← Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches
Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches
The Invisible Stakeholder Who Almost Derailed His First Big Project | Mukhtar Kadiri
00:14:27
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- [00:04]
A
Hey there, agile adventurer, just a quick question. What if, for the price of a fancy coffee or half a pizza, you could unlock over 700 hours of the best agile content on the planet? That's audio, video, E courses, books, presentations, all that you can think of. But you can also join live calls with world class practitioners and hang out in a flame war free and AI slop clean slack with the sharpest minds in the game. Oh, and yes, you get direct access to me, Vasko, your Scrum Master Toolbox podcast. No, this is not a drill. It's this Scrum Master Toolbox membership. And it's your unfair advantage in the agile world. So if you want to know more, go check out scrummastertoolbox.org membership. That's scrummastertoolbox.org Membership. And check out all the goodies we have for you. Do it now. But if you're not doing it now, let's listen to the podcast.
- [01:12]
B
Hello, everybody. Welcome to one more week of the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast. And boy, do we have a surprise for you today. And our guest this week is Mukhtar Kadiri. Hey, Mukhtar, welcome to the show.
- [01:26]
C
Thank you for having me. Vasco, I should say.
- [01:28]
B
Yeah, very well pronounced. Not everybody is able to pronounce that weird S. That sounds more like. But thank you for doing that. So Mukhtar is a PM career coach with 15 plus years of experience in project management. He specializes in helping project and program managers land high paid roles. And he's been named the number 1pm in Canada. And he also has a LinkedIn following 67,000 professionals and counting, I'm sure probably more by now. And he shares practical insights for free on LinkedIn. And he talks about job search, career growth, and of course, surviving and thriving as a project manager. So Mukhtar, welcome to the show. And of course, tell us a little bit more about yourself. And you know, the first question is always, how did you end up becoming a Scrum Master? So I'm interested to hear what you have to say.
- [02:28]
C
Yeah, yeah. So, okay, I guess I can take a step back to college and this will be very important. So in college I started out studying electrical engineering and computer science and then I decided, okay, this wasn't for me, I wasn't just getting C then. So I decided, all right, I'm going to switch to petroleum engineering. So I switched and then when I finished, when I graduated, I ended up with this mix of computer science and petroleum engineering. So this company liked that background or that mix. And then they hired me to sort of sit between petroleum engineers and developers because the company was about creating software for petroleum engineers. So I was in that interesting in between spot and then I was put in front of clients. And when you're put in front of a client in a consulting capacity, you're just responsible for making sure that we recuperate revenue. Like we deliver on our milestones and we recruit revenue. So, you know, before I knew it, I was, without knowing it, I was leading projects, right? You know, from one successful engagement to the other. And then, you know, that's how I started leading projects. And then I officially had the Project Manager title. So to your question, how did I end up becoming a Scrum Master? So actually I became a project Manager, program manager, and then in my, during my career as a Project Program manager, I served as a Scrum Master sometimes. But, you know, I would say most of my career has been project and program manager.
- [04:03]
B
This is a very interesting mix. And of course everyone that follows this podcast knows that my background is in project management as well. But I'm also very vocal in saying that project management and agile product or software development don't always marry so well. So I'm really interested to hear your thoughts. And what you have discovered is exactly because of that experience. Right? Living in these both worlds. So on Mondays we always start with an interesting story of a failure. It's something about your career, what you learned at that moment. So tell us that story and share what the failure was and we'll dive into the takeaways and the insights later on. But tell us that story first, Mukhtar.
