Lindsay Velecina: 0:00

Music. 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 in this episode, we're going to explore how today's market views scrum mastery and talk about how we got here. We'll unpack some common pitfalls, such as blind application of the framework mechanical Scrum, a failure to think beyond the team and the impact of the lack of domain knowledge on the role. Joining us. We're very, very lucky today. Listeners joining us. Today, we have Bala Alawi from an Agile Coach lead at Sanofi digital accelerator. He's going to share what they're doing at Sanofi and how they found great Scrum Masters. We're also lucky to have Stephen Sykes, co founder of Scrum match, who worked with Sanofi in solving this problem. Welcome to the podcast, gentlemen. Thank

Stephen Sykes: 1:17

you very much. Pleasure to be here. Thank you for the invite, Dave.

Bilal Alawiye: 1:21

Thank you, Dave, happy to be here with you guys to have this nice little chat.

Dave West: 1:25

Yeah, it's gonna, it's gonna be fun, because it is a hot topic in certainly in our community. So it's great that you're, you're here. So together, we're going to discuss how partnering with Scrum match Smash, which is hard to say on a Monday morning, Scrum match, enabled Sanofi to recruit great, true Scrum Masters. Then I think we're going to talk a little bit about how Scrum Masters succeed in their role, from fostering a product oriented culture and delivering meaningful results every sprint to mastering domain knowledge. So before we sort of go into the whole scrum master hiring them that you know, the situation that was causing Sanofi some challenges. Can we provide our listeners with a little bit of context? So, Villa, do you want to start and talk a little bit about Scrum at Sanofi?

Bilal Alawiye: 2:17

Yeah, sure. So you know, the journey with agility and and Scrum is not new in Sanofi, you know, right? So we, we probably have started this path, probably maybe five or six years ago, across the entire board, but it wasn't until, you know, recently, in 2022 where we created what we call the accelerator, which is kind of was a new way of working and applying also agility in Sanofi, which where we really started to dive much more into scrum so we have an entity about 121 30 people working actually physically on different strategic products. And during that time, we actually hired and worked with a lot of Scrum master this is where, really we started seeing how Scrum is able to provide great results, or not, on the field. Or as before, Scrum was much more a reference for the company, but we haven't really seen it on the ground, how it how it behaves. That's a nutshell how the journey started. Agility and Scrum is kind of known, but accelerator was actually the real ground of work where we saw scrum mastery happening in life.

Dave West: 3:30

Yeah. And, you know, we, I talked to a lot of pharmaceutical and biotech organizations that are the impact of digital on their enterprise has really grown the amount of Scrum that's being used there as organizations sort of wrestle with the complexity that Digital Plus, obviously medicine and Life Sciences is also very complex and that combination. So it's really interesting the journey that you're on at Santa Fe So, Stephen, what about this scrum match?

Stephen Sykes: 4:03

Well, we started about a year ago, and before we started the company, we we had a premise or a hypothesis, and the hypothesis was, out of all the Scrum Masters that are out there, how many are actually delivering real, real value to to users and the organizations that they work for, and we we run a few experiments where I'm lucky enough to be able to help my clients select scrum Scrum Masters, and we hire Scrum Masters ourselves, and we quickly saw that through the hundreds of candidates that We see applying for jobs, a small percentage of those are actually the people who know, who know Scrum and can apply scrum in practice. And then the question was, well, if we can see that, do employers see that? So do employers know what quality of candidate that they're getting when. When they're hiring, are they asking the right questions? Do they know what to look for when they're hiring a scrum master? And we saw a gap in the market where, well, the majority of people who work for for scrum match are professional scrum traders through scrum.org You know, we have expertise in that area. Maybe we can help, we can help companies find the best Scrum Masters there in the market. So that's how that's how we started. We started with a hypothesis, and luckily, over 400 candidate reviews later, our hypothesis being proven correct.

