Lindsay Velecina: 0:00

Ryan, 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.

Ryan Ripley: 0:20

Hi everyone. I'm Ryan Ripley with Agile for humans and professional scrum trainer with scrum.org I'm stepping in as a guest host for episodes highlighting the experiences of other scrum.org professional scrum trainers. I hope you enjoy getting to know these amazing people. Welcome to another episode of becoming a scrum master. I'm your host. Ryan Lee. I can't even say my name now. I've done so many of these. Of I'm Ryan Ripley. That's rich fellow PST. But also, before that was a scrum master. And we're going to talk about that. Want to talk about the journey, some of the ideas rich. We're going to kick it right off and a rich old friend, good mentor, as I was coming through the PST process. Taught me a lot about being a scrum master. Taught me a lot about applying professional scrum he was one of the stewards for that course, and really helped me understand the practical implications of that course and some of the ideas known rich for a long time, I've been looking forward to getting him in the hot seat here. So Rich, can you share the story of how you first encountered Scrum and what motivated you to become a Scrum Master?

Rich Visotcky: 1:34

Yeah, I can. And thanks for having me here. This is cool. So agile concepts have been on like always familiar to me. One of my first jobs out of college was working for a small software startup. We had no real process. It was just three guys banging away at stuff and seeing what worked. And I was like, Okay, that was cool. And then after a few years, I moved we came up here to Wisconsin, I got a new job, much bigger market, and I worked with a company that did Scrum, or at least they said they did Scrum. I think I read the guy, and I'm like, Yeah, I guess this makes sense. I didn't really understand, but we were using much more of the elements, and it felt good like we were just, we're having reviews. We were having retrospectives. I got together with the other two people on my team every day for what I thought was a daily Scrum and but I didn't really think a lot about the practice. And then few years later, I went to another organization and I got trained. It was actually my first APS, SD class. At the time, the PSD, I was really introduced to scrum guide, scrum.org home of Scrum, and it was enlightening to see what we did well before what I clearly had wrong, both in just understanding of each event and what it was for. And then we got put together as one team, a couple people from my organization at a client site, and we trained everybody else, both the our competitors and the clients, people on Scrum, and tried to exemplify being on a good scrum team there. So that was, like, that was my first real, really doing Scrum, really trying to do it well. And I know as a developer there for almost three years, and after about a year and a half, we have scrum master. You might know him. His name's Gary Pedretti, yeah, it was quite a team. Gary Pedretti, Andrew Seaman, Eric Weber, myself.

Ryan Ripley: 3:28

How did any work get done at the time? We were

Rich Visotcky: 3:31

awesome developers, architecturally minded. Eric was our product owner. It was just good stuff, right? It was just, it was really interesting to watch and really hold us, having us all hold each other accountable for Yeah, we could be doing better here. And then Gary left. And eventually Eric did, but when Gary left and he became a PST and started consulting in other groups, we needed a scrum master. And thought about it for a while, and actually I first asked another scrum master in the organization that I really looked up to, and he said he was too busy. Okay, and so we thought about them where I'm like, You know what? I want to take this on. I think this would be really interesting. And because at that point, at that point in time, we had 13 teams working on a product. They were some of the best technical people that I'd ever worked with in my life, and it was interesting to watch how we can get so much done, accomplish so many different things, when we were sharing responsibility, working together in each other's code bases, solving problems, right, thinking about the system as general, and yet, when We argued, my stuff needs to come first, and all these different things, how that same group can get ground to a halt. And I'm like, wow, that people problem that's hard. I want to go work on that for the rest of my life. And so I took on the accountability of being a scrum master and leaned into it for a while, and then I had a kid, and I thought I couldn't do both the development. Helper and Scrum Master jobs at the same time. So I thought I couldn't handle the system. But after a few months away, I came back to it. I'm like, yeah, actually, I think I can do that. And I think I want to do that for more groups. So that's what that's actually, when I became a PST and I started working with other groups, training them up and being SCRUM masters for different teams in a lot of different areas. Awesome.

