Agile Podcast E1 - The First Episode

I'm working is a product owner now, and I told somebody this recently. I don't remember, I don't remember who it was. I, I'm trying to remember who it was. Oh, it was on the, it was on the, the, the, the lean beer call. That's what it was. It was like, I'm working as a product owner now and I'm like, oh, this is for me. I was like, this the product ownership. Product ownership, yeah. Is that even called that ownership? Yeah. Like I was like, this is for me because like as a scrum master you have to deal with, I mean, I think of how to put this, I didn't think of how to, I mean, I haven't really like expressed this out loud. Since I started this position, like as a scrum master, you have to deal with like, you have to know how to do product ownership. You have to know how to be a good team member. You know what I mean? You have to know like the duties of a scrum and then you have to do like a bunch of other duties like being a good mentor being a friend occasionally, that kind of stuff, right? Yeah. You don't really have to do that as a product counter in my, you don't, but you have other challenges, right? Because you have to shepherd those stakeholders. Um, and that can be challenging for a lot of people. They aren't used to it, especially if you have competing stakeholders that want their own thing. You know, all that good stuff. Yeah. I, I told that to Mike Miller one time. I was like, I was like I was like, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't like stakeholder management doesn't like, that becomes your only job at some point as a product owner. You know? It's not true. Cause you have a bunch other, you have, you're like a little mini ba and you gotta get people together and all kind, you know what I mean? The other, the other responsibilities. But yeah, man, stakeholder management. I could see it. I don't know. What do you think you can, you can disagree with me because that, that, that, that's all I do all day is disagree with people. So, and I spend most of my time keeping the peace. So, yeah. It's interesting. I, I'd love to try a product ownership. I did a project with a very short project actually, where I was playing. Um, I know this is a cardinal scene, but I was playing double duty. Mm-hmm. Um, kind of acting as a. Scrum master and a pro. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, I was doing that when I started, but, but it, it, i, it got to a point where I was like, I was like, dude, I can't I can't, it, it's certainly not tenable, you know? Yeah. It's been hitting, so I brought on the left. Yeah. So they didn't find a replacement quite some time. Mm-hmm. When was that recently? No, no, that was a couple of jobs ago. So I'd said at least four or five years ago now. Maybe a little longer. Dude, there was something I want to ask you. I can't remember what it was. It was something along the lines of like, Think, I think now, like after being, after being with this client, I'm pretty, in my mind I'm like Product ownership. Like I was I would, I think I'd rather do this in the future. You know what I mean? Like, what is that do, would you rather be in the scrum master spot or would you rather be in like a scaled spot where you have Scrum? Because like I, I ask because I'm like, I'm working now, and I like, I clearly see, I, I told her this the other day. I was like, I was like, there's tons of opportunities because it's, it's, it's the first time that I've been in a spot. Let me think about that before. That might be a lie. Let me think about this. Before the other, the other thing that I, that I I took from our like Oma and I did a we did a, um like a, a, a test podcast just to check the mics and all that kind of stuff. And and out, out of that, I watched that test podcast. And I talked about a lot of really different things like air disaster and stuff like that. And I was like, man, Oh, my details are wrong. Like, they're just terrible. I was like, everything I'm saying is wrong. Like, there's just like details that I say that I list where I give like, oh, they flew for X number of hours and then they crash or whatever. Like almost every detail I said was wrong. So I gotta try to, I gotta try to not if I say something, I'm, we're gonna have to look it up, like when I say it, just so I can get the details right. I gotta be better about that one. Um, anyway, weird. But anyway, I, I was working with her and I was like I, I was like, look this is probably the first time again, I'm not a hundred percent certain about this. I probably needed have another drink. But um, I was like, I think this is probably the first time that I've been on a project where I feel like I am properly aligned with the executives and empowered to do the job that they brought me on to do. And they're giving me their backing a hundred percent. Nice. That's always a plus when they're giving you the backing. Right. Cause you're not fighting uphill battle all the time. Yeah. Which is good. Yeah. Yeah. But but so I, I told her, I was like, look I was like, in, in an environment like this, I was like she, she I think her, I, this might not be true, so I, I have to ask her. But I think she's only ever been a scrum master at large organizations. You know what I mean? So, and if that is true, I'm like, I, I told her, I was like, I think you have a opportunity here to like really get in people's business and learn a lot of the different areas that otherwise you would be kept away from. Either. Either, either because like you got big egos or whatever in those little departments or whatever, they keep you out of there, or. Um, you're too busy with other things that you're doing running around. Like, I, I know when I was doing, I was a scrum master at a large organization, let's put it that way. I I remember running around like crazy just trying to get people's time. Yeah. You know what I mean? So it was like she didn't have to deal with that right Now, like the, the thing is like, we don't really ask, we don't really, we don't really ask for a lot, well, let me think about this. We don't really ask for things often. So when we do ask for things, people take it serious cuz they're not used to us asking for things. That's, that's probably the easiest way for me to describe it. That's actually a luxury I think, you know? Um, and certainly for her it's a great opportunity to pick up some other things, you know? Yeah. Um, yeah, because at at large organizations you are just, like you said, looking for people, chasing them, and even to the point where, You spend a lot of your time just being compliant with their processes. Yeah. Doing reports and this and that. Um, basically all of that is non-productive work, so, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's a great opportunity for you. Yeah. But if you've never had if you never had that experience, like if you don't know that there's a difference or whatever, you know what I mean? Like, it all becomes normal that the that's the thing, the that's the thing that worries me about working at different organizations or, or having, like being in a, a, a, being in a consulting firm, like you don't really have control of the clients that you're consulting with, you know what I mean? I, I mean, I guess, I guess you would have control if you had like, higher and fire, like if you were the one selling the clients. Right. You know what I mean? You would just like fire the bad clients and keep the good clients. But, uh I don't know. I don't know. So what, what so here, here I'll tell you this. Here, let me, let me start with this. Here's, here's what I told her, and you, you tell me if you would've different advice or if my advice is wrong, right? Because like, you're, you're, you are the guy that I go to for advice. So, so, , what I told her was I was like, look, man, you like, it's a, we're properly aligned. We're properly aligned in the structure to do our best work, right? That's the way I feel. I was like, my idea is I'll just bring her to everything. Everything that I go to. And where possible I'll like put her in uh I'll give you an example. They, they, um all of the deliverables up until this date that we have had to produce with the development teams have been based on a roadmap that I did my first, first or second, first or second week that I was there. I sat down with all the executives and a high level stakeholders. And we did road mapping exercise. And we did a storyboarding exercise from that road mapping exercise. And we, and I took that back and I went and did a bunch of little ad hoc def refinements and, and got stories and, and flushed 'em out and brought 'em to the team. Flushed them out. Flushed 'em out. Yeah. Flushed them out. Yeah. Flushed 'em out. Flushed 'em out. Flushed. I, I don't like flesh them out. It's like you're carving you a skeleton. Oh, no, no. What, what a terrible term it is. Uh. Anyway. I don't, I do that sometimes. But anyway, we, so the, the point of that ridiculous story is we have to go back into that mode again, because now all of our deadlines that came out of that one session ended in the end of March. So we're approaching the, basically the end of our rope, and now we have to go back to the, well, boy, I'm like, I'm full of them today, man. I'm full of nonsense. Like what are the, what are, what other corporate nonsense could be like a at the end of the day and circle back and well what are back to the, well, I love metaphors, man. Terrible. These are terrible. I never I almost ne like metaphors do not exist in my language. I don't know why I'm saying it now. Probably cause I know I'm being recorded. Jesus. Um anyway, so what I told her was I have to do a story mapping exercise. This, which will be part road mapping, part storyboarding. Story mapping, boarding, mapping, whatever. And I said what I, what I would like is I would like to come in the room. I will invite my stakeholders. All stakeholders I think are necessary for that, for the exercise. And then I want you to facilitate the exercise. You know? And she was like, well, I, I, I don't believe that I've ever actually facilitated a full exercise before like that. And I was like, cool. Yeah. Yeah. It's time. Take a leap. Yeah, absolutely. You know, so this is, this is this is this is the opportunity to her. I mean, I don't know if you would do the same advice. You know, I definitely would say that jump in with both fade. I'd probably prime her a little bit so she doesn't feel like she's left out on the limb. But yeah, she she didn't really have to do a whole lot of that on the