Dave West: 5:33

Yes, it is something that that I see a lot. Obviously, I talk to a few Scrum Masters. Being the CEO of scrum.org they seem to find me, particularly when I'm traveling, you know, undercover, and talk to me. And it is there is a vast difference in terms of skills, and that can be a real challenge for scrum adoption and organization. No insult to the to these unskilled Scrum Masters. It's not their fault you don't know what you don't know until you don't know it, right? But the reality is that can undermine scrum so. So let's lean into how did we get here? Why aren't Scrum Masters? So let's start with a fundamental question that I think many listeners are wrestling with, if they're Scrum Masters or if they're working in organizations doing agility, why aren't Scrum Masters seen as valuable in some organizations? Why, you know, and how does it connect to this skill thing? So I don't know. Blah, you are in a hugely successful, amazing, biotech, pharmaceutical health organization that's, you know, trying to solve some of the worst diseases in the world, right? Why is scrum mastery? You know, how does it fit in? How's it seen inside Sanofi?

Bilal Alawiye: 6:50

So, yeah, that's a great question, because, you know, it has been a very long journey and a very, you know, it was full of ups and downs. You going back to your question about, How did we get there, and the perception, and when we first started the accelerator, it wasn't a very easy ride. You have to remember, we have the pressure also to, you know, deliver stuff. We have also a lot of promises to to keep, in terms of success in terms of sustainability, and at the at the same time, we want those SCRUM masters to be able to be successful. So the way we started, it was kind of very bumpy, because we started recruiting in a way where it was very just focused on mechanical Scrum. Shall I say, it's just okay, do you know how to do, how to perform, or how to do, to apply practices, or to a retrospective or daily? The first interviews were kind of much more towards that, and we quickly realized that the value was not there at all. So it took us a lot of back and forth, test and learn to realize that first of all, the the role of the scrum master was not at all clear. And also, the person that's coming in, they kind of thought it was an easy ride. So I'll just have to do a daily in a retrospective. There you go. I'm a scrum master. That's it. So it kind of took us on a little, you know, surprise at the beginning, and then after a few, a few back and forth, we start realizing that, hey, the interviews were actually not kind of working, and these people don't understand the level of commitment and investment they have to put in, and the skill set they have to also understand and the business in order to be successful, which wasn't giving them a favor, because the perception From management was starting to become, hey, I mean, okay, we just hire them to do some stuff to deliver. So there wasn't a lot of expectation on that. It wasn't until we started changing a bit our recruitment, our perspective on that, that we start seeing different results. So

Stephen Sykes: 8:55

let me jump into, oh, sorry, Steven,

Dave West: 8:58

yeah. Jump in. I was going to literally do exactly what you're about to do. I was going to ask you your

Stephen Sykes: 9:03

perspective. Thank you, David. Apologies for jumping in, but I just wanted to jump in on last point and going back to scrum.org, central mission, look, at the end of the day, we're here to deliver value. And it was very clear to the clients that I that I speak to, that there were a lot of companies that just weren't seeing the value delivered in regards to the investment they returned. And then they have to question, okay, well, what? What's the, what's the reason for that? And a lot of it is what Bilal has to say about expectation management, right? A lot of people thought they could just, you know, facilitate a few meetings. But in fact, when we're talking about the accountabilities of a scrum master, they're accountable for the effectiveness of a scrum team, right? And what are teams expected to do? Teams are expected to deliver, be it either a scrum team or a sports team or any level of team, the goal is always deliver. And deliver. Well, so then we, then we have to look about, well, okay, what kind of qualities are we looking for when we're hiring or recruiting a scrum master, and do do we have those qualities in the candidates that are applying for these jobs? And I think that the market significantly changed from now and 10 years ago. Maybe Dave, you want to jump in about what that looked like, what you've seen in your kind of an area. But I think that there's a there's a there's a there's definitely been a market shift in regards to what companies expect from Scrum Masters, rightly so, given the amount of investment that they're investing in Scrum and Agile transformations.

Dave West: 10:41

Yeah, I think that what's really interesting from my perspective, and, you know, and I'll, I'll come back to, I think it's really interesting that the change that you saw at Santa Fe in terms of your appreciation of the importance of the role, but that what we've gone through in terms of the industry is we had a bunch of project managers. We then started doing Scrum. A lot of people became Scrum Masters, either from a technical or from a project management perspective. They tried to not do anything different that other than the, you know, the process of Scrum. And I think it's very clear that the change to Scrum is more than just a process change. It's a fundamental change in terms of accountability and role and importance and where you fit and, and it's complicated to navigate, right? I mean, that's the bottom line, and, and I think that that what you're doing together is, is navigating that in a, in a, in a in a more effective way, which I think is really interesting. So, so, so what happened at Santa Fe you realize this, you know, you've got this, this change that's needed yours. You started talking to Stephen and Scrum match. What happened next?