Ryan Ripley: 5:21

So you've also bled into the second question here, which is good a specific project or situation where you had the eureka moment, it sounds like when you had the murderers row of PSTs working together. And that's a compliment. That's a powerful group of people. And I think that's where you saw the power and potential of Scrum. And I'm glad you described that experience. It's, it's a it seems to be a common thread in a lot of these discussions, where, when people see the impact of working like this, and it's just, you can't go back nitrovan. And I talked about that in a previous episode, where he was just like, I saw a glimpse of what it could be, and I didn't want to see anything else. And would you say that it's that kind of moment for you too,

Rich Visotcky: 6:05

absolutely. And I've heard it that way before. I remember a couple months after apssd that I taught, running into a guy named man crew at a at a client site, and like, how are you today? I'm awesome. I'm like, That's a hell of a term. And I'm like, why? And he goes actually a few weeks before your class was going to quit. He was an architect. He was getting tired of watching, of spending weeks building things only to have it not be implemented, or things getting canceled all the time, and just never saw the connection to his work. And he's an hour I'm working with people who are implementing these designs, and they're learning from me, and I'm seeing the connection of the people who want this stuff, and that means something to me and and, yeah, I'm never going to work a different way. I'm like, that's really cool. And for me, I think to be comfortable moving into the scrum master accountability, to holding that with the team, to to working with more people and and eventually becoming a PST, was like every review that we had in that team with all those PSTs, I took on more opportunities to question our stakeholders, to point things out, to just try to be as transparent as possible, and to watch the conflict and the negotiation and the collaboration happen, and I used to talk, and I still talk fast, but I used to talk really fast and scratchy and everything because I was nervous and I got over that just because I'm like, these are important conversations, and I want to be a part of that, of bringing people's different perspectives together. And I think as Scrum Masters, we have the opportunity to do that, to to show people that whatever they're doing right now might be the thing that's getting in their way, but it also has the seed of what can make them really powerful.

Ryan Ripley: 7:49

Love it the scrum master, right? So it was a role now it's an accountability. So I'm going to use those interchangeably. I know that's like a slight mark against my PST license, but

Rich Visotcky: 8:03

we're both on demerits now.

Ryan Ripley: 8:06

How has your perception and execution of the scrum master role evolved? How would you think it's changed over the years?

Rich Visotcky: 8:14

Any I think it, it started off a little bit of I'm the meeting Master. I'm organizing things, stuff like that. I'm trying to get people together. I'm the person who has to like be checking what we're doing, how we're burning down, and asking those kinds of questions. And I started to actually take a step back from that, because as I thought more about helping people with self management, my perception and execution there shifted towards Do people understand what their boundaries are? Do they understand what we're working towards? And when do I give them an opportunity to run with it on their own? And I think I also went too far in that direction for a little while you choose, and I actually put on too little boundaries, and needed to bring that back in and help people hone in focus to the point of, I'm a very patient person. I like to wait to speak when someone else is speaking. I got a lot of time that I could wait to see something good happen, but I'm not willing to just let it glide indefinitely. I'm always going to keep my finger on the pulse of something, and so I do that more with organizations. So another change, right? That another thing that has changed as it's evolved, and as I've evolved, has been that understanding of Scrum Masters aren't just for Scrum teams, right? They're for organizations too. I should be talking with people in finance. I should be talking with executives. I should be talking with HR to go and help them create a better environment for this to really allow us to create a lot of value and let these people do amazing work in the organizations that they're at. So I think that's part of it, right, the shift from role to accountability. It's mostly around who does it. Right? I think there are people who are really good at doing this kind of work. And we should let them run with it, right? Like when you're good at something and people can recognize it, yeah, let them have the stage, let them go. But as far as who can take it on, and you could be a manager, you could be a developer, you could be the CEO, you could be the person from the front desk. And actually, that happened at a group I was at one time. They everyone in the organization got trained on Scrum, and they started getting a little more involved, and they became a scrum master at one point. I was like, that's great. So it's just they held that accountability before they held the title, right? And that was huge. They walked it, they ran before anyone ever really called them out on it. And that's changed over time for me too.

Ryan Ripley: 10:42

There any other aspects of the scrum master role or accountability that's different now compared to when you first started?

Rich Visotcky: 10:51

I i think if anything else is different, it's understanding a little more of, like I said, how you're part of the team and how you're part of the organization. Yeah, I've seen SCRUM masters that, and I've worked with Scrum Masters that were outside of their team, and that was a little weird, and it felt normal initially, because I didn't know any better. And then seeing like, just how much changes when you're in it with a group of people, right? And you do get to be with them, is huge. So I think that's shifting a little bit for me, right? You can't just plop somebody into the spot. They really gotta. They gotta be there and work with

Ryan Ripley: 11:27

that group. Nice. So what advice would you give to someone aspiring to be a scrum master? And this could be a mindset, a skill, a habit that you think is critical, or just something completely different.

