechanical scrum because most of the people and even companies can fall into what I call the trap of, you know, doing the mechanics and forgetting or losing sight of the end customer or the product and losing sight of why we doing all of these because all of these are just the means to achieve that, you know, used to make goal. So the professional scrum personally it was a ha moment because it helped me connect the dots. Connect the dots, the word what is the most important thing to deliver value to satisfy customer to build a working product, those kinds of stuff, not only focusing on doing retrospectives during daily scrums, doing sprints extra, but having insight, the end goal which is satisfying customer and having valuable product is the biggest or mode I can say I discovered with professional Scrum.

Dave West: 10:08

Yeah, it's so easy to focus on the mechanics. And it's a very effective way of doing work and getting people to work together. It's a great rhythm. However, the real value you get from Scrum, as you realize, and you know, I realized as well was really when you when you flip it from doing work to delivering value, and that that moment has a huge impact. For me, it was, I was working, I was working at a startup. And Ken was my mentor. And even though I'd been talking about Scrum, I'd been writing stuff about Scrum. hadn't done it really not really, really not. And then can introduce some very simple changes to how we thought about the backlog. And I saw a huge change to the how the teams approach the problem. And the outcomes that we saw. And I and you did the same, which is, which is awesome. So do you. So let's talk a little bit about your experiences being a world traveler, you know, Morocco, Belgium, South Africa, or West Africa. do you what do you see in these markets? You know, is a how scrum being adopted, say, for instance, in Africa today? Yeah,

Souleymane Thiongane: 11:26

very good. Interesting question. Because when I joined Morocco, I found here, market that is very light dynamic, because we have many big company that are, you know, working on the transformation journey, meaning that building products in the digital, you know, digital product for the customers to found here, a market that is really dynamic. But this is we can say, in Africa limited to this part, or in this region of Africa, if you go a little below Africa, for instance, where I'm looking at my native country, in Senegal, or other African countries below, you can say see that the market is not that major, let's say, people are not really aware of those products coming from scrum.org or even, you know, products from Scrum. And we found out as PhDs in Africa that we need to work on that we this is what was one of our biggest challenges, because we trying to, let's say, educate we trying to help people understand how they can find value in this and start working on this. In Africa, we can say a couple of, you know, industries that are trying these different work, for instance, telecom company, as I told you, a couple of banks, you know, but you can count them, you know, into your, into your hand, your fingers, but not more than that, compared to what we can see in Europe, for instance, or we can see in other markets, you know, it's more, there are far more demand, you know, regarding, you know, this framework, so we are, we are facing difficulties. And one of the ways we can, you know, try to solve this is, as I told earlier, to educate them about that, for instance, me personally, I try to work on that by building content regarding Scrum, how it can help them how they can find value in it, trying to share my experience in social network, like LinkedIn, trying to write blog posts, or even, you know, videos on YouTube, so that they can see the value on it, and maybe it will work on, you know, helping us have a more, let's say, major market, and they can see value on those products.

Dave West: 13:50

I mean, there's a lot of opportunity in Africa, there's a significant digital revolution happening across the whole continent, and particularly in West Africa, and the light where there's a lot of organizations that are growing and Africa has obviously got an amazingly young working population who are digital native, they've never seen anything else right when you say and so I think there's a massive opportunity and I think you and I have talked about this before. However, the they're a little bit behind in terms of, of Scrum experience and knowledge, but that's probably a good thing. You know, maybe they'll never have to do mechanical scrub, although never have done that never have to fight over the waterfall. You know, mentor. It is interesting. I was recently involved in teaching a class to one of our we have we support an organization all year, which is a charity and, and I was chatting to the students And one of the students said, yeah, what is this waterfall thing? How can it possibly work? How can you know everything up front? And I was like, oh, from the, from the metaphor, and the main, obviously wasn't the bay. But as we the expression is from the mouth of babes, you know, the you get this sort of perspective. It's super, super interesting. So, so So what next? What's next for you, Solomon? What you know, you've, you're practicing scrum with your with, with Toyota in, in Belgium, which is great. You're teaching Scrum, you're building lots of content to help evangelize scrum into the African content continent. What's next for you? What's What are you excited for in the next in the next few months? Yeah,