Bilal Alawiye: 11:58

Yeah, so, so, just before jumping into the very nice discovery of Scrum match that I want to actually highlight you said something there which is really interesting is that, in terms of accountabilities, a lot of the Scrum Masters were just going into this role with one very narrow perspective, which is process or fix some stuff in terms of process. But actually what we did at the exterior, the first thing we did, and it might seem very, very naive or very, you know, weird, but I kind of like she did a lot of good things, is we changed the jargon, so we try to abide much more with with the scrum values and principles, and we try to start understanding the role of a coach, because and and the better, the best way we did that is by highlighting that we're like sports coaches. And a sports coach when they work with a team, they need to navigate different angles and different perspectives. So the same way the scrum master, they have to uphold for some of the principle of Scrum, but they also have to see the dimensions of a product technical mastery. They have to see organization as a whole. They have to have good negotiation skills. They probably have to also work on team dynamics. They probably have to also shift their postures depending on the context. So the first thing we did is that stop seeing yourself as just a person who applies want to practice but try to see yourself as you're coaching a team to win a game. And that actually started shifting the entire perspective. Now the second we did is that we actually started understanding what was going wrong with our recruitment. Why were it not working? And by interviewing some people actually, one of them actually told us something that kind of highlighted is that, well, I signed up just to do a daily and retrospective. This is what I grew up understanding, what a scrum master is, especially here in France. So this led us to start under investigating what can be a better recruitment. And I landed on Stefan's scrum match. It was basically, I think, was part of a forum or a community on Slack, and we started seeing a bit. And the first thing that I saw that was really interesting, that Stefan put was the maturity model that scrum match has done, which is just a very nice way of seeing if that what a scrum master can do on which level, for level one, they can do this, and level two, they can do that. And that, by itself, gave me a better perspective on how to evaluate. And then, from then on, we contacted each other, and I guess the rest is history, right? Give it to you. Stefan, to elaborate.

Stephen Sykes: 14:35

Thank you. Bilal, absolutely. We have a pretty, pretty good history from from now, but the way we work is, if your client is looking for a scrum master like like Sanofi, we go through a review process, and during this review process that somebody has to fill out a profile online, depending on the what they fill in their profile, we'll select them to go through a review with at least two Scrum Masters, where we'll go. Through a 90 minute call where we'll ask lots of questions and case some case study questions, and really kind of drill into not just the theory of Scrum, but more importantly, the practice of Scrum, and their actual understanding of how you apply practice, right? So what scrum.org does really well is making sure that people have the ability to understand Scrum, Scrum theory, and when they go out into the world, is when you really find out whether they're able to apply what they've learned into practice. And that's where we that's where we where we fit in, is what we test a little bit about, okay, they've been in the job for X amount of years. How have you applied your learning in practice? What results have you achieved? What methods did you use? And again, every only a very tiny portion of the review process has anything to do with theory, but it's all about what did you do? How did you do it? Have you done this before? And can you push yourself and do bigger things in the future, and that's the review. That's the review process. And we're lucky enough, we've had good success with Sanofi. But I suppose one thing I before we go on to a different topic, I just want to share a couple of insights, because at this stage, we've, as I've said, the start, we've reviewed about 400 candidates so far, and about 38% of the people that we review don't even come onto our platform because they don't have fundamental scrum knowledge, right? So that's quite it's a pretty damning indictment that people who call themselves Scrum Masters, about 40% of which will find it difficult to explain what Scrum is, never mind actually applying it. And there you see that the problem with the market in itself that you have a large market of people, people, Scrum mastery is a well, well paid job, but a large percentage of those, those people don't understand scrum fully and don't know how to apply it. And it's our our jobs, I think, is to kind of make sure that we highlight which SCRUM masters can really deliver value, because that's what we're here for. If we're not delivering value, we shouldn't really be calling ourselves Scrum Masters in the first place.

