Pro learning experience at OKademy

Instead of intro

Hello. I share my impressions of scum-masters from ScumTrek in school. Under Habrakat there are six pages of text of my thoughts and impressions on this subject. Wellcome.

Why did I even go to study

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We in Mindbox have an old tradition: send those who want to learn. I love to study, so I study at least once a year at the expense of the company, and a couple of times myself, for my own.



For example, in 2015, I from September to December inclusively studied at the first stage of the Gorbunov Trainee School. I can read about the results in my work at Blozhik, briefly: I am very tired, I really liked it, I advise everyone. The horizon destroys categorically expands, charges with positive energy, like Putin - water.



Last year I went to the school of OKademy scram masters in ScrumTrek. I have a long history with scrum skill. I came to Mindbox as an adult 25-year-old juna by C # in 2012. He settled for ridiculous money on a full-time day and started working. I worked through a year and a half to the scrum master of the team. About a year and a half later, he lived as a scram-master of the team that was constantly hit: newcomers were hired to me, they grew up, and they were taken away, and new beginners were given to me. A year ago, I became sick with the flu for two weeks and suddenly it turned out that without me the team wasn’t working - I’m not so good at it, if there is no self without me at all. Scrum master made a teammate, leaving me my other duties: to pick a piece of a product, to support one big project, and to program a useful one in the time remaining.



Eight months life was good: neither you Skype interviews with applicants, nor you face-to-face interviews, nor you newbies training. Calmly support the most loaded project, fix bugs, agree on repairing the fact that it does not climb, with other teams, specify the requirements for custom modifications, develop the product, write the code, write billing, nevertheless interview people, teach a new colleague to this, and so on.



Do I have to say that in August I once again solemnly became a scram master? No, the colleague who was in my place did not share anything. Just our team sawed and made two. Propagated by budding. What does a normal person do in this situation? Correctly, calmly accepts fate: if for some reason life is kicking towards scram-mastery, then it is necessary to go in that direction and look already normal, what is there and how, to learn mind-wit.



So, last August - adok. In the team, I and three other people: two programmers and a front-end worker. And we have the hardest project, legacy by technical debt from the sawn team and good samovar in the form of custom development. And, of course, product improvements. We take more people into the team, teach them and quietly grind in to each other. By November, we are already working smoothly, but I have everything as before: on manual control and with my full control.

Before study

This is where the OKademy study request appears successfully. My colleagues, also scrum masters, see the price tag and get scared, but I, quite ready for labor feats, agree to learn with all my strength if I pay for the training.

Tuition is paid, and I mourn my weekend, which turned into one half of Sunday. And I start cheerfully on Wednesdays, by 17 o'clock to run to the office of ScrumTrek for a three-hour lesson.



According to the plan was to attend 9 full-time classes and finish exactly 10 days before the New Year. I left work at 16 o'clock, as a result I “skipped” three working hours of work per week, which I still had to work on Saturday. Plus, before class, you must also read a certain amount of materials and view a pack of video lectures. I allocated for this up to five o'clock on Saturday too. As a result, we add up working off for cold weather on Wednesday with homework, we get a full working Saturday. Add to this the daily work, three workouts, personal life, and we get BE-CELL!



Such a schedule of life dramatically pumps the skill of time management, which happened to me - I made an hourly schedule for two months, up to December 25: rise, breakfast, way to work, work, way to study and that's it. Pay attention to those who think, and not whether to go to learn: workload plus eight hours a week to study - this is if you want to do full-time and homework thoughtfully. My fellow students read and watched lectures on the subway, so they spent much less time on weekends. I can't do that - I reviewed video lectures two times.



Even during the course we had one group homework: we chose a topic, worked it out, prepared a report and drew flipcharts. For all this, you have to get together with fellow students and chat. We did it in three hours, but before that we read a lot.



So, if you are going to study, keep in mind that studying will take a lot of your time and you need to be morally ready for this. And close to this moral preparation will also have.

About study

At the time of training in OKademy, I already had two ICP Agile certificates: one initial Professional, the second Team Facilitation - Ahmed Sidhi came a couple of years ago and conducted a two-day training. In addition, there is a certificate of Product Owner in Action. This is all covered in ScrumTrek. Fat plus go four years in Mindbox. When I came, it was already an Agile-company, and I saw from the inside how it all works and evolves. Total: I had both theoretical and practical knowledge. True, all this is from its own bell tower and without a special system.