last project that she was on with a client as a project that I started on as a SC master. And then they added another team. Mm-hmm. So I started more like coaching them. And so the idea that the team needs a scrum master too. Yeah. Um, so that's how she came on. Yeah. And, and even then it was a slow transition to her as a scrum master, so that took some time. But when that happened, they're looking at my role, they're looking at her role and the other scrum master for the other team, and they let the other scrum master go thinking that she could just do two teams. Was that a, was that a on onsite person? Scrum master or was this after everyone was remote? This is af No, this is before everybody was remote. Okay. All right. Yeah, just, just prior to it. Um, and the other scrum master was also a contractor, so they figured they're saving money, I guess. Mm-hmm. Um, but behind the scenes I was really kind of helping along Right. As much as I could. Mm-hmm. Which they didn't see that. Um, and a lot of time was spent trying to do GA charts and projections and Microsoft project and all of that stuff, and. She didn't have experience of creating critical paths and GA charts in certainly with MS project. So I was doing that and then they course extended the argument in, in their minds that you don't need a coach and a scrum master. So I was encouraged to leave, which I did, and kind got mad because it dropped her in it Right. With all of that stuff. So, ah, right after I, I went off the project and still, of course with cso, I did help her out unofficially. Yeah, of course. Um, with that. But, so she's come a long way by having to face the music directly, so to speak. Right. Um, that was a very politically charged project. Yeah. But, but by the time she came on, I think the dust had already settled about that. Um the two different partners as stakeholders wanting their own thing. Um, but in the end they agreed to disagree and one congratulated to the other. Mm-hmm. But yeah, it's coming back to, to your point I think it's a great opportunity for her to. To start with leading this this journey. Mapping, user mapping, whatever you call it. Yeah. Um, if we can prime her first, she has some confidence. I think she'll feel better about it. All right. Right. So, so, , this is a, this is a good point cuz like, this is something that actually people well honestly, I could use it too, but like, anybody that listens to this is gonna be able to use it., story mapping, like let's, let's nuts and bolts. Let's talk about like, how would you walk through story mapping? Like I have, I have road roadmap items, which likely roadmap items are just things that, that the leadership is thrown out, so get me this or whatever. They're, it's high level objectives, right? And, and my leadership like, well, it's not, I, I don't want to target my leadership like this. This is the other thing I learned about being a product owner is like, I put a lot of effort. In as scrum master trying to even my language out, just, just to even it, I'm not, not like, not like, not like try to I'm not saying I'm trying to s not risk offending people or whatever. I'm just trying to make like the peaks in the valleys in my language. I'm tr trying to even'em out a little bit. And when I went to go be a product owner, I'm like, man, I, it's like I reverted in all my languages. I was gonna ask, how's that going as a field? It's, it's going terribly for my professional development, but like, if my, my personal satisfaction, I feel great, but I don't know. But but, but the, the, the, the point was like, alright, story mapping. So, so you're probably the perfect person to take us through story mapping. Like what is the ideal story mapping session? You know, like what, what, how do I, what do I need to do before I get there? What do I do when I'm there? And then like the other thing about product ownership is like, there's a special sauce that I've discovered of like, after you get everybody in a room and do the thing, you have to take the thing and put it into the system. And that's a whole different thing than none of the books teach you, you know? Yeah., walk me through just the story mapping experience. Yeah. So I'm glad you, you mentioned the three phases, right? The preparation going into it, the actual process. Mm-hmm. And then what do you do with it afterwards? Yeah. When you have it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think the preparation is, believe it or not, the most critical part. And that's because if you're not, if you're not adequately prepared, then everything just falls downhill from there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, so you mentioned bringing stakeholders into the room, so of course bring the right people in, right? Mm-hmm. And then they need to be clear coming in. With what it is, what is it that they want from the product? Right? They don't have to worry about when or sequencing of it, right? Yeah. Yeah. What functionality do they want? Mm-hmm. Um, and, and that's about it really. But it needs to be total meaning if they left out a piece of functionality that's critical, that's gonna hurt us, right. Going forward. Yeah. Yeah. So bring in everything they take and think of, even if it's a high level, that's okay. Mm-hmm. Um, so that, that's the preparation part. Now that's on their side, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. In my, in my case, it's, it's, it's they're, they're doing, they're doing quarterly planning, but in actuality they're, they're playing through the end of the year. Like, they're, they're, they're, they're like, the pretense of this is like, we wanna plan the second quarter thoroughly and get real deadlines or whatever, but like, They I saw their roadmap items like I got a preview of it and it's, it's not just second quarter, it's second quarter and third quarter and fourth quarter. So I'm like I was like, I told them, I'm like, I think you guys need me to fly in because like, this seems a bit more, this, this doesn't seem like a two hour exercise on the phone. This seems like a two day walkthrough with like tape on the walls and that kind of stuff. Yeah. So most of the user story mapping sessions I've done have been that. Yeah. Right. The first day is just like, it's a top down approach. Yeah. So you break down these, these high level objectives into smaller pieces, right? Yeah. Yeah. Um, and then, then you end the second day literally with a map that says, here's what we're doing for MVP uhhuh. If you wanna break it down into other m um, acronyms, minimal test, testable solution is one that people use. Um, you would have. User stories, albeit not with great amount of detail, but you would have those and you would have those sequenced with respect to each other. So you've think, thought about dependencies right there as well. Mm-hmm. And you would have a release plan leaving the, the event on the second day. Um, I think it's extremely ambitious. Try and do it on a, on a two hour call. Um, it's just not gonna happen. Right. You're gonna have to have multiple calls like that. Well, I mean ambitious is one word for you. Like, we can use that word if you want. Ambitious. But I, I think from a, from a team perspective, they've gotta be able to come in there without any preconceptions of we need, we need to do this by this date. Cuz you haven't heard anything yet. Yeah. So just come in here with a blank slate. Yeah, right. Look at the objectives and. Put those up on the wall and, and then here's the thing, story mapping is what people call it, but for me it's important to do a journey map. Like how would the end user navigate your system? Yeah. Um starting from logging in to logging out Yeah. What they do all the way in between. Yeah. Yeah. Put those up on the wall and, and vertically then you would put down high level epics Yeah. Under each one of those objectives. Right. Let me, let me, let me ask you if you if you walk into a company for the first time and they're like, oh, oh, okay. Okay. Here, here we go. If you're hired and you're brought into a company for the first time, And they're like, oh, we, we have to see the backlog. Like, we don't, like they, they're setting up agility for the first time. I'm like, let's, cuz this is basically what I went through, right? And the first thing I did with them is I sat down and I was like, well let's get all the stakeholders, all the relevant stakeholders together, everybody who whatever, have to kind of trust them. Cause I don't really know the stakeholders yet. Now that I've been there for a while. I know who everybody is and I know who to contact for what. Right. But, but when you go in for the first time and you have to build their backlog, cuz for these guys, they, they transition from traditional project management into agility. Like a they just jumped straight in. They just one day they just this like, it's, it's like a story that like you don't ever get to, you hear about and you like people talk about it or whatever, but you don't actually get to experience. Right, right. So that like, that's why I'm enjoying what I'm doing. Brian's pretty crazy cuz like I said, like at 10 o'clock at night, he's on, you know what I mean? Like seven o'clock in the morning he's on and like, dude, I'm on because like, I, I like, they're doing it right. You know what I mean? They've committed to it., I wanna make sure that like there's no, there's no yeah. Like there's no impediment to their, their success Right. On my side. You know what I mean? Uh uh Yeah. You wanna enable it the best you can, so, yeah, that makes sense. It really sounds to me like they're going through this transformation, but it's a step function. Yeah. It's not a gradual thing, which is it has its advantages, right? Because they're committed, they're all in. So it's CCO swim time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh Jesus I, like I derailed this because you, we were talking about, we were talking about story mapping. So, so what the point I was trying to ask was, Um I, I point, I was trying to make thing I was trying to ask, I have no idea. What, what I was going, what I was trying to ask was, you have, you're coming in for the first time. They obviously don't have you're doing the roading, but what you said was like, well, we need to figure out the user's journey. Like show me the journey map through the application. Right. Well, they don't, they're trying to do story mapping to see their backlog, basically. Like that's, if you ask them, they wouldn't know this is what they were doing. But that's, that's