Dave West: 17:16

No, I think it sort of reminds me a little bit of in the early 2000s where everybody, everybody was a web developer, right? And there was this moment in probably 2000 and what two one, when the everybody was realized that they weren't web developers. They could cut and paste, yeah, they could use WordPress, but that does not make you a web developer. And there was this re sort of like restructuring of the market and and I think we're at a very similar place with with Scrum Master. And I think really you know that we are at this change in terms of these delivery leaders inside organizations, which ultimately what a scrum master is, you know, a delivery leader, a person that concentrates on that. And I think that that's really, really interesting, that that we're at that point, and not a surprise, really, you know, in the last 510, years, we've been, you know, growing in popularity and importance, and now I think it's sort of sort of gone mainstream. So I'd love to pull you as I've got you here, and I think this is a really interesting story. I really want to sort of pull back on what should Scrum Masters really be good at? What are those telltale signals that there's a good scrum master versus a not so good less experience. Let's not use any negative words, because they're probably awesome human beings, but they just just haven't quite got the skills to be awesome at a company like Santa Fe so can we sort of like, what should Scrum Masters, you know? What is their focus? What is the things that that are interesting. I don't know who wants to answer that. Yeah. I

Bilal Alawiye: 19:04

can start maybe from the Sanofi perspective. Yeah, we can give it another other ideas. One of the things I've seen that a lot of I don't want to let's say bad Scrum Masters, or mechanical scrum master do not grasp is the understanding of the business and the domain, which is something a lot of Scrum Masters struggled for a long time, where they say, Well, I'm not I'm not here. I'm not involved with the team, so I'm not supposed to know. They can figure it out. I'm just here to, you know, help out if there's some conflicts, or I'm just a time box. But in reality, this is one of the biggest indicators that the team sees in scrum master. Imagine a new scrum master coming to a team, and they're trying to smell you like dogs, like, Who's this? So for me, like one of the first thing that they're gonna probably. Think, make sure they can I probably pay attention to is, Are you understanding what we're going through? Do you understand the problems we have before we talk about flow or team dynamics or delivery optimization and CICD or whatever you want to talk but before, do you understand, like in Sanofi, we are very much sensitive about you understand clinical data. Do you understand regulatory environments? Do you understand the level of complexity when working on the on the US market versus the European markets? Do you understand the molecule pipeline journeys that we have in our company, before you start just addressing anything? So I'll just stop here and just have this one. I'll give it to you, Stefan, but this one really marked my my attention when I was in central

Stephen Sykes: 20:47

fields. So I won't even take it like even a step back to what, because I agree with everything Bilal says. But I think if you're a scrum master and you're not delivering a working product every sprint, you have no other problem deliver working product, product every sprint. And even a large amount of Scrum teams that I see out in the wild can't do that, right? So I think the minimum expectations as a scrum master is you need to be able your team needs to be able to deliver working increments, working software every sprint, and then, then, then you can build out from there. But there's, that's your first kind of minimum expectation we need to have. Expectation. We need to have working product, working software. And to hit home on on Bilal point about about product is, oftentimes SCRUM masters are going to be working in teams where the person who is called the product owner, product owner might have never touched scrum in the first place, and it's our job to make sure that they understand, that that that person understands how to apply Scrum, where scrum fits in. But that also means the scrum master has to know about product. What is this product? Who is this product? Cater to. Cater. Cater to. How often can we get our product actually into the hands of users and like, close the feedback loop. How many, how many clients have you all seen that where you know they say that they're actually doing Scrum but they actually never interact with an actual user, right? And then going to, just to hit bilal's point is, I, the thing that I often see is Scrum Masters tend to limit themselves to the team. They don't, they don't look outside the team, and don't look at the whole product right from beginning to end. How did this product come? Come to here, what blockers do we have after passes this team, where is flow blocked in the product in the process? How do we reduce that kind of stuff? I come to think that, like you know, Scrum is here to deliver value, but also, as practitioners and agile practitioners, we need to have a toolbox of skills that we can use with with clients to help solve their solve their problems. Because scrum isn't a panacea. It's not going to solve all your problems. It's just going to show you what problems that you have to try to solve, right? And as a scrum master, you need to have a good toolbox of other, other other things, whether it be Kanban, whether it be design thinking, whether it whether it be technical knowledge. Technical knowledge you you can't rely on, on scrum alone. You need to have, you need to develop like like, any skills with it, football. You develop skills in certain areas. How do I talk with management? Right? And I think that's something fundamentally SCRUM masters have been really bad at over the last years, is to demonstrate the value that they've had brought to organizations. What have I achieved, and what was the result of

