← Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches
Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches
When Agile Labels Hide Waterfall Reality — A Scrum Master's Wake-Up Call in SAP Migration | Maria Skvortsova
00:14:26
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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 warfree 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 the 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 this Scrum Master Toolbox podcast. And this week, joining us from the beautiful country of Armenia is Maria Skvortsova. Hey Maria, welcome to the show.
- [01:26]
C
Hello. Thank you. Nice to meet you here.
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B
Absolutely. So let me tell you a little bit about Maria. She's a delivery manager and agile coach who actually enjoys navigating chaos. Many of us get lost in it. She enjoys it. So it's going to be a wonderful week of stories. She has a decade of C development and a degree in professional opera. I'm sure that will bring some stories as well. She bridges the gap between hardcore logic and human empathy. And she helps enterprise teams stop processing tasks and start performing like a synchronized orchestra. Bet the opera background comes in handy over there. Maria, that was a short intro. Tell us a little bit more about yourself and how did you end up becoming a Scrum Master?
- [02:19]
C
Yeah, it was like interesting journey, I would say. As you said, I was 10 plus years as a C developer and the technical leader and my next step in Korea was logical to become a project manager, but I was feeling that it's not the thing that I really want to do. And I didn't feel like controlling the capacity, controlling the budgets, controlling the roadmaps is the thing I really want to do and I didn't think that it will help people to evolve and teams to work better, get better results and so on. And one of my friends said, why don't you look at the Scrum Master position? I was like, what it is? I have no idea. Because I worked in this classical development where we Used the classical waterfall approach and I went to Google. As usual, we didn't have AI yet. So I looked through the Agile Manifesto, I read about Scrum and I understand that it's not only the process, but it's something how I really think and how I feel. And I decided that I want to change the systems, the processes to help people to feel safer, to feel better and perform better. And it sounded for me, and it still sounds for me more interesting and more right way to manage projects. So that's why I spent some time learning all these things and then I applied to my first Scrum Master role. So this is how I can get to this route and it's an interesting background.
- [04:10]
B
Of course, project management to Scrum Master Transition is something that many of our listeners have experienced or at least heard me talk about it because I was a project manager before I was a Scrum Master. So I bet there's some interesting stories there. But of course, today's Fail Monday here on the podcast, Maria. So let's explore one of those stories. Not because we like to dwell on failure, but rather because we know that there's a lot of lessons to get from those stories. So share that story with us, Maria.
- [04:42]
C
Yeah, absolutely. I was inspired by Agile Scrum. I was thinking everyone should know about it. And I wanted to be an Agile coach and tell more projects and people about this. And then I was invited to one team, one company that were doing SAP migrations. It was not a big company, but like a small boutique company. And they invited me as an Agile coach because they said, oh, we want to transform all our organization and all our clients to Agile ways of working. So you will implement all this, you will create training for us for Agile, mostly for the high management. So I had to explain all these details on very high level so they understand, so they buy it. They had to sell Agile to these people. I was so inspired. I created a very good training. I like it and it was really good for this high management. And I was there more like a PMO person. So I was giving like advices. What should they do in the projects, how they better transform, how they better perform, how they organize their iterations, what should they do? And so on. But it feels like something is going wrong here. People come back to me with the feedback and say, no, Marie, it's not working for some reason for me because I came from the pure IT software development was strange. I was thinking it should work because it's also the same, more or less the same area. And then I Decided to try myself and I get to the position from the PMO to the position of delivery manager to touch real project. It was also a different story. But at the end I end up there and I start my real SAP migration and implementation project. And here the understanding came that in these projects the iron triangle is a king. So they have fixed cost, fixed scope and fixed time. Here people, when you try to sell them Agile, it's not suitable for these environments. All they call Scrum and is it just a nice word which shows us like box iterations but they never deliver any value to the client client, they never show, they never get the feedback, it's not needed because they are targeting their go live date. So it's absolutely waterfall, stage by stage process. And they realized that even if I like Scrum and Agile and I think it's really good ways of thinking, some areas cannot adapt it because they are completely different from the mindset, from the ways of working and we should not try to push the things there. It just doesn't work.
- [08:10]
B
Did you feel when you got to that realization? Because I guess it, it must be hard to be so inspired and motivated with this way of working and then find an environment where you feel like if I try to do this here, I'll just create chaos.
- [08:27]
C
Yes, absolutely. I was really frustrated, I was, I would say even disappointed because I was believing in this. And I even found the author of one of the book which is related to Agile in ACP and I asked him a question like I read your book, I'm absolutely inspired in it, I think it's really good. And what do you think about the Agile in SAP migrations or implementations? And he said, you will never build the real Scrum there. The only thing you can do is take one small piece of the project where you do the real implementation, divide it into iterations and try to create a Scrum. But it won't be the thing that we read in the books and we expect it will be kind things. So it was really hard to realize. But I think it's a good lesson for me.
- [09:31]
B
And yeah, I believe that that is an important lesson as well because we must decide where we want to commit our energy to. Right? Trying to push a boulder uphill is not a good strategy for our own personal development, let alone the health of the others around us that may suffer from the chaos that we unwittingly could cause. So for those out there listening to us, and probably in the middle of a project like the one you just described with the Iron triangle Which I sometimes, tongue in cheek, call the irony triangle, because it's an illusion, let's be honest about it. So for those listening out there that may be just now at the edge of getting to this realization, listening to this episode and realizing, hey, Maria is saying something important here. What advice do you have for them?
- [10:26]
C
So first of all, I would say that we need to understand as quicker as possible when we try to put labels with nice names and do not understand the nature. So we say the project is agile just because we have the word there and it doesn't correspond to the nature of the project, we should realize it as soon as possible. And if you feel it and if you do not want to live in this environment, like I realized for myself, it was very hard decision, but I understood for myself I don't want to stay here. I decided to go back and spend my energy, as you said, to the. To the environment I really feel comfortable in, because all these strict ways of working is not my piece of cake, you know. And this is what I would say to these people who are like in the middle if they want to continue or not. You should hear yourself and understand if you really want to stay there.
- [11:34]
B
And I would add, I totally agree with what you said. And I would add that don't be discouraged because there are many organizations and projects out there who are embracing Agile. Sometimes without even talking about, just feels like the natural way to do it for them. So don't be discouraged by that because you shall find other projects and other organizations where Agile is embraced. And the, as I call it, irony triangle is not the rule of law. Maria, it's been a pleasure. Thank you for sharing that story with us.
- [12:07]
C
You're welcome.
- [12:09]
A
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B
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A
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B
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- [13:22]
A
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- [13:59]
B
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