Introducing Dominic — From heritage conservation to Scrum Master
Welcome to the 21st Century. Where you go one way to end up in a completely different place than you thought.
But how did I get to this different place?
I studied cultural science and heritage conservation (I just recently handed in my master thesis). I have always been some kind of theoretical person. And when I learned one thing in the past 5 yeas, it’s how to write scientific papers.
So everything was somehow set in place for me to go the route of an academic career. But you see, the thing is, academics in Germany are a financial wasteland. Finding the bottleneck to slip through and actually make a living out of working for a university is, with the number of students rising but the money for science declining (at least when it comes to humanities), not that bright of a future.
Luckily, I have a broad interest in other topics, and one of them is technology. To be more precise: digital products, as for me they are the definitive future of mankind. Kinda like the industrial revolution, the century of information and digitization turns over our global society faster than we can comprehend.
I have a long term friend who worked for agencies and startups and is an agile coach. Over the course of many conversations with him I slowly grew interest in agile programming, “new work” and contemporary company culture.
When I was approaching the end of my studies I realized I’m interested in what I studied but I’m not bound to work in this specific discipline. I was given the opportunity to do an internship at the agency my friend worked as CTO and agile coach. And I gladly accepted it.
4 Weeks into Scrum — Starting from scratch
So here I am. I never programmed a single line of code. I never attended a business meeting. I never sold a product or developed it. And now I was about to try and improve a team that did all these things combined.
I guess my benefit is, (if there is one) that I was already thinking agile when it came to my life as a whole.
Transparency: I was always convinced that when I’m vocal about what I’m up to in my life and to people I work with or that are part of my life and in return they are too, all of us are able to help each other in a productive way-
Inspection: I’m deeply convinced that only trough retrospective thinking one can improve. Look at what you’ve done and evaluate it. Always. Even if it went well. Life is a process of trial and error, and it’s the things you learn along the way that will improve your future. It’s basically common sense: Keep the things that work out and eradicate all that’s an impediment for your improvement.
Adaption: Life will always give you situations you are definitely not prepared for. Things will occur that are not planned. If you live your life by steep rules, without flexibility, without spontaneity you can come across situations you can’t respond to, if you’re not willing to give in and discard maybe some of those rules you have. Else you will stagnate and waste time but, nevertheless, life goes on. So I was always convinced that instead of rules one should have ethics and guidelines. And most important: a flexible mindset.
When I was introduced to Scrum, it wasn’t hard for me to grasp what it’s about — it’s all these things layered onto programming and developing.
But what I realized, too, is that many people have a hard time discerning between a mindset and a set of rules. The main difference is basically simple:
A certain mindset always allows you to actively respond to the conditions you are facing, while maintaining a certain direction.
A set of rules determines how you will respond no matter the situation, and in conclusion they cage you.
The Mindset of being agile is basically that you are able to improve yourself, your team, and your workflow by holding on to an attitude you apply to a situation or task you find yourself in.
Isn’t that hard to get right? Basically sanity and reason, right?
Well, definitely not. Somehow many people (I believe the overwhelming majority) always want things to work for them. They don’t want to work on something more than the basic tasks they are given, and they want rules they can hide behind if they fail.
That is the death of progress by definition. And it’s paradox because on one hand everybody wants as much freedom as possible, but nobody wants to work actively on achieving this freedom.
Simple example: You and other people develop a product. You need other people because each and everyone has individual skills that have to go into the product in order to make it the best possible. On the other hand, everybody wants the production of the product as smooth as possible, they don’t want to waste their time. They want to be effective.
What would you do to achieve exactly this?
Would you talk to others in your team in order to get insight on what they are up to, to gather knowledge outside of you core skills, and most importantly to avoid problems that could be solved by some conversations?
Would you look at every step you took in order to create your part of the product and would you be interested in what your team did? Would you, by retrospectively evaluating certain steps towards the final product everyone took, want to improve yourself along the way in order to work faster and more accurate on the next product?
I guess you would want to. It is, in the end, common sense.
I acknowledge that a team needs someone to moderate them while doing this.
But what I don’t get is why the f*ck it is so hard for everyone to develop a mindset to actively accomplish this. It’s all just about the will.
And if you’re not willing, then you are doomed to always stay under your potential as a team and as an individual.
You will waste time, nerves, and money.
So start thinking agile,
because you are not agile enough.