basically what they're trying to do. They're trying to fill out a backlog so that teams can start real process oriented stuff. But like, if you back up as an Agile coach, you'll be like, well, what, what, what business function are you really trying to do? You know, well, I don't know how a user goes through my application. You like like likely many other companies probably struggle with this. They have no idea how the users use their application. Right. You know? So would you have to sit them down and establish a basic journey map first before you go into like a storyboard? Or would you try to do it at the same time? No, I, I would do it as the first phase of the, this exercise. Um, so it's done jointly. Mm-hmm. Because oftentimes what you find happens if you do it before then is they don't think through it logically. Yeah. Or systematically. Right. They'll just come in and say, well people do this, they do this, they do this. Yeah. And then the dev team sitting there, when you're story mapping, they go, well, you can't do that till you've done this other thing. Right. So you end up spending a lot of time spinning your wheels. So it's a lot better if everybody does it together. It also fosters that collaborative spirit. Right. Yeah. Dude, I'm glad you brought that up because I, one of the things I, one of the things I One of the things I, uh I want to, I like, honestly, we could talk for like two more hours on this topic. Cause I'm super interested in how people get set up. I think there should be a package of how you start, you know what I mean? We we could even deploy that package before we even get there. It'd be like, Hey, hey, hey. Like here's the initial, like here's the initial analysis or whatever. Or, or maybe like, here's, here's what we think would work for you, or whatever. But then we give them and be like, do this for your company or something. I think that'd cool with a package. I mean, that sounds ideal, right? Yeah. But a lot of times this stuff is very contextual. Yeah. Well the other thing, the other thing that I wanted to bring up was like what, like the thing about their journey, the user's journey map of the application. Uh one of the things that we, we, we wanna do that, we wanna do that for the client we're working with now. Right? And and. And what I said was, I was like, well, I want to do, I wanna do a journey map? I was like, but in order to do a journey map that is impactful and that we can use in the future, I was like, the first thing I think we need to sit down and do is we need to figure out who the user personas are that use the system, who are the users of the system. And this is like, this is not this is not something like that the, the agility market has cornered or whatever. This is a, this is a simple ba task, a task that I should be able to give to any ba off the street agility or not, and be like, figure out who the user personas are of the system and they should be able to run with it and do it. This is, again, this is the cool thing about, this is the cool thing about being on the project, all this stuff is new to her. So I'm like, here I was like, we're gonna meet with the business, we're gonna discuss user personas. And we're gonna basically listen to what they say. Write it out. I came up with a template that honestly, I just, I, I, I found like two, three templates online and I just copied them and I was like, well, this is, this is what we really need to know. And and I, I found on the information and I took some notes in the meeting and she took some notes in the meeting. And and then I was like, all right, here's the notes. Write me some user personas. And then she's like, oh, I need some more time. Cause I, I haven't really done this before, you know? And I'm like, good, look. Great. Awesome. That you haven't done it before. Come up with like, write a first draft, figure it out, and then we'll meet again. We'll look over what you wrote and, and, and then we'll revise it or whatever. There is a really cool canvas out there. I believe it's Roman pickler that has it has written it. How to write a user persona. Oh, yeah. And it's, it's just a one sheet wonder. Basically you fill it out. And give the persona a fictitious name. You know, ideally it should be a real name. It'll be cool. Yeah. You know if you were looking at like, the owner of the company doing something, you could say, well, let's just call that person Fred. You know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, but yeah, it could be, it could be fictitious as well. The thing about personas is you start there, but you know, as you get more and more experience with using them, you start incorporating things like negative personas. Right. She always have those Right. In any system. Right, right, right. Um, and then shouldn't overlook those. I, I sometimes see people writing stories like as a system. No. Right. And I'm like, okay. The word persona has the word person in it. Oh. You can ask a persona questions. You can't ask a system question. Oh, you had me as so stop with that. You had me as a system. Like, I'm, I'm out. I can't, I can't. Yeah. I see, I see those kinds of, I'm gonna anti buttons. I gotta tick, I'm gonna hide into the table right quick as a system. There is some, like a, like in, in a couple years, some, some, some random engineer or whatever's gonna find this podcast be like, well, I'm gonna error write you angry tweets. It's perfectly valid system. Like, no, it's not. No, it's not. It's terrible. And you're terrible, right. Jesus. I, I, I used to I used to get into some really knockdown, drag out fights with that one. Like, dude, you can't it's not a user story. I don't, I try I try not to use the word user when I'm saying it's just a story, right? Cause it's the object in the system. But like I get the perspective of writing a. Story from a user perspective, therefore to user story, whatever. But I was like, listen, the, the object that we're writing, it doesn't matter what it is, bug story, whatever you wanna call it, requirement doesn't matter. It has to have value to, it has to have value, it has to have the ability to be deployed and have value immediately when we're done with it. So if you're talking about a backend process that does something automatically to sanitize database records or run some kind of job that looks in a, looks in a, looks in a folder like I, I, perfect example. I'll give you the perfect example. Uh I worked on integrations with financial accounting systems and here's what would happen. Here's what would happen. This is in trucking industry. Okay? So our system would get invoice invoice was an invoice. I don't remember what it was. It, it was some kind of, it was some kind of oh, maybe it was a proof of delivery. I don't remember what it was. Anyway, it was some kind of thing that said the goods have been delivered to you, the customer. And then something happened, it went to their financial accounting system and then that, that, it must have been a bill of lading or something like that. Bill of lading or bill of materials. I think something, I think it was a bill of lading. Mm-hmm. The bill of lading would, would be recorded in our system and then it would be passed to the other person's system. And and once it's passed to their financial accounting system, like we, the vendor, like we don't care. All we know is it's been delivered to the customer who's gonna pay for it? It. However like companies with financial accounting, like with Great Plains or with whatever, QuickBooks, whatever, whatever else they have, right? They, they want to, they're very if they're going as far as to take our records and to import'em into their system, they want the systems to be exactly similar. So the system that we had, I'm gonna forget why we even brought this up. By the time I get to this end of this story, the system that we had worked out, and this is 15 years ago, , don't, like in, in, in modern modern, modern, the, it, it was 15 years ago that I worked in the system, but the system probably is 25 years old, like architecture. Um so it should just be an API call system system, but we'll forget about that for a second. This is the way the system was built. It was it was our system every day would drop a file in a secured FTP of basically like a CSV export of all that customer's records, entire dump of the customer's records. Mm-hmm. And the customer system would pick it up, process it, and drop it into like, I don't remember, like a return subfolder or something. I don't remember what it was. I, I can't, I can't recall. But anyway, our system would take the return file. And add it to our system so that like we could record that, like the customer paid those invoices that we have in ours. So basically the, their, their great planes system. I remember it was great. That's the only thing I remember that's correct in this story is that it was great planes we were interfacing with and their great planes export would chew up those files, uh record them in our system and so that our two systems would be sync. Like in a modern system, you just build an API and Yeah. Yeah. They just hit it and it'd be done. Right. You know, I can't remember why I started with that story. We're talking about writing user stories. Yeah, writing. Huge story. So, so, yeah. So, so that's exactly right. In that case, I, I I recall the, the knockdown fights with development to be like, the system is processing out the F T P folder. Like, I don't need a user in this, but like, no dude, you need a user. Because the user, like the financial accounting user, is the one that cares about marking the end, is paid and syncing our system with that, with that payment. And you know, like for whatever reason, like I, I don't, I don't, I don't remember this was so many years ago, I don't remember the I haven't been in so many fights. I don't really remember. Like I, I got hit in the head a lot. I don't really remember. But I, I, I remember like they sticking to their guns at me. Like, no, it's as a system because the system is automatically processing it, you know? Yeah. It's a, it's tough to, to fight that one, but I usually just say, well, why do we even bother with this particular story? Right? What's the business benefit? Who is it benefiting? Wiva? Okay, now we're getting there. Right. The other thing that I, I see quite often is, As a system, I want to increase the number of CPUs on our virtual machine, right? It's like, well, what's the business benefit of doing that? So can't you rephrase that in a way that illustrates the business value of