Interviewer (4:09)

I really like how you put it. Being a Scrum Master is like a full package deal.

Host (4:13)

I really like that.

Interviewer (4:14)

It's not just about the process. We are there to enable people to succeed at something that is really difficult. Right. Because it's a lot of people collaborating on a very complex system, whatever that system might be. And we need to take into account the personal side, the people side, which is of course on everybody's people side, but also our own. As humans, we also have our limits, our boundaries. So thank you for that recommendation. The link is in the show notes of course for everybody to go and check it out. And Denise, now we turn our attention to teams and how sometimes they can become their own worst enemies. So tell us the story of a team, give us a little bit of the context, what kind of project, how many people and so on. And then walk us through those steps. That is that behavior or those approaches that people were taking in the teams actually grew and became a problem for the team.

Denise Ari (5:10)

Yes, of course. I was going to talk about one project which is security project. You know it's working. This bunch of engineer needs to work with this couple of services. This services is using by millions people like attacks and they are in live. You know the. And they are valuable security perspective. And these engineers had plenty phases with architect architectures and they had the solutions. Everything starts very keen, very. You know the. It was very high motivation. But what happened on this project we did some negative attitudes, you know, the lack of support.

Interviewer (6:04)

What do you mean by that? Can you give an example?

Denise Ari (6:06)

Yes, of course. It's just like a constant criticizing without any reason. To question people's skill sets and it's just like expressing pessimism. You know the anti morale. This is the thing. You know the. It's not easy to have team morale up and you know the trust these people was not like a new joiners. They were around for a while but when they see this kind of phase of the you know the stakeholders management and the roles conflict between each other and everyone's stepping in their shoes like a scam master P.O. you know the. And the lack of support is a technical wise because it's very easy to. If you're doing something stressful, you know I mean software developer development wise. You know the very tight timeline, a high expectation and unrealistic deadlines. It's very easy. It's very easy to. People can't turn each other. You know it's just literally because we lost to trust people things they being micromanagements. You know the. They were micromanaging and they can easily. And we had very problem with communication and they were like under 10 people. It was not like a big crowd like 8 people, 7 people very capable people. You know the high experience people senior people is. And. But yeah it's. If you're losing, you know if you're bringing negativity to youth and lack of support and you know the constant criticizing and micromanagement. It's very easy.

Interviewer (7:47)

You know this type of behavior like the constant criticizing the micromanagement and kind of this negative attitude. If I hear you right it kind of started coming up in everyone right like it wasn't just that the managers were trying to micromanage but the negativity was also between the people in the team. Is that the correct understanding?

Denise Ari (8:09)

It starts with. No, it start with the P.O. i mean like a on the project person.

Interviewer (8:16)

You know how did the PO start bringing that negativity into the team.

Denise Ari (8:23)

According to the this and we changed 3PO by the way in under the one year for this project. It's nothing just like. And you can imagine how wrong it is because I think what triggered this culture. I don't want to say culture but this is another thing, isn't it? It's happening. It starts with the stakeholders management, the client management. They reflect stress thing to directly to team. And the team is doesn't matter how they senior how they experience. You know the how did they start and offline discussions. You know the asking overtime without my. You know the awareness and the Friday evenings. You know the suddenly people turns online and carry on work for you know the unknown delivery Time, which is everything was no, no and no. And what happens. It's just literally. And the people it was. It's not easy to say. Especially it's depend on the personality. You know, the saying no because these people were so senior and very dedicated. They quite on point focus people and they.

Host (9:46)

So what you're saying is that kind.

Interviewer (9:48)

Of the product owner was potentially feeling the pressure from the client and kind of bringing that pressure to the team directly without filtering it.

Denise Ari (9:56)

Without 100%. Yes. Without filtering at all. Without, you know, the even unnecessary conflict on emails, you know, the rude messages, micromanagement, obviously, you know, the question on questioning and asking justifications about the task. Why is taking too long. You know, the. But the transparency was there. Everything was on the tools, you know, the. Everything was on the solution document. It's nothing. Someone's gonna made up some steps, which is. It can be, isn't it? We keep adapting. If there is a blocker, we keep trying to solve it. But yeah, it was like a very big experience for me. But yeah, it just. It cost a lot.

Interviewer (10:41)

So when you look back at that, that moment, that story, like if you could go back and. And relive that story, what would you do differently these days, Denise?