This I do not brag about. I said this because one of the conditions of study at OKademy is the availability of theoretical knowledge of Agile, and experience with the Scrum team as a scram master from two months. If there is neither knowledge nor experience in work on Skram, then from scratch on the course it will be difficult, because a lot of concepts, words and a lot of “is so clear”. No one will beat you for clarification, but you will have to clarify through the word.



The course in OKademy is divided into two pieces: Hard Skills and Soft Skills. In the first part there are 3 face-to-face meetings and an exit test, in the second part there are 6 face-to-face meetings and a couple of tests. Training takes place on the talentlms.com platform - there are two parts of the course, in each part everything is broken down by topic: here is the video for you, here are the articles for you, here are the photos of flipcharts from your classes, here are the notifications and everything else. The platform has a free application for mobile phones on Android and Apple, so there will be no problems with access to the material. The only thing that mobile applications are a bit “neutered” in terms of functionality, but nothing critical: it allows reading and watching educational materials.



The first part of the course is Hard Skills, about the basics of Scram again: we read the scram-guide, we discuss, we learn to do all sorts of Scramovsky events in science and with full understanding of why all this is necessary. A lot of exercises to work for three-four. We had 8 people in the group. I suspect that they no longer do it, otherwise the coach will not have time to answer all the questions. Duck is the first part of the course about how to organize processes, what to start up for, why the order should be like this, what happens if you miss some events. In short, this is a very literal immersion in a scrum guide - these are the processes, this is how they work, this is the order.



This part was interesting to me for two reasons. Firstly, I didn’t read Scrum-Guide to OKademy, more and more traveled on common sense and on the knowledge that I got in our office: you look at the people around and do it either as well or improve it somewhere. Therefore, it was interesting to learn how it was accepted to live there from Orthodox scram masters. Secondly, I was glad to realize that our internal work process in the office was very close, very close, to the Orthodox, who is registered in the Scrum Guide. At this place, I began to suspect that it was not me who did not read a scram-guide in our office. In general, the benefit to me was something like this: I realized that we were heading in the right direction and got an idea of ​​how it should be in the ideal world of the authors of scram-guide.



At the end of the first part of the course, you must pass the test and gently proceed to the second part. This is where the most interesting things started for me, but I still didn’t know about it. Soft skills are about communication.



I do not know about the other guys, but by the beginning of the second part I had such an understanding of the concept scrum master - this is such a special person who is called upon to establish communication of everyone with everyone: among developers (developers team), within the scrum team as a whole (developers team + Product Owner + Scrum-master), with steak holders (these are people with money), and communication with other teams. In some places, there is still communication with users of the product that the scrum team is creating.



Another scrum master must be on the sidelines of the development team and make the team have all the conditions for productive work, and everyone around the team has no complaints about fakap, prolonged deadlines, govnokod and their own ambition of the form. ” we are the coolest team. ” Example: clarification of requirements - team members themselves choose which of them will do this for a specific task, the scrum master here helps to solve controversial issues like “I want! “No, I want it!” Or “We don’t want to do this at all.” Something does not suit the office - they recorded it, discussed it with the team at retro, the scrum master facilitates and leads the meeting, helps to find a solution. We need a meeting, a demonstration - the scrum master has set the time, helped with the organization, but again so that the team is included. This is not a team leader who knows in advance what is best. This is such a person-unifier, who can rake everyone in a handful, ask the right questions and bring them to the right decision.



How did I work as a scram master? It turns out somehow wrong: he figured out the requirements himself, he himself grummed everything, distributed the tasks himself, solved the problems himself and all that. I carried out the retrospective in a similar way: we had a flipchart in the middle of the room during which we could write our pains, and then discuss it in retro. Duck, so I usually offered the first solution to each item. And then I learn that it is not necessary so. The correct behavior of the scrum master in any situation is to create conditions for the team solving of any issue: from the bad smell from the toilet to the choice of the architectural solution for the implementation of the new functionality. And it breaks you from the inside: “But this is slower than immediately offering the right option!” Shouts a little dictator in my head. It's like that. Only, if not the team came to a decision, then the principle “not invented here” works and you at least kill yourself. In fact, it is more useful to give the team a walk around on a rake, if a rake allows, evaluate the economic risks of such training and if possible, let the bump fill. If so, there is an option that is right here, then you need to enter it gently and carefully, so that the team itself comes to this decision. In short, the world collapsed:

Now you understand why they call you Hitler behind your eyes?