that? Like, as a user, I would like quicker performance from the system, so therefore you're adding more CPUs, likewise with adding extra disc drives and storage and whatever else. Sorry, as the system SY system's gotta do it. Yeah, right. Exactly. System's the user. That's, yeah. We've reached, we've reached the future, the future of ai, right? Yeah. But yeah we definitely set up a kind of a mock session where we go through a whole entire story planning or journey map, whatever you call, right? Mm-hmm. Even that's gonna take more than a couple hours probably, right? Because we're doing this as a learning exercise so definitely do that. How, like how much time do you normally, like how, like if you were going into a, this is a small company, if you're going to a small company and they didn't have a backlog, like how much time would you tell them to reserve for this? Um, if you gotta do this right, it's gonna take you at least a day. Yeah. So if the objective is to get to the point where you have stuff in your backlog, you can get there in a day. Right. If the objective is to have a roadmap out Yeah. With dependencies and release plans and whatnot, yeah. It might take you a little bit longer, but there's no reason to couple those two things together. Yeah. So you could say, let's just do this for a day. Mm-hmm. And come back, have a couple sessions or whatever to Yeah. Yeah. That's what, that's what I'm thinking. That's what I'm thinking. I, I, that's what I, I've, I've kind of, I've kind of prepped them. With, with that, with exactly what you just said, I was like, I'm gonna fly into town. And then on the, like a, like the first day I get there, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna kick open the door or kick open the wall like the Kool-Aid man, and be like, I'm here. Like, we all need to sit in a room together for a day. Like, I'm gonna take over conference room for a day and We're going to like hardcore talk about the roadmap and maybe start breaking things down on the roadmap or whatever. And then we'll maybe we'll stay in the conference room the next day or two and have people come in and out and in and out. Cuz I mean, people have meetings whatever. People have stuff they have to get to. But that's, that's how I think we're gonna go about it, I think. And, and I think it'll be the, the difficult part for me, difficult part for me and like this is something a actually like maybe you can help with. Like, this is a tough one for me. Difficult part for me is I want my scrum master to facilitate the session. Okay. This requires me to sit back and let her facilitate. Yes. You know what I'm saying? You know what I'm saying right now? Like I Exactly. Okay. Like. What, like what do I need to do? How can I check myself to make sure that I'm letting her facilitate and I'm not jumping in every few seconds? Cuz that is a tough part for me. Yeah. I mean, that's gonna require that level of self-control, right? So when you feel like you, you want to jump in just exercise, self-restraint, just say she's got this, right. Yeah. Have confidence. Yeah. And, and she, she may stumble, that's okay. But then, because you're gonna schedule in these frequent breaks, right? Yeah. During the break you can recalibrate with Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a good one. Yeah. Um, I just wanna touch on the touring as well. I think it's awesome that you're gonna be in person with mm-hmm. With all stakeholders. Yeah. Um, but as far as capturing the backlog, you touched on it earlier on in, into a system of some kind. So there are a couple of things you can do there. Um, one of the things I did last time, I did this story mapping right here in the office mm-hmm. Was we used, we used a, a, a wall and we used yellow stickies. And at the end of the session when everybody was happy with it mm-hmm. We had swim layer for MVP and MTSS and everything else, and we'd sequence that, our releases, when everything was done, I just went around and took some pictures of the wall. Yeah. But I didn't take pictures with just the camera like app. I took pictures with a, an app called PostIt. Oh yeah. Right. I have that. It creates, it creates, actually creates the yellow stick electronically. Right. Which is awesome. Yeah. It says double entry and all of that good stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I have that app. That's pretty cool. I don't, I hardly ever use it, but it's, it's, it was very effective the few times I did use it and I don't know why. I don't, I actually no, I probably do. Like I don't use it cause like I'm never with people physically anymore. Right. Um, but yeah, it was very effective. Yeah. The only tip there is that don't use dark colored stickies. It doesn't see those on contrast, man. But, um the other thing, if you had to ever do this remotely, which is of course not ideal. Yeah. Um, there are systems out there that you can use. There's one called stories on board. Mm-hmm. Which is kinda like a virtual whiteboard. Um, and, and I think they have a free trial. That's the only way I've ever used it to be honest, is just use the free trial. You get a month and after that you either pay up or, or, or lose it. But, but that's enough for me. Right. So you get the, the full use of the product. It's not like a cut down use. Right. So that's awesome. Sign up for it. That's the only thing is, is you have to sign up with your email. That's okay. Um, brilliant tool. Another one is aha, which again has a free trial for a month. Oh man. Aha. But it integrates with whatever tool set you're using though. I can't. I can't do. Well, I can't. Oh man. Oh, wait, what's is Aha? The no, ahas Not bad. What's the other one? What's the other tool? The, it's Trello, right? Trello's. Trello. Oh yeah. Trello. Yeah. Tr I'm not too film. Trello's great. If you wanna just like do this with your church group or friends, but if you wanna do this professionally Yeah, it's come a long way, but it's still not there for me. I can't, I can't, I can't. We're like, we're using Jira now and I like everyone knows I can't stay in Jira. Well, I'll tell you what. So I think stories on board and Aha. Both integrate with Jira. I happen to know that. Aha. If you go into AHA and create work items, they can go directly into Jira and create whatever level of hierarchy work item you want. Yeah. I like I when I used when I used VSCs. My last project they had integration with AHA and it was it was good. Basically the division of labor was the leadership used aha. And all the teams used vsts and it was a, they were very happy with that because they could, they could see their high level items in high level releases, cuz their releases were like quarter to quarter. They didn't care about what was being released every week or whatever like they, they only cared about the quarterly stuff cuz they were talking directly to leadership once every, I dunno, month or whatever it was. Right. Um, but it, it seemed pretty efficient. I mean, you can change priorities and stuff. Seemed pretty efficient. That's exactly what we did there. Um at the same, same client actually hooked up VSDs to Aha. We went a little bit beyond just the epics. Mm-hmm. We actually went down to the, the user story level where stories could be created in VSDs. Yeah. But then they would fall back into Aha. So you could see them. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, and the reason we did that is so that. These product owners were solely working out of aha. Yeah. So they can add in clarifications or Right. Yeah. Descriptions, et cetera. Um, it, it was bidirectional feed. It worked really well across two or three, three different VSAs there. Oh, cool. So that, yeah, that was across sevens teams. They worked, worked really well. The only thing is, I'll tell you, there are some glitches once in a while when they do updates to Aha. Cuz it's all on the cloud, right? Mm-hmm. So you have no idea when they're gonna do an update? Yeah, yeah. They show up at work one day and suddenly all hell's broken loose. And that's because they did a, they did an update overnight. You, what do you use for what do you use for retros? Because uses mural for retros and she, she's fantastic with, with facilitating it with the giant canvas that mural allows you. And I'm like, I told her in one of the sessions we had 1 0 1, I was like, man, like you're way better at this than I am. Like, I'm terrible at this. Compared to, I've used Murro. I've also used Miro which is a similar competing product. Mira, m i r o, Miro. Oh, Miro O. Yeah. Yeah. That I don't think I've ever used it pretty good. The thing I really like about Miro is if you're doing presentations and you have two people speaking, or if it's just one person, you can have your, your presentation slide, and you can have you in a bubble, like in a circle with a speech bubble. Yeah. So, and, and people can see you real time speaking and still see your slide. Huh. So people find that distracting, but it's just a novel little thing that they do. Oh, I've never heard. What, what does Miro do? Like how is that different Look? Because mural is just like a big canvas and you add stickies all over it, and you can pre organize the canvas however you want. Yeah. Mine was the same. It's just a computer product. Which minor nuances there. It's a, it's a, another pay-to-play product. Yeah. Yeah. I think they have a, a Phoebe as well at the trial man that you can sign up for. I, dude, I feel there should be a, there should be a package that, like when you sign on to a consulting firm or whatever, like there should be a package, you should be like, you have access to all these tools. Like boom, there it is. You know, our, cause the coaches have used a bunch of different tools. Every coach uses like four or five different tools, but sometimes you do the same thing cuz some of 'em are good at one thing, some of 'em are not good at one. But it's like you use different tools so you know what is good for what, what is good for another, what is good in the case of like, well with these users, I use this tool, sometimes I use this one, whatever. You know what I mean? Like, dude, you should have a preloaded, we should, we should do that man. We should like, we, we should sit down and think about like, What tools would we preload if we could, as far as like a, if you were to join a consultancy, like the, your dream consultancy, your joining a consultancy, these are the tools you get automatically when you start. Yeah. I think there's a start to that, to that end in Nino, there's a page that has all the tools