- [04:50]
C
Yeah, so I'll take you back to early on in my career I was so, remember how I said I was like put in front of clients? So I was put in front of this, you know, this client, myself and a more senior consultant. And then this client decided, okay, like they wanted to cut costs and you know, so they, they caught me basically, right? So I went back to the bench and I was sort of sitting on the bench with nothing to do. Very, very uneasy feeling because, you know, my company, they were looking to reduce costs. So I just felt like my days were numbered. I mean, and then this one project came along and then they put me on there. I was just happy to be useful. Although, you know, it was like a low priority project and all of that, but it had the potential to be a big project, right? So I, I was put on there and I was told, okay, like this is the, we call the person the contract holder. So basically this is like almost like the, the, the sponsor or the main person on the client side, right? So this is the contract. So I met with the contract holder and I, you know, understood the terrain and we laid out a plan. All right? And then I started to just execute because I was eager young, you know, started to execute. And then shortly thereafter, one of the stakeholders called me into our office and I came into office and she blasted me. Like, I'm not really used to people screaming at me in a professional context. Like usually that happens at home, but. But yeah, so I was like tail between my legs and I. Okay. But basically she was really upset at how the project was going along. It just didn't align with our vision of the project. I ended up finding out she was actually even more powerful than the contract holder, but she was not placed anywhere on the org chart. So that was my number one lessons. You look at the org chart, don't be fooled by the org chart. So you need to really read between the lines and all that. Anyway, she was upset with me. Now I had, you know, this. I had to really win her over, right? So I understood. I started, you know, doing one on ones with her, understood what success of the project would look like from her perspective. Who are, you know, the people that she really thinks will be able to, Whose opinions really matter for this project, right? So there were just so many stakeholders and different interests. So met with all of those people and they now really mapped a comprehensive success criteria for the project, right? Because nobody really told me, okay, this is what success looks like. And that's also a very dangerous thing because you can just go in there and be busy and be executing. But so what I did is I met with all these people, understood what success, and they just distilled that into this scope slash plan, right? And this was even before I called myself a project manager. So I was just sort of, you know, just trying to survive and trying to, trying to move this endeavor to the finish line.
- [07:56]
B
It's interesting how you describe that, I guess, switching your thinking, right? Because you were thinking that one person was the contract holder, main stakeholder, and then you discover actually they weren't. This other person was even more important and you didn't even know where they sat and how they related to the project. Like, and that switched into, okay, let me map out what success looks like. And for me that's very important as a lesson for Scrum masters out there. Because very often success isn't offered. Like, we are not told this is what success is, right? And very Often it happens, we're just given a list of tasks, we get a backlog and then go execute sprint by sprint. And what strikes me is that very often even the system is designed for us to focus on that task, like the thing to do, rather than understanding who are the key stakeholders and what success means. So these days, when you, when you coach PMs out there, like, what are the tools and the mental models you offer them so that they can finally understand how important it is to actually do that Groundwork of mapping out who the real stakeholders are, not just the ones that are named, but also the other ones. And how do they define success for the project, Right?
- [09:15]
C
So I'm a big believer in that. Like, a lot of project management is common sense, but, you know, so, like, a lot of times, like, I'm a big believer in, like, you know, like, relationships really matter, the human side of project management, really. Not to say, like, the other things are not important, like, you know, frameworks, the rigor, all of that is important. But I think, you know, sometimes, sometimes common sense becomes not, not common. But one thing that I would just say before I answer your question is that even sometimes, just given the complexity and the ambiguity, the people in leadership don't even necessarily know what success looks like, right? They might feel it or they might know it at a. Maybe at some level, but they haven't quite sat down to really articulate it. And a lot of times, like, you are brought in and when you are brought in, like, you are not necessarily going to be handed a success criteria. So it is up to you, even in your own best interest, to make sure that I articulate what I understand as success. It is clear to everyone and we are now moving forward. Right? Because I hope this is not an exaggeration, but I would say most of my projects are usually like that. Like, I come into chaos and you have to sort of just, you know, okay, this is what you. This is your perspective. Okay? I'm putting everything down. Okay. This is a unified vision of everybody's. Everybody's vision. Do we agree? Okay, let's march forward. Right, so to answer the question, how do you, like, I'm a big believer in one. On ones like, I don't like. I really, I think, like, that's one of the most powerful meetings that a project manager Scrum Master can have. Because, you know, there's always group think, you know, in a group setting. And a lot of times you don't really know what's really going on in team meetings. Right? It is in those in between corridor chats or the one on one, that's where you actually get the real status, the real confidence level of people. So to me, like when I just set foot on the project, one of the first things I do is just schedule one on ones all around, you know, with different people. And you know, when I meet one person, I understand what their pain points are, what their frustrations are, what success will look like. And then I ask them to point me to another person. Right. And then I go until I now start to see patterns.
- [11:25]
B
So you're, you're kind of navigating the complex social network by collecting information from people in these one on ones and then kind of building your own map of who are the real stakeholders. Not, not the named stakeholders, but the real stakeholders.
- [11:41]
C
Right, right. And not to say you discard like, you know, I mean, you have all of that and you keep that, but then you also need to validate with your own mapping, so to speak. And sometimes it is complementary and other times it can be contradictory. Right. So you need to sort of make sense of all of that.
- [11:59]
B
Yeah, absolutely. And that's a great tip, one that we don't often get here on the podcast. So thank you for sharing with us, Mukhtar.
- [12:07]
C
Yeah, no, no, for sure.
- [12:11]
A
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- [14:00]
B
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