Bilal Alawiye: 23:38

that? Probably, sorry, I just want to add probably to your point, Stefan, you're talking about product. I would probably say product slash system, because it's also a system thinking issue. Is that okay to understand your organization? How many dependents Do you have? A lot of the times also, we've, we at Sanofi have started working in teams where some scrum master didn't actually understand the ecosystem surrounding surrounding that product or that team, and then we expect them to actually deliver value. So I agree with you, the product part and the system part is a huge one. And actually be able to deliver frequently is one of those symptoms. I would actually we at Sanofi, we try to ethically do one more go beyond the delivery and much more about learning. So we're trying to come up with a way. How can we measure sort of feedback loops, by not just delivering frequently, but usage and learning after that. Because, in a way, we try to define agility as faster learning and a complex adaptive system. So that means, if I can just make my team learn faster, de facto, there will be actually improvement in the business, and also for the user's problems.

Stephen Sykes: 24:48

And Dave, before I know you want to jump in, but two seconds I have. There's one point I think that also Scrum Masters. A lot of Scrum Masters, I would say 80% of the people that I've gone through reviews with tend to for. Get and that's about discovery and product product discovery, right? There's a lot of we talked about Scrum Masters and delivery managers. And I kind of, you know, I kind of like feel a bit uneasy about that, because the Discover delivery is only half the battle, right? And discovery is a large part of part of the battle. Unfortunately, not many Scrum Masters out there help product owners focus on Discovery just as much as delivery. But over to you, Dave,

Dave West: 25:29

yeah, it's interesting, from my experience, a really good delivery manager cares deeply about the stuff that's being delivered. You know, it's not just because it's not just the they're not just the post person, you know, delivering the parcel from A to B. They've got to make sure the parcel lands, and because if it doesn't, then they ain't going to get paid long term. I mean that that is and the partnership with product ownership is crucial. In 2020 we changed the scrum guide to reflect that where, historically, a scrum master was accountable for three things, you know, the team, the product owner and helping you know the organization do Scrum the relationship with the at that point, we used to call it usable increment was very tenuous, and ultimately we made the changes to sort of bring that together, and how a Scrum Master does it, whether it's, you know, 500 years of you know, pharmaceutical knowledge in their head, or whether it's less of that, but a real Passion for customers and for outcomes and and the like, or whether it's, you know, their experience with design thinking or systems thinking, whatever that and it depends on, obviously, context, I think it, it makes a huge difference. But so that you're talking a little bit gentlemen about product culture versus project culture. That's the smell that I kind of got, is that something that resonates with you

Bilal Alawiye: 27:09

absolutely, absolutely, even at Sanofi, like even our CDO, is deeply invested into going into that mindset of outcome based cultures and product culture, where it's not just delivering stuff. We're much more interested in solving a user's problem and de facto having a business impact. But in our in our case in Sanofi, we also have been hit with the output being such a long time where everything is just check boxes, I delivered this or delivered that. So the accelerator was a very cool opportunity to harp on the fact that it has to be outcome oriented. What is changing behavior? We're much more focusing on what will people be doing differently and how, and how will that impact the business and and when I first going back to Stefan's work with Scrum match, one of the things that was interesting when we had our first talk, me and Stefan was about that topic in per se, precisely, which is product culture and helping product owners, because we're also sometimes challenged having product owners who don't know to what extent they should be shaping their product as well. So with the same problems that patterns that patterns that we see with Scrum Masters, we can also sometimes see them with product owners. So yes, short answer to your to your question. Dave, absolutely, product culture is a must, and it's actually rooted in our culture,

Dave West: 28:34

and I haven't actually heard it articulated quite as well as this, which is, you know, I think, pretty awesome the that Scrum Masters really are creating the environment for product thinking to gain traction. Product owners haven't got the invite that they execute in the environment, and it's a it's a hard job. I'm more on the product side and less on the scrum master side. I I'm not good at dealing with messy environments would be a good way to describe it. I like things nice and ordered. So I'm not a great Scrum Master. I'm a better product product person. And so the product owner has a lot of, you know, they're thinking about value, whether it's, you know, current value or unknown value. They're look they're looking at the network in terms of customers, stakeholders, managing all of those to ensure the environment, though, for that to succeed, has to be created by somebody or a group of people. And scrum master is the only I mean, there's nobody else that really worries about it, right? I mean, it's it. You've got to have somebody caring about that. And I think what you described is this change agent element of the project to product culture, which is really, really exciting. Stefan, you've talked to hundreds of candidates. Is that something that's top of mind for these people?