that people have used. Oh, really? Um, but to your point about walking into a client and saying, these are the ones we need. There's some issues with that, because I know some of the Big Four are like, oh, we don't trust that one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, we don't allow Zoom for, for, for an example. Right. Um, but we want to use Google Meet. Oh, but you can't record in Google Meet, so how you record meetings. Right. So it's like, okay. O bs studio. Yeah. Boom. Or, or you, you create workarounds like Yeah, I record Google Meet Yeah. And snag it. I create SNAT videos. Yeah. Right. Yeah. You end up with huge videos. But yeah. You know, space is not, not a constraint anymore. Oh man. What like you, like I wanted to talk more about user personas, but that's probably just because like, I like talking about user. I like talking about like, this is, this is the, this is the thing I found about, out, out, about myself as working as a product now. Like, I talk, I like talking about like nerdy BA stuff. I should probably like go find, like I, I, I was an i b A member for like, many, many years and I never really I never really used my membership for anything. You know, I never took any of the tests or anything that I probably should have taken. Um, but it, it it would be cool to like reach out to some of those people that, that are i b members and be like, Hey man, like let's go, let's talk about nerdy BA stuff because user, like I could talk about user personas for. Easily two, three hours easily. Wow, that's great. Easily. There's two kinds of user personas. There's assumption based user personas and there's research based user personas. And I was like, it's, and I was like, I'm I, I sent her a video. It was like an hour long video about user, I can't remember what the video was. I'll have to go research it. Maybe I'll go, maybe if I'm not lazy, I'll go research it and I'll go add it to the notes. Cause in YouTube you can put notes on the bottom of the but there was a really great video about all about user personas. Like all the, the breakdown from people that really don't really know what they are. And he was talking about assumption based versus research based and the like, the basic concept is like, assumption based is exactly the way it sounds. It's like, well, I know what my users do. You know, which you're gonna get out of many, many people from the business. They're gonna be like, I know how the users of our software use our software. I know everything about 'em. And then there's research based, which actually is like, I'm gonna sit with the user and I'm gonna watch how they navigate. Or I'm gonna go where users are, where a lot of users are, and I'm watch what they do. Or I'm gonna um, maybe I create, like we did this with a mobile app we did on a project I was on, we integrated a heat map in the mobile app so you can actually see what people are clicking on and you can gather mass statistics about your users. Usage of the application. So you start seeing heat maps about like most people go here first and they go here next or whatever. Um, which is like a su if you're a UI ux person, super valuable tool. Absolutely super valuable tool. Especially to, for a UX person, because you can see the behavior, right? Yeah. The users. Yeah. Also, if you're, if you are implementing a new piece of of the UX or if you've redesigned the ux, which which is where we implement it, we redesigned the whole UX and we took the opportunity to redesign, to implement this. It was like a third party software. We bought it and integrated. It was, it was fairly expensive, but quite honestly, like it was worth what we got out of it cuz we basically had no idea honestly, like we had all of our personas to that point were assumed personas. So actually being able to see the real, like the real data of what people were clicking in. Where people were confused and what screens people took a long time on. You know what I mean? Um, it, it helped. In that instance, it didn't help so much because like, development gathered all the statistics. So it's like the developers only passed the statistics that they liked to the business, right? It, it would've been better for the business to have those stats and to drive UX design and product design based on those stats. But, uh hey, whatever man. But another opportunity to improve. Yeah. Yeah. And like I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm trying to think of the, the, the, I'm trying to think of the thing I really wanted to ask you, which was oh, I, dude, I know what I want to ask you. I know what I wanna ask you. Like, there's this I saw you comment on a, on a thread in LinkedIn and it was I'm not gonna mention who, who posted it or what the thread exactly was. Cause I can't, number one, I'm not trying to blast anybody. But number two, I can't, I really can't remember exactly what it was, but it basically was, it basically was, I've noticed this trend in the agile space on LinkedIn. I almo, I almost never comment on anything on LinkedIn probably, cuz I'm terrible on social media. Like, I just don't care. Like, I don't, I don't care to, to, to talk to, to people like in re ever. But but uh when I do talk to people on the occasion, I do talk to people. Um like I, I, I noticed you talk, I noticed you commented, I almost commented on it and I wrote it was one of those comments where you write something and then you delete it. It was one of those I have plenty of those. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so somebody, somebody posted like there's this trend and I've, I've noticed it a lot more with people in the agile space. Mostly coaches, but like, I don't mean you never know when somebody posts Agile coach. I don't, you don't know what their real job is, but mostly coaches I notice they'll, they'll, they'll post on LinkedIn with a, with a, like a statement or a topic or a question, but the question itself is super incendiary and then they'll get like 147,000 comments, right? And I'm like, is this really helping anyone? Like, are like, or are you just like, I didn't realize LinkedIn, like I didn't realize that the algorithm on LinkedIn The clickbait mattered in on LinkedIn. I thought LinkedIn worked differently. I guess it doesn't. I have no idea. It doesn't. Yeah. But, but like, the point is like, I guess I bring that point up to be like like why, why do people post that stuff? I, I, do you feel the same way that I feel right now, like when people post that kind of stuff? Cause I saw you comment on one of 'em. I was like, oh dude, I got, I usually, I usually am very restrained, so when I did comment, it must have really touched the nerve with me. Oh, I, I wish I would've taken a screenshot of what it was. Oh man. Yeah. And I, I try not to let you know any like, political biases show through or anything like that. Right. Um, it wasn't, it wasn't a political thing. It was something along the lines of, I don't know if, I don't remember if it was a, I think it was something, I think it was something mentioning Safe. I think that's actually what it was. I think it was something mentioning Safe and there was like thousands of comments. I remember there were thousands of comments. I'm like, why? Like I know that, that don't, don't we have better things to do with our life. Like that's, that's why I remember reading through it. But like the, the point of reading the comment was like, obviously there were, there was nobody, and this is probably a political thing, right? This is this, this is probably what it actually is. Like, there was nobody being like, I understand why organizations I, I remember having a conversation with Mike Mill about this. Like, I completely understand why large organizations adopt safe. I get it. I totally get it. You know, and, and the fact that that is lost. The, the fact that a, your typical agile coach, this is a, this is a, I can't really generalize this one cuz this is a tough one to generalize. I, but I, I would expect your, your typical agile coach would have a similar opinion. And here's the opinion. Okay. Which is large organizations are would find a difficult time adopting an Agile methodology as an organization, as a large organization. I mean, you're talking hundreds of thousands of, I'm talking true large organizations chase Bank or something like that. Like, you know what I mean? Like that that would be, that would be an example of I think Chase actually is supposed to be Agile, didn't they? Or isn't Chase the one that came out with that article a couple years ago where like, we don't have Scrum masters anymore, we have Agile delivery leads or whatever. I, I don't, I don't, I I could be misquoting it. I, I probably should look it up right now, but if you are that large of an organization, you can't really break your software. You can't really break your software delivery into, like one team works on. This product that delivers my website, however, cuz their website is probably worked on by hundreds of people across dozens of teams or whatever. Yeah. Not only that, it's probably multiple third party vendors that are working on it too, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. With their own little pockets of knowledge in various scaling frameworks. Yeah. Um, in, in large organizations like that, the best you could hope for is adoption at a small micro level. Right. So maybe, and even there, if they're doing that on an existing project, it's kind of risky if they adopt a Greenfield project and say, we're gonna do this project. Mm-hmm. We'll scale that up, you're using xy, whatever it is, safe scrum and scale, whatever methodology they do. So the framework they use, I should say their chances of succeeding are higher, but remember, it's just a drop in the ocean, right? Yeah. It's just one little microcosm. Yeah. Where they've embraced this, this framework. Yeah. Um, to go across the organization, it's a huge ask. You're talking about years and you know, it, it global organization, like the ones we're talking about here. Mm-hmm. I don't know if you ever get there. Right. Because what happens before you get there is the organization gets either acquired or they split parts of their business off and divest those, or they acquire new businesses. So is a changing landscape. Yeah. The like what, like I ask people this nowadays, it's like given where we are right now in in a pandemic or almost post pandemic, I guess. Mm-hmm. If you had to start with a new framework for scaling, what would you choose? Right. Remember, tons of people got laid off to the