Rich Visotcky: 11:43

I think if you're aspiring to be a scrum master, the one thing is just start, start living that accountability, right? I again, before you, before anyone says you're a scrum master, go, be a scrum master, right? Go. Help bring good scrum practices to both your team and your organization, make sure people understand not just that they're using the right term, but what does it mean? What is the purpose of this sprint review that we're going to get into? Is it just to look at a bunch of product? No, there's more to it. And how can you help encourage your team, no matter what position you're in, to go and start leading in there? So I think that's pretty key. I think from a mindset perspective, you've got to be willing to to let go of control, which I think when I was starting as a scrum master, it's hard for me, and it's just that being willing to let go of control, but still influence and say, Hey, how can I set somebody else for an opportunity and almost control by not coercion or anything, but just by by influence, and trying to get them to think a little bit more. So if you can do that, if you can start saying, Hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna point something out here for you that maybe is hard to hear, but I do it because actually I care. I love you. I think it's an important thing for you to understand, because you could be doing better, and I can maybe be doing better too, and we can help each other out with that. And then you have to let them go with it. That's huge, but they got to know, right? They got to know that, that there's a better way to deliver value. There's a better way to operate. Quality Matters, business value matters, right? It's not just all love and fluff, but you do these things to like, to help people get towards more outcomes, because you care about them. And that's a mindset I think is important,

Ryan Ripley: 13:32

too. Awesome, Rich, I got one more for you. What is the one book every scrum master should read doesn't have to be an agile book. Doesn't have to be a scrum book, just a book that you think has had a huge impact.

Rich Visotcky: 13:47

The book that had the biggest impact on me was drive, so Dan Pink's work. Dan Pink's work. Drive. It changed how I operate my business. It changed how I interact with teams. It changed where I sent my kid to school, right? It's changed a lot for me, and I think it from a scrum Master's perspective, knowing that you have to give your team some autonomy, and you want them to gain that autonomy, that they're trying to grow, right? And that you that stagnation is not acceptable, right, for their skills, for their product, for their organization, that they'll need to grow, and they need a challenge to get there, and you can help provide that challenge to build that mastery is huge and reminding them of purpose that we don't often see that in organizations. So I think that book touches on some really core cultural kind of things that a lot of people can get out of it. So if you're starting off, or if you really don't understand those concepts that if I had to pick one, that's where I go. Awesome,

Ryan Ripley: 14:44

Rich. I appreciate you doing this. It's great to hear how you got started. Some thoughts on where things have gone, and some advice for the aspiring scrum master. Anything else you'd like to get in front of people before we wrap this one up? Ah,

Rich Visotcky: 14:59

just it's a. A really cool thing to continue this journey over time. Like Ryan and I were both Scrum Masters. Ryan, you were, I think you've been a product owner too, right? Oh,

Ryan Ripley: 15:09

yeah, most, so that's Todd's. So between the duo of Todd and I, Todd's very heavy on the product owner side. I was more scrum master executive leadership, but have definitely held the role and felt the pressure and did not like it, but it's yeah, the answer is yes to your question. Okay,

Rich Visotcky: 15:30

cool, yeah, I've held every accountability on a scrum team, sometimes all of them at the same time. And yeah, yeah, that's a real pain. But I think that was you're going through like that journey is it's not just getting the PSM one, it's not just getting the title right. It's a long and hard journey. And I want people to keep thinking about pushing that ahead, reaching out to people like you and I for help with that, because this is what we do. We want people to keep growing and learning and getting better and being what they can be, and inspiring others to do that too. You want to go for that. PSM, three, it's hard, but that's pretty awesome. And if you get there, that's cool. You want to join us as PST, that's great. And sometimes, if you just need to do great things in your organization, do that and share them in your organization, and share them with others, right? Come out and speak at places where we're speaking, because if people need to hear these kinds of stories. So come join our ranks and ask for our help and keep growing out there, everybody.

Ryan Ripley: 16:25

It's great words to end on. Thank you Rich.

Rich Visotcky: 16:27

Thanks, Ryan. You.