Denise Ari (10:56)

What would I do? Okay, maybe I can avoid unnecessary, you know, the tensions. Maybe I did some things personal as a Scrum Master because it's very difficult, isn't it? Taking as. Not as a personal, but at the same time. At the same time, you're a gatekeeper. You need to protect the team. Yeah. And that's the challenge for me. And. Because if I see something's wrong, I. Yeah, I. I can't hold myself. Speak up. Maybe I can be more politics. I don't know. But this is my personality. I know it's very difficult. We need to be. We. We are on the professional environments. We need to. But as a Scrum master, at the same time, if I can't protect the team, take care of the team, what's my purpose? You know, the. We keep delivered, you know, and. But we lost so many engineers. They rotate to another area. Burnout, sick leave, they close themselves. You know, the. And yeah, it cost a lot. But what I do differently, maybe I can be tried more politics and I don't know, calm and maybe avoid any tensions between. Especially written communication like on emails and messages. Maybe I can avoid. But yeah, that's it.

Interviewer (12:17)

And sometimes we can't avoid the pressure. Right? Like sometimes the pressure just is there because it is part of that particular environment. But I think you make a very good point, which is that as a Scrum Master, we need to protect the team and we need to try to enable the team to be able to deliver. And that might be difficult in some cases, and we need to figure out what is the acceptable way to push back in specific areas or specific organizations. It's not easy, right? And that's why Scrum Master is such a difficult and important role in software development.

Host (12:52)

This is a great story.

Interviewer (12:53)

Thank you for sharing that, Denise.

Denise Ari (12:55)

No worries. Thank you.

Host (12:59)

Hey friend, thank you for staying here is all you need to know about the Global Agile Summit if you've ever suffered or know people who are suffering from Agile fatigue, this event is for you. Agile fatigue is that feeling that settles in when we can't really see a light at the end of the tunnel. We get discouraged, especially when conversations revolve around the same old frameworks, the same old buzzwords and theories. We don't feel that energy anymore. Well, the Global Agile Summit is a different kind of event. We're bringing you real life first person stories of agile succeeding out there in the real world that will inspire you to take action and transform the way you work. The Global Agile Summit will happen In Tallinn, Estonia, May 18th. That's the workshop day. Then 19th and 20th, the conference day. And Tallinn, Estonia is one of the most innovative tech hubs in Europe. The Global Agile Summit is hosted together with Latitude 59, which is kind of a citywide celebration of software startups and groundbreaking ideas. And we'll have a shared ticket for you to attend those events as well. So who will be speaking? Well, we've got an incredible lineup of thought leaders in software and Agile. For example, Clinton Keith, the person who wrote, literally wrote the book on game development with Scrum and is busy bringing Agile to the world of game development. You must check his session. The very famous and well known Jurgen Apello, author of Management 3.0, will be talking and exploring about AI's impact on leadership. We also have Goiko Adsic, who's taking an unconventional look at product growth with his Lizard Optimization keynote. Other speakers include, for example, Sig Sven Dietz, who's challenging everything we know about software development by ditching, literally ditching contracts and estimates. Can you imagine his teams deliver software before their competitors are even done with the contract negotiation? How agile is that? But there's more. We'll cover engineering practices in our developer track with talks on, for example, AI assisted test driven development, developing products in minutes with a different approach to how we develop, configure, deploy platforms and much more. We also have a product track where we cover cutting edge ideas around product discovery, delighting customers with product delight frameworks. We'll, we'll have a talk about that. And we also have an Agile Business track where we will talk about, for example, Open strategy, a very agile approach to managing organizations and delivering software faster to clients faster than you can even write a contract. Literally. I mean, I already told you about Svendit's story is amazing. It definitely is a must see. I'm sure you'll be inspired and get a lot of ideas for your own software projects and software delivery. Now, whether you're a business leader, a product innovator or a developer, you'll definitely find value in our three focused tracks. That's Agile Business for those working with businesses and organizations, Agile Product for product managers, production product owners and innovators and Agile Developer for the builders making Agile work in practice. The coders, the testers, the designers, the producers, the scrum masters, you name it. If you join, you will meet over 200 agile professionals from all over the world. People who just like you, want to grow, want to share, and want to learn by challenging the ideas that don't work anymore. At the Global Agile Summit, you'll get new connections, fresh ideas and the energy to take your own Agile to the next level. And who knows, maybe even find your next career opportunity. So don't miss out. Check out the full program and grab your ticket now@globalagilesummit.com I'm really looking forward to seeing you all in Tallinn, Estonia in May.

Interviewer (17:37)

I'll see you there.