pandemic, et cetera. Yeah. Yeah. Do you have all these people on staff where you can pigeonhole those into specific roles that safe prescribes? Mm-hmm. Or would you say, let's focus on doing the basics right now that we're doing that, let's just do more of it. Dude, I like honestly though, like I, I've never seen I've never, I've never, like somebody on the internet is gonna write angry tweets at me for saying this. I'm, dude, I've never seen an organization that has a release train engineer. Like their job role is release train engineer. I have. Oh really? Yes. Oh man, I have, and matter of fact, funny should say that cuz uh one of the projects I'm on now, right now is using Safe. Mm-hmm. Right. Right now we only have three teams, but we're on our way to 11 teams. Um, because they're using safe and because they do not have somebody in that role, we are actually suffering. Yeah. But what they do have are other roles. Like they have a master's, scrum master, whatever one of those is. Wait, is that, that's not a safe thing, is it? Yeah. No, it's not, it's not a safe thing. This is like a hybrid thing, right? Um, it they're, they're doing this their version of safe Oh, a hybrid thing. Yeah. So they that but that, that this thing must here on, oh my God. I gotta I got, I gotta go like a split screen cuz I'm, I'm screwing around. Yeah. Where's the, where's the camera? Oh, no, there, they're, yeah, but that, the that's the, that's, I feel that's the allure of safe. There's not a version of safe. It's, you're doing it right or you're not doing it. That's the allure of safe. Either you have a, you have a person whose job title. Is release training engineer. Eh, it's a rule, not a job title. No. It's a job title. It's his full-time job release train engineer. And that's what a lot of people don't understand, right? The release train engineer is not involved just at your product increment. They're involved the whole thing. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. They have to be. Yeah. And we don't have that, so we are missing that. Right. So now we have these teams that are working together, working in silos, rather pretending they're working together. Mm-hmm. And there's nobody, I, I liken this to like a, a conductor of an orchestra, right? So you have the brass section that's really doing really well. Mm-hmm. And you have the string section over there and the percussions over there. Everybody's doing great. Yeah. By themselves. Yeah. Right. When they all start playing together, what happens? And you don't have that conductor. Right. That's what an RTE really is. Yeah. Yeah. And I've made the case for, for one, in fact, we put together a business case, right. And it got turned down on the basis that. Well, we have other people that we should be able to manage that. And we have this guy who is the program lead. Mm-hmm. That is mm-hmm. Then we have this other person now who's a master's scrum master. Mm-hmm. And why can't they do it? Well, we ask these guys and they go, what's an rt? I've never done Mean one. I don't know what that Well, I mean, you, you would think, you would think that they, they can do it, it's just you need to move them into like a large organ, like weird, large organ. Sorry, this is like all stuff over the table. I'm like, what is this? That like, large organizations usually have like in my experience anyway, like it could, it could be different for everyone, but my experience, larger organizations will usually take people from other departments that are in large organizations usually have some kind of hierarchy or leadership level. I'll use military levels. Like you, you're like a major and then you're like a lieutenant colonel and then you're a colonel or whatever. So it's like someone is like a. Someone is like a someone is like a captain in the organization and they'll take 'em and they'll move 'em over over a program for a while and they'll do a good job and then they'll get promoted to whatever, you know what I mean? To major or whatever. And then they do a good job in that program. They get promoted a major because they get, did a good job in that program. But like, that's how larger, that's like the little game that they play in larger organizations, you know what I mean? Like you have a, you have a rank in that organization and you move from project to project to project. And like, depending on how you do, as you move from project to project to project, you rank up in the organization. Right? So I don't understand like if somebody has a skillset of a scr, like how, how, I don't know. Is it, is it an organizational thing? Is that the problem? If, if, if you show that you have a, a skillset of a scrum master. And that we already talked way earlier in, in like in, we already talked way earlier today about like, if you have the skill, like usually a very good scrum master has a bunch of like tangent skills. Like you, you, you're good scrum master, which means you have solid facilitation skills, but you also know whether what a product owner should be doing and you can help them do that. Maybe have some like, maybe some BA skills, maybe have a little bit of development skills. You at least you can speak the language, maybe have some test skills or whatever. You know what I mean? Like you can get around, um like if you have the skill set of a scrum master and you understand scaling, or maybe you've worked in the scaling environment before, I don't understand why you can't just move over with your hierarchical rank in the organization and become the release train engineer and just get named with the release training engineer job title. You, you can, I think what you do need is a. Bench for dealing with stakeholders at a higher level than a scrum master normally does, but it's not something they, they can't do, obviously. Right. I mean, yeah, they, yeah. It's a learned skill anyway. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, you're absolutely right. It does require that there's a recognition on the organization side that that role needs to be filled. Yeah. And that's what's missing in many places leadership issue, basically. Right, right. But at the same time, then they have these other, what I call redundant roles, right. Like master scrum master, I just I, I split my coffee here. It's like, what do you mean a master? What am I then a slave scrum master. They're a master. Yeah. They're a master scrum master. Unbelievable. Yeah. Oh man. Master scrum, master msm. That doesn't even sound right. That's, it doesn't, it's sounds terrible. It, it, it really smacks the command and control, and that's kind of how things are played out on a day-to-day basis. Is command and control. Oh that was the, that's not on my list of things for us to talk about, but that's a good one. Like, I, I also see the other thing. Oh, oh, you know what this, I should say this one for another podcast, but I'm not going to, we're gonna talk about it now. So I hired a product owner, first product owner I've ever hired as part of my duties to my client interview. We go through the interview, I ask my questions, bring people on board based on like, how they do with my questions, and then they talk to other people in the business. And I was like, Ugh, this person's got got a great head on the shoulders. They answer all my questions. Great. They seem to understand, understand the, the scrum process very well. And we brought them on board. Their, their background was a project manager and they could not, they. Could not do. They were just like overwhelmed from day one. And I felt very bad because I was like I was like, I, I have my C S P O I, I have my csm, I've been working in the field for a couple years. Like, I, I should have seen this. I was like, how could I not have seen this that I, were they just really good at interviewing and selling themselves, you think? Yeah, I mean, I mean I thought about that, but I was like, no, no, I, I think what the issue was, I think what the issue was is that there I think what the issue was is let me, lemme see if I can, I'm, I'll throw this out there and you, you, you, you see if you understand it and if you don't ask me some more questions about it cuz I, I'm not sure if I understand myself. So the issue was this person was a project manager, p p certified project manager in another life. Turned scrum Master slash Agile coach worked for many years as a Scrum master slash agile coach occasionally dipped into product ownership, and now is taking a full-time permanent role as a product owner. Okay? So we talked about before, it's like if you're, if you are an, if you are a, if you're a Scrum master, you have at least a, a, a tangent of knowledge about product ownership. If you're an agile coach, you probably have a little bit of deeper knowledge of product ownership, right? Like a little bit, maybe a little bit deeper, maybe a little bit more season. Maybe you've done it for a little bit, you know what I mean? Um, but The interview questions. Like, I, I feel the interview questions that I was asking up until that point were more scrum fundamental focused than they were product ownership and business focused. Okay. And I feel, I feel because of that I feel because of that I missed a big gap in the person's experience. So this person that you are, you're describing sounds like my journey. You know, PMP worked as a project manager for many years. Um, turned Scrum master, worked as a scrum master for some years, and then turned as a coach. But I'll tell you this, it's hard for some people to let go of their mentality of project management. Right. Which is you create work packages for people, you tell 'em what they're gonna be working on and when they're gonna be done. Yeah. Right? And if you can't let go of that, it's gonna haunt you. Right. If even though you have a different title that is something that I work actively to get let go of. Um because being a project manager for many years, that's what I did. Yeah, right. Um, but then I realized, so my transition wasn't like overnight or anything, even as a project manager, I was trying to incorporate some elements of what we know are, are good agile principles. Like, for example, bringing stakeholders in mm-hmm. To do what are now known as print reviews and demos. We used to do those Right. Just say, is this kind of along the right lines of what you're thinking? Yeah, yeah. Um, wasn't, didn't have a title or anything like that, just had those sessions, but. If, if your interview process is focusing on Scrum fundamentals, then you are absolutely going to miss, right? Mm-hmm. The, the