What’s this Blog About?

I’ve held off starting this blog for a really long time.

At contracting interview someone asked me, “What do you do to contribute back to the Scrum community?”  Jeepers!!  Like spending your weekends reading scrum and team building books, watching videos and preparing PowerPoint decks and delivering incremental results isn’t enough?

And who would be interested?  The internet has a lot of noise of well-meaning people like myself creating verbiage without value.

But in my private, professional development retrospective I think about what I longed for when I first started doing Scrum.

Oddly enough, I did my Scrum Alliance certifications years after doing Scrum.  To me, the Scrum Framework seemed pretty self explanatory and there were plenty of videos online to fill in the gaps.  And sure enough, it works every time, first time.  But to be fair, I don’t do ‘Wagile’ and I follow the Scrum Framework to a T.  Unlike so many, I don’t feel that altering or tweaking a tried and proven formula for team success from founders with decades more experience than me is worth altering.

But I longed for the tips and tricks other Scrum Masters were using that I could pick up and use day to day.  You know, the practical stuff that a seasoned Scrum Master would share over a cup of coffee.  And being someone who’s continually driven to learn and improve, I also wondered if my style of servant leadership (not management) could be improved.

It’s ironic, you do a course like CSM and then …. Well nothing really.  No one really tells you actually how to be a good Scrum Master from day to day.  Lots of academic presenters don’t tell you the raw day to day stuff like mistakes they’ve made or how they’ve grown because … they need to be politically correct particularly if they’re selling something.  And my friends tell me I’m pretty blunt. I say what everyone else is thinking, so this should be interesting.

If a few people find the suggestions, antidotes or the way I do things helpful for them at one time or another, or even inspire you to do something even better for your Scrum team, then I guess I’ve accomplished the challenge set to me of ‘Giving back to the Scrum community’.

If you’d care to send me a virtual cup of coffee by sharing a comment on how you do something with your Scrum or a resource you found helpful then that’d be great too.

I’m pretty sure that not everything I share will be about agile and scrum, but it’ll be interesting and maybe even amusing.  So welcome to all those that appreciate a dry sense of humour.

Subscribe to my RSS feed in the top right hand corner now and we’ll chat soon.

P.S. this is the best way to connect with me as I don’t do facebook and very rarely tweet