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. And to know today, I have with me, Duane Girard. Thank you for joining us, Duane.

Duane Girard: 0:33

Thanks for having me, Dave. It's nice to talk to you again.

Dave West: 0:35

Cool. So the reason why I'm so excited about this talk or this conversation, or this podcast today is Duane, learned a lot about teams as a sergeant in the in the US Army. And in the military. You know, he actually learned a lot about agility, which he then when he came in civilian life, went through some training and some words stuff and some application stuff. And then actually started to use these skills as a professional scrum master out in the real world. So I'm really excited to hear your journey, Duane. And maybe there's some, some things we can learn along the way. So I guess to start off with, you know, tell us a little bit about you.

Duane Girard: 1:26

Yeah. I currently work as a scrum master and Agile coach for a large multinational organization. I'm a woodworker. And I'm a dad. I've been doing Scrum Master workers some analog of the position for about 15 years now across a couple of different industries. You mentioned one of them.

Dave West: 1:42

Yeah. So tell me, I mean, everybody wants to know, the army, you know, for many of us that haven't served. And by the way, I really appreciate your service. Thank you, for allowing helping us have this life that we all live. So thank you for that. But for the people that haven't served, it sounds like a big change from being a sergeant in the US Army to being a scrum master/Agile Coach, you know, can you tell me for that sort of evolution that that learning arc, as it were?

Duane Girard: 2:20

Yeah, it's no problem. Um, let's see. So I joined the Army in about 2006. And between multiple different deployments as both a soldier and a defense contractor, I had the opportunity to build fostering coach teams in environments that were frequently more kinetic than usual. So I had to focus on teaching and enabling my team members to resolve problems quickly and independently. And instead of waiting on me to do it for them, because quite often time was of the essence. And I eventually stumbled into being a QA engineer had the opportunity to watch my scrum master and realized, Hey, I did that job before. And it was really just a Lexicology issue. We use different words, but we approached things in the same lightweight and fast response kind of manner.

Dave West: 3:08

Yeah, so interesting. He said, so many things that I'd like to explore a little bit. So I've always thought that Well, I guess I don't think that now. So I've read enough books. But back in the day before I even started thinking about this, that arm is a very hierarchical and a very command and control. But what you just said, when you were describing your learning, that's not the case is it? You create a lot of autonomy in your unit, and then the group of people that you work with on a regular basis, how does that sort of fit with this vision of command and control in the army.

Duane Girard: 3:48

In the environments that I worked in, the focus was more on individual squads. We worked in small teams to produce outcomes that were valuable to our leadership, I received feedback on it quickly. And then we're able to adapt our approach to things as we move forward. We definitely didn't run in one to four week Sprint's but day to day, we got immediate feedback on what we did in our operations, adapted for the next day move forward and presented it for feedback immediately. Again, the next day, we didn't call them sprint planning or retrospective or the daily scrum but we did have those events. It

Dave West: 4:30

is super interesting though that that and the reason why was because the environment what you described as kinetic as fast moving, you didn't you knew what your the outcome that you were pursuing was, but the actual how you were going to get to the outcome. Nobody knew until you started doing stuff, right? Would that be a fair assumption? That's correct.

Duane Girard: 4:54

At the squad level, we definitely trusted the individual skill set to figure out the best way forward and bring need desired outcome to our stakeholders or officers leadership, senior NCOs, whatever you want to call.

Dave West: 5:07

And that required so you trusted and they trusted you you trusted because there's a high large amount of trust than that is fostered in the armed services? I'd assume.

Duane Girard: 5:18

It depends on which part of the armed services you're in, but I was in a highly specialized job. Yes.

Dave West: 5:25

And, and that this trust was necessary. It is always interesting. I recently was working with some Royal Marines talking to them and, and they were like, Yeah, trust checking in working, you know, making sure that you're there for your, for your comrade for your, you know, partner in crime, as it were, or your squad member, is really important. That also what they talked about, which I want to see if this has a parallel with your experience, to me, was the size, it could only work up to a certain size. Because, you know, if it's hundreds of people, well, then that's a whole different problem, right?

Duane Girard: 6:01

Correct. Yeah. Different services are going to use different words. But if you try and organize any sort of exercise at the platoon level, and allow no flexibility for planning subordinate to that you're not going to have a very good result. But when you break it down to the individual squads, and you trust your experts, and the people in those squads to lead themselves, as long as the outcomes and the way to those outcomes is clear those people. I mean, they're not trying to let you down, they will go out and if it's possible, bring you back those outcomes.