Stephen Sykes: 29:59

The honest answer? Is for the people who get onto our platform, yes, but for a lot of people, no, right? And then going back to like, swinging around full circle to allow point is, when we go through a review with our Scrum Masters, we have an expectation in regards to what kind of knowledge should they have, and a lot of that also includes, how do I help my product owner get value from the product that they're actually creating? Right? We're not expecting SCRUM masters to become product owners. Maybe that they won't do that in the future, but you got to think about actual businesses. A product owner is somebody who's been working in the business, has lots of domain, domain knowledge, knows how the business works. They probably don't care about, quote, Scrum or on Scrum, it's up to the scrum master to try to put the pieces of the puzzle together, right? And use that domain knowledge, domain knowledge and expertise in how do we get answers quicker? Blaz point, how do we learn quicker? And how do we put what we learn back into the product and back into users hand, so we can develop a better product, right? And it, I, it's, it's, it's when you, when you see SCRUM masters who are totally focused on things like crazy, things like velocity, or the Mickey thou most things that don't really have importance, when you can be putting your time and investment elsewhere into making sure that your product success success, and a lot of that time, and we should say that to any Scrum Masters out there, is you should be spending lots of time helping your product owner thinking about the value that your product is generating. If you don't know the value that your product's generating, you better make that transparent. And likewise, the Scrum Masters themselves. You can apply the same you can apply the same principle. If you can't explain the value that you as a scrum master, are generating, it'll be very quick before your company realizes maybe you don't have value at all, so make your value transparent. Before I was a Scrum Master, I worked in banking, and I remember when my first manager said says, you know, you can't manage what you don't measure right? And make sure that everything that you have is measurable so you can. And there's lots of great Scrum Masters out there who probably just do a bad job at communicating that the value that they bring, right, so that my hint to Scrum Masters out there is communicate the value, the value that you have brought, that your product has brought, help your product owner communicate that value. And those are all skills that you can learn right in regards to what areas, whether you touched on it, Dave, without mention evidence based, evidence based management or other areas. You know,

Bilal Alawiye: 32:50

probably, by the way, one of those questions we asked a lot during recruitment was tell me about the last product you were part of, and what were the success criterias. And most of the time, the responses were very basic. Sometimes just okay, we have a good NPS or something like that, but it wasn't really, we didn't feel the depth of someone understanding the health of a product and where what they have been doing really. And so that's also sometimes good indicators when we're doing the recruitment, the interviews, to seeing if that Scrum Master has really invested time in working on the product or

Dave West: 33:26

not. Yeah, I think it's funny. I got a video this morning from from a scrum master who'd put a better together that literally, with their product owner, they were walking down a corridor. You know, it's a millennial thing. I don't totally get it, but it was awesome, because they're both good singers, and they were better together. Do we do? And I it was, it was quite funny. And they said, you know, they said, This is how we think the partnership needs to be, and we you should spend more time emphasizing that, and it's something we don't spend a lot of time emphasizing. We spend a lot of time talking about the separate, you know, accountabilities and but ultimately, it's their marriage, their synergy, that drives value. And if I can't, as a scrum master, answer that simple question that you said, what value is my product delivering? Then ultimately, how can I ensure the delivery happens effectively? I think that it's a fundamental. It is a fundamental, alright, so we try to keep these podcasts, unfortunately short. You, we could, I could listen to you too, all day. You've, you know, you've taught me more. I just like, I've learned so much from you. So thank you for attending the time. But before, our listeners love a little the last thing. So I, you know, maybe there's a scrum master listening now, and maybe they're, you know, maybe their company is hasn't appreciated the value of Scrum mastery and the. Scrum master accountability, and maybe they're looking for another job. What do you think, if it, what's the one thing they need to concentrate on, you know, in terms of developing a skill that makes them more employable? Would you say Stefan? You You know, you've spoken to many at scrum match. What would be that one thing? Is it? That product thing, is it the, you know, understanding product outcomes. What? What is that? One thing