product owner angle, which is largely in the business arena, it is really understand, right? Yeah. Um, what is it that this business objective is fulfilling towards the mission this year, right. Of the organization? How does that fit in? Mm-hmm. How do, how does the budget contribute to the organizational goals for that year? If they don't understand that those things and can't answer those questions yeah, they can know Scrum very well, but they're not gonna succeed as a po. Yeah. I, I, dude, I like. Like I did a lot of soul searching after that. Yeah. After that, because I like, uh dude, I have this like, weird thing about myself. I was like, I don't like my, my, since I hired people, like they're their failure. Like, I feel like it's like it's my failure. It's not really their failure. Like, I didn't set them up for success to start with. You know what I mean? I, I'm like the, like the other part of me is the company I'm working for, like they're startup. Okay., to to be honest, like startups, like startups are needy. Okay. Yeah. Startups are needy. So it's like, you, you can't hire somebody in, in a startup. Like, I'm, I, I I, I, I don't, I don't even know what you would say in an interview to be like, Hey man, are you prepared to work at a startup because startups are needy? Like, that's the, that's the most plain way I can say. You know what I mean? And in reality, like what, what does that translate to? That translates to like, startups are like, they want your time. Like whenever they want, whenever they need it, they need to be able to get your time. You know, that's not a fair thing to ask. Yeah. I, I concur. I think it takes a certain type of personality to work in a startup. Yeah. It isn't for everybody. You have to be comfortable with the unknown. Um you don't have to, you have to be comfortable with the non-real way of working. Um, and, and an established way of working. Yeah. Figure it out as you go. A long type of mentality. Right. Um, if you're not comfortable in that, you are gonna be out outta position there. Yeah. Yeah. You won't, you won't last long. Yeah, that's that's, that was a paper millionaire a couple of times back in the heyday of the hey, internet. Hey, I had stock that didn't really, it wasn't worth much in the end, but just pre ipo we were going around picking out our exotic cars, thinking I'm gonna buy one of those cuz I have enough on paper. So, yeah. Um, but startup was, was really, the pace was frenetic. And because you see other people working in that way, it rubs off on you too. Yeah, I really like that. I really like the, the, the adrenaline at the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But if somebody's like, towards the end of their career, that's not for them. Right. It's too much uncertainty for them. Dude. I don't know, man. I, I, I think, I think like it, like it really isn't for a lot of people. Like, but, but, but, but like, I don't think they real I mean like, I gotta think about like, It is different for me because I'm not in the phase of my career where like, I need a job. You know what I mean? Like, I need to have a job. So it's different plus like I have enough experience and enough uh skill and whatever, variation on what I've been doing in my career, whatever, to, to be marketable., I I dunno, it's, it's just different for me. It, it, it's, it's very strange. It's very, it is a very strange thing to explain too. It is, it is. It's very strange is right. I, I think one of the things you might wanna think about in, in a similar situation next time is perhaps just extend a trial of some kind to this person. Like, try him out for a month and see how it goes. Um, with the caveat that everybody will park company amicably unless, yeah. Unless every both sides agree that it's working out, then you know, you can flip it over to a permanent role. Yeah. We, we used to do that in a, in a, when I was a manager of the company I worked for would do that, they would do I don't remember what the period was, 60 day or 90 day. I don't, I don't remember what the period was, but they had a period of time worked out where it was like a, it was like a like a probationary period or whatever. It wasn't called, I don't remember what they called it, but that, that's what it was. Basically, it was a probationary period, right. You know, trial period. But for the employee and the employer and where anybody could decide like, this isn't for me. I don't know. I don't know. The, the, the trouble with that kind of stuff is like that, that is hard on somebody who like really needs a job. You know what I mean? Yeah. But also you, you're right, I do agree, but at the, at the same time hopefully they can dig deeper and muster up that extra motivation to make it work. Yeah. I like, or, or, or realize within that time period this is not for me. Right. You know what I mean? It's no facts, this is not gonna work. You know, like I, like in this instance it was like, it was pretty obvious. Like, cuz like, my thing is like, I'm going to do whatever. I need to understand the, I'm a product owner, so I'm gonna do whatever I need to understand the requirements. I'm gonna schedule time with whatever I need. Like, if I can't get time with people during normal business hours, I'm gonna schedule time whenever I can get them and I'll work it out with them. You know what I mean? And like, we'll get what needs to be done or whatever documented, but I'm gonna use every, every every means available to me to do it. And like, this is what I was like, even though I was working here in town and I was working at a client here in town when I was When I was before I joined ca and I was super effective with them because I would do exactly that. Like I, I'd go set, I was a, I was, I was like a, I, I, I guess I was sort of in a BA type role. Maybe like a 50% ba, 50% like test, test related role. It wasn't really a it was a very weird position, but like I was the BA that was like, you can point me at something and like I go figure it out. Like, I don't really need supervision. You know what I mean? I go figure it out. Then they, the, the, the, this was like a the client at the time was a very traditional PMO structure. So they had project managers and each project had a BA that would spin up before the project began. They'd run for a certain amount of time, then they hand off the project requirements, the teams or, or whoever else, or you know, whatever, developers, qa, whatever it is. Yeah. And uh I kind of got deployed a little bit as the BA that ran ahead, but then a little bit as the QA that ran after and on different projects I was in front and on other projects I was in the back, which is super annoying sometimes. But But yeah, I, I, I remember, I remember them telling me in one of the, one of the feedbacks, a yearly feedback to whatever was like, you're really, really effective and we're really happy to have they they offered me a position and I was like um, they're like, you're really effective. We're really happy to have you because like, it seems like we give you the goal and then you take that goal and you figure out how to accomplish it. And I'm like, yeah, I figure out how to accomplish it cuz you guys don't care about how I go about it. So it's like, if I sit outside some executive's office who has been with the company for 15 years, and you should be a developer, and they're the person who wrote this software and they're the only person who knows how the software operates. Like, I'll sit outside their office when they're booked all day back to back to back meetings and wait for them to come back to their office to have a five minute conversation as they walk through their next meeting to get a small snippet of how the so, yeah. Yeah, that dogged determination is often. The key, I think. But, but it's rare., I like, dude, the other thing I want to ask you so, so we talked about earlier though, like one of the things we talked about earlier was what happens when a company starts? Like, not really I'm gonna say penny pinching, but that's not the word. I'm really mean. It's like that, that they're, they're saying like, this, this happened to me. Actually, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll start with a situation that happened to me. I'm not gonna, I, I don't wanna blame anyone. So what happened to me was I don't wanna blame anyone, but let me tell you, let me tell you about my traumas., no, uh uh uh. So it's not really like, it's not bad. I'm not really mad about it or anything, but I'm not salty or anything. But here we go. Uh no, the situation was when, when Covid started, the company took a look at its books and is like, hey, like why would we have an onshore scrum master and pay you X amount when we can have an offshore scrum master and pay them whatever, a half third pennies on the dollar, basically. Uh so I bring that up because my client now is asking me like, Hey, we have, we have this team that's offshore and we have some developers that are offshore and our scrum masters on shore, like our offshore people are offering us like, I see you smiling cuz you know where I'm going. Yeah. Our offshore custom offshore vendor or whatever is offering, like they say they have a scrum master offshore. It's pennies on the dollar. Like what? Like, Why don't we go in an offshore scrum master? Like what? Dude, I, I want to ask this in a, in a, in. Oh. So I have a thought on this that everybody listening to this probably knows exactly what my thought is right now. So I'm not gonna ask that question cuz that, that, that is, that's played out. The question I'm gonna ask is, how could I go with an offshore scrum master and be successful? That's the question I'm gonna ask. That's an excellent question. And, and I think a lot of organizations are struggling with this, right? Because it's purely an economical decision and it's a no-brainer for them. Like you said, it's pennies on a dollar. Yeah. Um, two things I'll say. Can it be done and can you be effective? Yes. Right. Um, the other thing is, we'll start with this. You get what you pay for ultimately. Yeah, of course. But, but given the situation where you have your developers over there and you have some team members over here having a scrum master. Onshore just onshore doesn't work. Mm-hmm. Effectively. Mm-hmm. Right. You'll sure you, you can limp through, but it, it's not the best way to work. Having a scrum master offshore and only one offshore, same thing. Mm-hmm. Right. Um, probably the best thing that can come out of this is to have a scrum master that you have already onshore