Souleymane Thiongane: 15:50

very good question. So the next, the main challenge I had this previous day was to become a PhD. So first of all, I have to mention that, by the way, because it was tough, it was challenging. It took me around two years, or even a little more than that. But it's something that I really enjoyed. I enjoyed it, you know, I enjoyed more the past on to becoming a PhD than having the budget of PhD because I learned a lot, I discovered also amazing people who are willing to help, and I really enjoyed that community. So what's next for me, first of all, I'm trying to have a similar community with the same sort of values and way of working in my region. And I already started since the beginning of this year. So we are working on the community we are calling Agile Connect, we are starting in our, in our how to call it in our in my native country in Senegal, but they are calling Senegal, we have people in they're very motivated, very engaged, who are doing professional Scrum, who are experimented a little and who are learning. You know, sometimes when I have trainings, I can give, you know, free slots just for them to better understand and see the value. We did one a couple of weeks ago on PSFS on facilitation skills, they really liked it, you know, so they are discovering, and they practice this and bring value to the company. So this is my first, let's say, next step, meaning how I can help the things I learned in this journey of becoming a PSD, how I can help my community back, you know, to improve as well. The second thing I'm targeting, and I'm really excited about it is probably why not I want to you know, write a book. I don't know if it will be in English or in French, I don't know exactly. But it's something that I'm really excited about. I have couple of interesting ideas. I'm working on it. And yeah, maybe in couple of months or a couple of years, who knows, we'll see a book, maybe professed by Dave West, and talking about Scrum and agility.

Dave West: 17:47

If you can't find anybody better to write a foreword, I'm always willing, I know, it'll be a great book or whatever, whatever. Writing books is a it's a love hate thing, the experience of you know, I've obviously been involved in in the book series, we have 12 books now in the professional scrum series. And, and I've also written a few myself on that on this on this journey. And, yeah, there's moments I love it, there's moments I hate it. And afterwards, I remember both really well. But obviously, the we're here to help, I'd love to just talk a little bit about community and the value. One thing that I've really enjoyed about being the CEO of scrum.org is the community the both the professional scrum trainer community who, you know, I'm fortunate that many of them have become great friends, and also mentors and coaches and, you know, help us but also the broader community, the passion. One thing that I'm always very disappointed about work and, and I think this is, again, a testament to where I think the opportunity is in Africa is that you go to a company and people are they're just sort of down they're just sort of the somebody has taken their enthusiasm, enthusiasm, bone and thrown it away or something. And the energy the passion and great Scrum teams have energy and passion we that's part of professional Scrum. I think it's the art of the possible right. But the the, you know, the when you find these people, and you create this environment where they can flourish either in the community or in the team or, you know, a small section of our PST community. Amazing things happen. And I think that I think that your focus on doing that will be a rewarding journey and, and is great for Scrum, but it's also great for the world as well. Right? Yeah, interesting times ahead. So we try to keep these podcasts short, I could talk to you about your adventures and your journeys all day. But unfortunately haven't got the time. And I know our listeners certainly enjoy these, these snapshots into our amazing Scrum, professional scrum trainers. But so thank you for your time. Solomon.

Souleymane Thiongane: 20:15

Thank you a lot for inviting me again, it was really nice for me to be there. And for the people who are listening to us, I will just invite you, if you want to learn a bit more about me say man or my company, go to scrum.org, you will find my profile, or you can find my company in the professional trainer network as well. Or go directly to my website, your agility.com and you will find me and the amazing team I'm working with to help companies in Africa deliver value and you know, thrive in the complex world. Thank you, David.

Dave West: 20:47

Wright, thank you so much. Okay, everybody. So here we are. This is the scrum.org community podcast. I was your host, Dave West CEO here@scrum.org. Today we had a really interesting conversation with a professional scrum trainer at PST Silverman Chun gang who is based in Morocco, but works all over the world, which I'm sort of a little jealous, particularly in the winter, because many of those places sounded a little bit warmer and nicer than they were I am in Boston at the at the moment. But we were fortunate to hear his journey to professional Scrum, his journey through many industries, telecommunications, banking events, and now in the auto Auto World with Toyota. The fact that he's both practicing and teaching at the same time is, is a kind of a theme for many of our professional scrum trainers. And, and he's, you know, he gets the opportunity to share his own experiences and his own stories in this in his journey and in his work with his students and with his colleagues. So I think that was a really interesting takeaway, and obviously, the great opportunity we have in Africa, and maybe they'll never do mechanical Scrum. How nice would that be? Anyway, so thank you for listening. Thank you for being part of this journey. This is a scrum documentary podcast. For other podcasts. Maybe you want to hear about other professional scrum trainers or some other interesting, interesting guests that I'm fortunate enough to get on this on this on this medium. Feel free to go to our channels on all of your podcast platforms, or go to the scrum.org website to find them. Thanks for listening. Bye bye ScrumOrg

Souleymane Thiongane: 22:38

Bye, everyone.