Dave West: 6:35

So many parallels probably to your life now. So Alright, before we get to talk about that, because I'm sure there's all sorts of interesting parallels and maybe some contradictions and you know, modern corporate America compared to that of that environment. But before we get to there, tell me so all right. You left the army then did some contracting with and then you moved into, into so why did you decide to sort of take some professional scrum qualifications and you know, learning around professional scrum why? Why did you decide to go down this path? You know, there's many places you could have gone after a career in the in the US Army.

Duane Girard: 7:19

I'll riff a little on CareerBuilder. Here. They used to have an apply all button for your their recommended jobs. And I clicked it. I accidentally got interviewed for a QA engineer position ended up getting the job. And that was my way into technology. It worked out pretty well. For me though, as a QA engineer, I mentioned before I had the chance to watch my Scrum Master Work and realize, hey, I did that before. And I've always been the kind of person who wants to be really good at whatever I'm doing. Maybe I'm not the best, maybe I am. Depends on the skill. But as a scrum master, it took me three attempts at the PSM one to pass. No, but as I observed and learned from my scrum master, went out, studied the theory followed the scrum master learning path on scrum.org, that sort of thing. Eventually I mastered it, I passed the the assessment, and I went out looking for new challenges. As my career advanced the challenges, you know, the next logical step was the PSM two. When I met rich Wysocki in Minneapolis for that one, traveled to Toronto to see David Dame for the PSU, the first one, I believe in Canada. I've always been the kind of person who goes out and looks for the next step or the next challenge, because not only is it fun to accomplish, it gives me data to bring to a conversation that says, hey, this is why I'm pretty good at what I do. So I actually ended up i 2020, taking the PSM three, I mostly took it as a scouting mission to see how difficult it was because I had a discount code, and I thought it'd be fun. It kicked my butt. But it was really educational, because we learn from failure, right? Took me two more attempts. I eventually pass it in December last year. But after all of that, after nearly five years of effort at getting better at things studying the theory and practicing with communities of practice, whether it's at work or discord, or slack, or whatever I could find at the time. You can imagine my excitement when I got that email that said, Hey, you passed.

Dave West: 9:36

I can. So it is interesting that you sort of concentrated not only when you're talking about your career in the army, but about failure scars, learning feedback. I think that's obviously a key part of Scrum. But it's also you would you describe it as a key part of the education to scrum as well the learning. As you tried things, you got feedback. You're like Oh, Well, that's interesting. Again, that doesn't, you know, that doesn't necessarily match with the sort of macho soldier kind of image. So dealing with adversity and failure is crucial, right? Would you agree?

Duane Girard: 10:16

Absolutely. You can't be brittle if you want to be tough.

Dave West: 10:21

Wow, that's actually that's a super, not only a great slogan for a T shirt, but also great, but also kind of deep.

Duane Girard: 10:33

I appreciate that. I've always liked to be able to teach people. And I can't do that with basic level, anything. I can't, I focus on building my skill set so that I can teach Junior Scrum Masters so that I can teach teams, my specialty or what I prefer to specialize in as founding new teams, whether it's one team of software developers, or it's a team of teams, that's what I enjoy doing. And I can't do that unless I can quickly establish myself as really good at this. Part of that is, you know, my, my radio voice. And the other part is, hey, guys, I know how to do this, just trust me for a couple of weeks. And I will show you

Dave West: 11:16

and you do have a fantastic radio voice as well. I'm filling live in adequate on this podcast every moment because I'm like, Oh, that's so wish I sounded quite as good as that. But so obviously, you know, this idea of learning about learning, learning, you know, learning about empiricism learning about how failure trying to, you know, continuously improve, what else did you learn from this whole journey, this, this journey of sort of professional Scrum and, and the application of it working with Scrum Masters doing the sets doing, go into training classes? What other things sort of stand out from this journey?

Duane Girard: 11:55

Well, the PSM three is really hard.

Dave West: 12:00

Thank you read.

Duane Girard: 12:03

Yeah, joking aside, I got a lot better as a scrum master through all of this. I mean, I started out knowing the parallels and definitely having an aptitude for it, because of what I learned in my previous career, but focusing on learning and communicating with other people in this in this career, and in this field. And sorry, focusing on learning from other people in this career and in this field helped me to be more successful building teams, apply scrum across several different industries. And without actively seeking to learn and understand basic theory and application, I definitely wouldn't have been successful at any of this.