continue, and you have somebody who fills the role of a scrum master offshore, because that way there's somebody that the developers can raise their impairments to without having to wait for a scrum to be spun up on this side. Mm-hmm. You still need to synchronize the two, the two scrum masters. The roles of two scrum masters still have to be synchronized, but you can do that more effectively. Mm-hmm. Because now you're not at the mercy of the time zones where. People aren't asked to stay at nine o'clock at night their time. Yeah. Right. Which is first thing in the morning, hard time or worse if you're west coast, right? Um, worse or better? Worse. It's way worse. It depends on where you are, but it's way worse. Yeah. Yeah. So I, I think that model where you have somebody, it could be anybody, it could be a QA person, it could be a development team member, but they act in that role. Um, now yes, if you've got a vendor who, who's pedantic about it, sure. You know, they might charge a few dollars more per hour for that person, but the value you're getting out of this is tremendous. So they're acting as a scrum master of, they, you have a scrum master over here, and the two of'em synchronize at some point. That's convenient for them during the day, but the dev team members aren't waiting around. Yeah. At either end. I think that's the best case scenario. So, so here, here's the. Here's what I am here, here, here's what I've been telling my client. And, uh you, you can like give me advice if this is good or not, right? Here's what I've been telling my client. Cause they, because they've been pressing me on this one, cuz again, it's like, I, I have no idea what they're paying offshore first scrum master, but I'm assuming it's half right? I'm assuming, I'm assuming the proposed rate's half, maybe not half. Maybe it's like two thirds. Cuz like in, in recent history, I, I remember when I was a, I remember when I was a manager, the rate I would pay out of India, oh no, it wasn't India, it was Ukraine and Belarus. In my experience, the rate that I would pay for a person in qa, this, this, this was my experience was in qa. The rate I would pay for someone in qa. Was almost the same rate as I would pay as like a, a entry level QA resource for, for like a mid to senior level on their side., it really wasn't a huge savings. It wasn't a huge, I mean, to the company, it was like, I don't know, 25, 30% savings or whatever. And like, if you ask some other like seasoned hydro coaches or any of the trainers or whatever, they'd be like, bro, you gonna pay that rate in communication costs and coordination costs or whatever. Which, which is true, but like, I'm, I'm trying to like, I'm trying to get over that, that. I'm trying to get over that normal point and just talk about I've just decided that the, the, the, the flat money, like numbers are all that matters to my company at this point, and I'm making this decision that, that, that's, that's what I'm talking about. Like when, when, when I'm, when I'm going, when I'm kind of like pushing forward at all costs with, with this Right. Just, just the, just the money. I just the, the end of the day numbers. Yeah. So I mean, certainly the, the gap has narrowed quite a lot. Yeah. Right. And I'm finding that for roles like Scrum Masters, the difference is not very much at all anymore. Yeah. And that, and that there's a reason for that. So what used to happen a few years ago is you had Scrum masters here that were certified Yeah. Let's say, and Scrum masters over there were simply developers that grew into the role. Mm-hmm. And they, they were not never trained. Right. Yeah. But now what you're finding is everybody's got all the certifications they need over there too. And you've got CSTs over there certifying their people at a fraction of what your I would pay here. Right? Yeah. Right. And then there's another little symptom there too, which is people over here are getting their certifications from CSTs in India. Right. But we won't go there right now. Oh man. Sign me up. It's like $200 as opposed to $900. I mean, it is quite compelling. Yeah. But coming back to our point though, the, the delta is so little right now that it really isn't the deciding factor by far. Mm-hmm. Right? Whereas those costs, in delays and just general confusion and communication delays, they outweigh the difference in the two quarterly rates, let's say. Um, so I, I would certainly encourage them to think through this in that, in that way, and not just look at the actual dollars. But even if they did, yeah, as I say, they're not. They're not that far apart. Yeah. I look, I, I think companies are real bad like probably this is because they have a QA background and it's like companies are real bad at at, at placing costs that are not like directly paid. You know what I mean? Like, I dealt with this in QA all the time. I was like, you we don't, we don't, when we make decisions, we do not. We do not. We, we do not. We never take in the cost of the risk. Never do we factor in the cost of the risk in a decision, even in the methodologies. Like safe has the shortest, shortest weight job for a shortest weighted job first or whatever. Like yeah, I could be screwing that up. Yeah. That's what it is. Yeah. But like, that doesn't take risk into the, it doesn't take like first to market. Or, you know what I mean? What if a competitor beats us to market? It doesn't take that into account. It doesn't take what if I push something and it comes back with like 15 bugs that I gotta solve? Like doesn't take risk into account at all. Like, I think you would have to break into like actuary mathematics to come up with some kind of a, and like nobody's, nobody's even like looking at it. Yeah. You're absolutely right. So there, there's the risk side of it, right? And then there's also the opportunity cost side of it, or making a decision Yeah. Has an impact on a decision you didn't make. Um, but yeah, companies are notoriously bad, I would say, at, uh these kinds of indirect cost calculations. Right., I like, I think there's I, I, I, I, I, I think there's something there, man. Like I, I don't know what it is, but I think there's something there. You know, I, I, I think there's something there where those costs should be taken into account somehow. But I don't know. I don't know. Maybe that's a, maybe that's a topic for the feature. That's a very complex topic and, uh one in cost accounting that they really haven't come to grips with, because you can't, you can't do a straight line calculation on a lot of that stuff. Offshore scr. So, so the offshore scrum master conversation, , so basically the, the, the recommendation here is you have, if you're gonna have an offshore scrum master or multiple, right? They sync up with a counterpart that's onshore daily. Yes. And, and the best way to sell it might be to say not necessarily that they hire a scrum master, right? One of the team members plays that role and they rotate, right? So one sprint, this person does it next sprint, another person does it. What that does is it, it makes them cross-functional, it makes them grow into that scrum master role as well, if they want to. Um, but you should make it optional, right? Just say, do you want to be a scrum master one day? Yeah. You know, here's your chance. Right? And they can be under the tutelage of the person here who is a full on scrum master, so to speak. Yeah. Um, initially, and that'll be fine. Yeah. I don't know. Like my, when I talk, when I talk to my client, what I told them was, they're like, well, what do you think if we have a scrum master offshore out India, the Ukraine or whatever, that that actually sits with our teams. I was like, well, there, there is a benefit of having a scrum master who actually like, physically is with your teams. Like is is in the same workspace as your teams. There certainly is a benefit for that, right. The, the, the, my trepidation. That's right. I said trepidation. I almost never say that word either. Of recommending that is like I, I like. I don't know if that person's just like a, a project manager that got a certification and now is like marketed by their consulting firm as whatever, you know what I mean? Is like, oh, he's a scrum master. Totally. Um but I, I mean, like f putting that to the side for a second um, my challenge is like I would rather they use my company's scrum master because at least I know my company's scrum master is like in, in line with the, the, the, the principles of agility, you know? Right. But would you have that, that opportunity offshore, that's the thing, right? I don't like, I don't know if, so they've asked me twice. Okay. And the fir, the first time I gave the, I gave the first answer. The second time they asked me, I was like, look, if if this is something you're really dead set on, I was like, well then what I recommend is cuz it, because we're talking about spinning up a couple teams. It's not, we're not talking about like one team. We're talking about like seven teams. Okay. So I was like, what I recommend is if you're gonna go with a vendor, like the vendor brings the scrum master approach, vendor brings developers, vendor, brings the scrum master approach. I was like, what I would recommend is we have, inside the organization, we hire a permanent employee, agile coach. Well, or scrum master, whatever, right. As a coach, scrum master, we hire 'em in the organization and then they basically become the resource manager over the Scrum masters that are on the offshore teams so that at a minimum they can make sure that some kind of standard is being observed be between all the Scrum masters. I couldn't agree more. I'm also glad you didn't say the word master Scrum, master of the phrase. Oh yeah. Whatever title. Whatever title they want, whatever title they want as Coach Works well, right? In that case. Definitely. So, so there's consistent practices being followed in different locations. That makes a lot of sense to me. Too much sense. We can't have that, that Well as a team. It does. It does. Oh man. Well, you wanna call it a wrap? I think so. I think this is a, this is a good stopping point. Awesome. So let's stop here and we'll like I have a bunch of stuff that I want to, I wanna keep talking about, but we have a bunch of future sessions. We do. Absolutely. Yeah. Also, I gotta think about who else I want to invite to, to, to discuss with. I gotta think about it. So, all right, man. Well, This worked out well, I think, let's see. Yeah, I think so. Except for that camera. I don't know about that camera. All right.