Yes, they are in the eyes of me so called.



Naturally, in one evening, changes in my behavior did not happen. When you tell all your life how it should be, and then it turns out that it would be necessary not in the forehead, but around, then you have to change your brain, habits and habits. But most importantly, they told me about it, proved it, explained how to crank up such things, and convinced them of their effectiveness. And then I tried it myself twice and it worked: the team itself suggested drastic changes, which I have also wanted for a long time. But it was a general decision, I just wrote it all down. What else is important in team decision making is team responsibility. All members of the team have undertaken some obligations and internally agreed to the changes. All this is slowly but surely leading the team to a state where the scrum master will not be needed, this is the ideal state of the scrum team. This is the first important piece from Soft Skills.



The second, even more important piece for me personally: “With all, everything is ok”. Each person makes the maximum that he is capable of at the moment. He is not a freak, not stupid, not a moron, not an enemy, everything is fine with him, just now he can just like that. If you need another way, talk to him. Without raids, calmly convey your position and get his opinion, and then try to come to a consensus together. This is an extremely high level of communication with people: here you still have to work, work and work on yourself. And I treat all people well, but when it comes to working questions, the internal “immediately everything is obvious” is included. Only it is not at all obvious to others, or that which everyone else knows is not obvious to you. And there are so many conflicts in this place - oooooooh. It was a red thread that went through the entire second part of the training, but it was especially focused on this when they talked about coaching. Surprise - a good scrum master also coaches his team and each team member individually.



As a result, I left the training as the best student in the group according to aggregate estimates and with the firm intention to change my methods of working with the team, which I am doing at the moment. I calmly looked at the failure of the two commitments, seeing in advance what everything was headed for. We discussed the fakapy on retro: in one case, the processes in the whole office improved - SLA was introduced for acceptance by architects, in the other - we improved. The failure of the second commitment was the more offensive that there was still a week of sprint to fix everything, but the guys did not take care of accepting the tasks in time, the host checked when he got his hands, found errors and wrapped everything the day before the end of the commitment. With this situation, it was decided to continue to fight proactively and to push the hosts on their own. That is, I didn’t ask someone to jerk there to check it out, but the team members themselves are now interested in the responsible persons when acceptance of their work is completed. As a result, the last commit - executed.



The training put the knowledge in a coherent system, gave an understanding of the usefulness of all the activities of the Scram, including the daily meeting. And, of course, brought new acquaintances - it is always nice to talk with smart people. From all sides the benefit turned out.

Conclusion

I write in a separate paragraph: this is my personal opinion about the training in the OKademy program. A pair of my fellow students, more sophisticated and savvy in all these matters, were not as pleased as I was. On the other hand, another pair of my fellow students, who were completely without experience, were even more satisfied than I was. Depends on the level and amount of experience in all this Scrum. Well, the desire to learn, of course.



Separately, I would say that in my humble opinion it would be worthwhile to include it in the program. All training at OKademy is about scrum-mastery, like managing the development process. From experience in mindbox, I can say, in addition to Skram, Kanban has proven himself as a visualization tool for everything that happens. Kanban is great for helping everyone see, grasp, so to speak, both in a single team, where there is its own real magnetic board with stickers, and in the whole office on Trelo-boards. If you have time to give it in one or two classes, so that people can immediately use it, it will be generally bombed.



Something like that.



PS

Thank you OKademy for these one and a half months of interesting lectures, discussions and appreciation of me as a participant in the courses!



In addition to jokes, but after each lesson, at 8 pm, when everyone exhausted first at work and then at school, and the coach worked with you for the last three hours very closely, you could approach him and ask questions that you didn’t have time to discuss in class, and the coach answers them. Normally responds, enters the topic, understands the problem, trying to help. And this is just so “oooooh”. “Yes, they pay money for it” - yes, but no. In this regard, it was just humanly pleasant.



Now everything is exactly.