Dave West: 12:44

Interesting. So. So I guess, you know, you've gone through the the arduous process of this PSM three. So we try not to make it harder for us. But it ultimately is, I'm afraid, because it is trying to test that, that that application of the knowledge and context and the nuances around the ideas of Scrum, because obviously Scrum is very, very simple. But its application is incredibly hard, because it's human systems problems. We don't understand environments that went nowhere. So So you've done that, what, what's next for your, for your journey? Do you think

Duane Girard: 13:21

I'm pretty new to my current engagement. I'm currently helping establish a team of teams again, that's what I like to do. And I'm really enjoying myself. So I plan to stay here for a few years at least. I'm not certain past that

Dave West: 13:37

in terms of, you know, tools and techniques that scrum has taught you. Is there anything that that's next On Your Radar about that you talked about PSU and lean UX and those ideas which you know, you took in Canada at a Dave Dame's delivery. Any other big things on your radar?

Duane Girard: 14:00

That new Professional Scrum Facilitation course looks interesting, I might try that out.

Dave West: 14:05

One thing that we've found, as we've helped people on their journey to scrum mastery and becoming a better Scrum Master, is that facilitation is a is a skill that is often undervalued. And obviously, the pandemic made it very obvious, because you've got, you know, 20 people on a zoom call or a team's call, and suddenly you're trying to get to an outcome, everybody's speaking at the same time, nobody's speaking at the same time, you know, et cetera. So facilitation is is a key skill. So I do recommend that class obviously, because of that, but but I think it's not just our class, but looking at things like liberating structures, visual facilitation, you know, and, and things around that are definitely something so I guess, if, if there's a learner, currently, you may be following a similar light, you know, career and you maybe come out of the services, maybe, maybe, you know, he's changed, you know, change career. What would you tell them as they're listening to this podcast?

Duane Girard: 15:13

When I started my career as a Scrum Master, I was a little bit budget restrained. So one of the considerations for me was that scrum.org offers the certification without requiring the major expenditure of the course. And courses are outstanding. But that's not the only means that we have to learn the skill sets, I recommend very frequently, the learning paths are free on the website. And I participate in a couple of different communities of practice. Do you mind if I recommend one?

Dave West: 15:45

No, go go ahead. It's always good to learn, maybe I don't know it either, which would be great.

Duane Girard: 15:51

So agile water cooler.com. That's one of the discord servers that I'm on. And it's the most active community of practice I've been able to find. For anyone interested in learning or just asking questions about unintended outcomes of Scrum. i It's really rewarding whether you join my server or not to get out there and learn from people we don't work with directly. Because otherwise we get stuck in, you know, the common paradigms of our coworkers.

Dave West: 16:18

Yeah, I think that's a really good message. I think, ultimately, I emphasize this to anybody I'm speaking to, particularly for younger people, that network, talk to people in your field, talk to people not in your field, find out how they're working, find out what tools they're using, find out what's useful for them. You can, it can do amazing things. And I think, obviously, communities of practice, either inside your organization or outside your organization are a great place to go to go. The forums on scrum.org is another there's some really good, less of a community but more of a question and answer and discussion. Some of those discussion threads get incredibly interesting. And I always learn things, when I think I know something, I end up learning something along the way. Or, you know, the go on to answer it and end up learning more than I actually give, which is always a good thing. Right. Thank you, Dwayne. That was really, really interesting. And thank you for sharing your journey to professional Scrum and professional scrum mastery. And it's certainly an interesting one. And I'm sure has a number of parallels with many of our listeners. So thank you for listening listeners, is the Dave West here on the scrum.org community podcast, thank you for your time. That was awesome. Duane, thank you for your time.

Duane Girard: 17:43

Thanks for having me, David. It was really fun to be here.

Dave West: 17:46

Thank you. Thanks for spending the time. And thank you for listening. As you know, the community scrum documentary podcast, we talk to a number of different interesting people who are sharing their journeys and sharing their experiences or we focus on a particular idea, whether it's leadership or empiricism, or whatever. So please come back for more. And we'll always be here producing more content to help you get a little bit better at the your profession and helping you solve complex problems. Thank you