Stephen Sykes: 35:26

make value transparent and a really kind of easy, easy way to do this. I'm a big fan of evidence based, evidence based management, management, no direct plug, but we really love it here at scrum match is to kind of sit down and work out what makes my product successful. And if your product is successful, your team is going to be successful and make and you need to make sure that people know about it, right? If you're if your head of product or your CTO doesn't know that your product's kicking ass, then you have a problem. So make progress. Make your product successes, transparent, that

Dave West: 36:04

sounds, that sounds awesome, definitely something that, at the very least, it makes you feel happier when you go home from work if you've, if you've done that, blah, what? What do you think? What would be the one thing that you would advise this Scrum Master? I'm kind

Bilal Alawiye: 36:18

of jealous, because Stefan stole my line actually is big fundamental, but I would if, along with transparency, invest time and understanding your company's problems, invest time understanding what's going on, that will probably help You ask better questions, and maybe it's my favorite skill, because I'm a very scientific person. You were talking about measurement, Dave, I think sometimes one skill that can help a lot of Scrum Masters be explicit. Sometimes we say we want to improve x, it's so vague, improve what, by how much, by who, at what time. Where are we now, there are things we can do just very easily, just being more scientific, just ask more specific questions that will actually trigger more interest with your teams and your company. So I think that can go along with transparency as

Dave West: 37:11

well. Oh, love empiricism, love scientific method, love hypothesis driven development. They just, you know, a product guy, that's what resonates with me, Stefan, I know you. We can't keep you quiet, you know. But Stefan, what?

Stephen Sykes: 37:27

Well, I forgot what I was about to say. I like you. I lost, I lost, I lost, I lost my focus. Yeah, I think, I think I've said enough and then talked a lot. But thank you very much, Dave for having us both on to talk about Sanofi and talking about scrumm match.

Dave West: 37:45

It was an absolute pleasure. It, I mean, I have to bring AI into it now, just for a second, because it wouldn't be a podcast today without talking about it. But what you two have talked about is AI is changing the landscape in terms of what skills really are. You know, if I want to run a retrospective, I can just ask copilot, and it can plan it for me. I don't need that skill. But the thing it can't do is empathize with customers or teams. It can't understand outcomes. It can't really clearly connect to the value proposition in a way that you're describing and and I think if Scrum Masters have those skills, then, you know, in this age of llms and AI, I think it accelerates them to that next level of leadership and really helps them make a difference in an organization like Sanofi or any company. So what you two have talked about today has is just, yeah, I think it's so relevant in this modern job landscape,

Bilal Alawiye: 38:52

and hopefully it will stay, will never be, probably replaced by a machine as much as a machine can probably make it more productive and help you see a lot of good stuff. But we've seen that what you were talking about, Dave, connection, empathy, asking the right questions. I mean, all of those are still very human fiber, way a human fiber perspective. So I think it's, it's, it's cool to say that, yes, AI helps us a lot. But this job obviously has also a different level that still needs a human to human interaction.

Dave West: 39:24

Exactly. You said it perfectly. It's sort of staying relevant for the future scrum master. Who knew? But it really, I think it really is so. Thank you, gentlemen, for taking the time today and being part of this, this podcast series. Thank

Stephen Sykes: 39:42

you. Thank you very much, Dave, thank you so we

Dave West: 39:45

were that was a really awesome podcast, wasn't it? We were joined by Bala Alawi, Agile coach, lead atson office digital accelerator program, and Stephen Sykes, co founder of scrummac. And they were talking about the role of Scrum Master, some of the challenges that they saw at Sanofi, and how, ultimately, the importance of really understanding what the accountability is. And it's much bigger than mechanical Scrum. It's much bigger than running the events. It's much bigger than than knowing just what professional Scrum is, etc. It's something much larger than that and and I think it was really, really interesting, particularly the relationship between scrum master and product owner and the importance of value and the importance of measuring value to really get that delivery capability delivering at full speed. Super interesting podcast today. Thank you for listening. Spending the time out of your busy day to listen to the scrum.or community podcast. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe, share with friends, and, of course, come back and listen to some more. I'm lucky enough to have a variety of guests talking about everything in the area of professional Scrum Product thinking and of course, agile, thank you, everybody and Scrum on you.