Lessons Learned From an Experienced Agilist

Agile frameworks like scrum are becoming increasingly popular across many types of jobs. If you work in tech, software development, HR, marketing, or any other career involving complex work, you may have encountered agile concepts and practices.

No matter where someone first hears about agile project management, some people set off on a lifelong journey to incorporate these principles, values, and practices into their lives and careers. That’s how it was for Sheena Gladden, who has been full steam ahead with agile since early on in her career. “I like working in an agile way because it is focused on the customer and delivering value,” she said.

Meet Sheena

Sheena lives in Delaware and is an IT business partner and agile coach for a global materials science company. She originally joined the company as a scrum master for the manufacturing side of the business, which was the first time she saw how scrum is applied in non-IT work.

Like many people working in technology and IT, Sheena was introduced to the scrum framework early on in her career. She has experience as a scrum master and agile coach at some of the country’s biggest corporations. Among many other certifications and accomplishments, Sheena’s a Certified Scrum Professional®-Scrum Master and Advanced Certified Scrum Product Owner®, and she’s currently on her journey to become a Certified Scrum Trainer®.

Sheena enjoys interacting with both the IT and business side of things in her current role as an IT business partner. There’s a lot of translating the “techie talk” to the business to improve understanding and communication between divisions.

“I really enjoy it,” she said. “This is a nice role because I can see it from a business side and understand it from working with the teams on the business side, but also have the IT experience. So I really enjoy it because I get the best of both worlds in my opinion.”

What “Agile” Means to Sheena

Ask 100 people to define “agile” and you’ll probably get 100 slightly different answers, but they’ll likely share the common theme of finding a better way to work. For Sheena, agile means being flexible, and inspecting and adapting. 

“Those are the three things I think of when I think of agile and how I apply it in my personal life even more so than work,” she said. “I have to keep reminding myself sometimes to keep it simple. If something doesn’t work exactly the way I had originally planned, how do I pivot?” 

The lightweight, straightforward nature of scrum means practitioners often find ways to apply it outside of work. Sheena found herself breaking down the planning and preparation for her son’s graduation party into prioritized increments. Just like a backlog at work, this type of personal backlog helps Sheena make progress without feeling overwhelmed or taking on too many things at once.

The First Scrum Experience

The first time Sheena worked with scrum was as a scrum master at an online bank. The staff had been working with more traditional project management styles when new leadership joined the company and introduced scrum.

In some ways, infusing the agile values of scrum felt like a natural evolution:

“I was very fortunate. I worked in an organization that already had a great culture and had a lot of these principles and values already in their culture. So it was actually a natural thing for the organization to switch to practicing scrum. It worked really well.” 

The company had already been relentlessly focused on the customer and on simplicity. “Part of the reason why I wanted to work for them was they were very customer focused. Even as a customer, they would make their website very simple. Even their legal documents weren't a lot of legal jargon.”

“I was very fortunate to see that as my first experience. And then after I moved to other organizations, I knew what the model was to try to help. So I would go into other organizations as a coach, and then try to help them and see where their gaps were and try to mimic something that I saw from that first experience.”

Advice for New Scrum Masters and Agilists

Serving as a team’s scrum master for the first time ever or for the first time at a new organization can be challenging, exhilarating, stressful, rewarding - those Day 1 experiences are as varied as any other job. 

During her time as a scrum master and coach for various companies, Sheena has developed a couple of tried-and-true strategies she recommends:

Practice Patience

For scrum masters and people working in a coaching capacity, her first tip is to have patience. People learning scrum for the first time won’t only be changing how they work; they’ll also be experiencing a mindset shift, which takes time. 

Patience will serve you and your team well as people learn new terms and concepts. “Sometimes people need to hear things a couple of times before the lightbulb goes off and it really sinks in,” she said. “It takes time for people to process and connect the dots.”

“You might wind up repeating yourself multiple times” and find yourself needing to rephrase what you’ve said to provide clarity. Sheena says patience is an important way to account for the mindset shift and learning that is taking place. 

Expect Real-World Factors 

Implementing scrum at work doesn’t always look the way you expected. It’s not uncommon for a practice that you learned in your Scrum Alliance class to look totally different where you work.

Sheena’s advice in these situations is to know when to speak up and to influence change where you can. For example, while working on a recent SAP implementation with a consulting firm, Sheena realized the approach was really a hybrid of agile and traditional methods. 

“I had to keep telling myself, no, they’re not doing this properly, but they kept reminding me that we’re working in hybrid.”

At first, it felt frustrating when she knew things were being done in a less-than-agile manner. For example, discussion of putting a due date on a task: “They just need to get it done by the sprint,” she thought. “And there are times when I have to speak up. Having to translate this is what you used to do, with due dates and such before, but now the team just needs to get it done in the sprint.”

Sheena’s solution in these situations is to keep influencing in an agile manner the best she can and to ask questions. “There are many times where I’m trying to influence and say, ‘okay, why do we need this? Can’t we already get this from our teams today in the way that they’re working now?” Sometimes posing those questions to the teams or management provides the clarity needed to reframe how they’re approaching work. 

Resources to Learn More

If you’re new to scrum and want to learn more, Sheena has a few recommendations for building your knowledge:

• Read and understand the Agile Manifesto, which is the backbone for working in an agile way
• Attend different group get-togethers of agilists in your area (try Meetup, Facebook groups, or Scrum Alliance user groups)
• Webinars, articles, and videos on the Scrum Alliance Resource Library

And of course, if there’s an agile coach like Sheena at your organization, reach out to them and ask for help. That’s what they’re there for!

If you’re a new scrum master wondering how to build professional experience before applying for jobs, Sheena suggests looking around for opportunities to practice scrum mastery in your current role. She’s seen this technique work. Someone she knows realized he could begin implementing a daily scrum easily in his current role. He never actually used the term with his team or said they were doing scrum, but the practice of meeting daily to create better transparency was taking place.

“Maybe the current team you're in, could you do a daily scrum and then have some more transparency within the group? Are there ways that you can incorporate retrospectives in the work that you do today? Within your current teams, are there little pieces that you can incorporate today to be able to practice it?”

Sheena’s looking forward to the future. She plans to grow and thrive as an agile coach and a guide for people searching for a better way to work. “It is so satisfying to see the spark ignited in the people I am training or coaching,” she said. “They are able to connect the dots from the concepts to practical application.” 

Continue Your Journey

To read more tales of agility like Sheena’s, as well as informative articles about scrum and agile in the real world, subscribe to emails from Scrum Alliance.