The 'Technical Enough' Guide for Scrum Masters with Daria Bagina

Embark on a transformative exploration of Agile leadership transitions with the esteemed Daria Bagina, where we unravel the pivotal role of technical understanding for effective Agile leadership. The picturesque charm of Toronto sets the backdrop for our insightful conversation, highlighting the necessity for leaders to be 'technical enough.' As we wade through the nuances of Agile roles, you'll discover that grasping the technicalities isn't just for developers—it's the cornerstone of bridging the gap between the nitty-gritty of code and the grand vision of business strategy.

Ever found yourself tongue-tied when trying to articulate a technical issue to your team? This episode is a gold mine for enhancing your communication skills within Agile frameworks. My personal journey with Azure DevOps exemplifies the value of being inquisitive and well-informed rather than settling for surface-level understanding. We dissect the finesse required in posing questions that catalyze growth and learning, steering clear of lazy inquiries that lead nowhere. Daria and I share insights on the delicate dance of asking the right questions, empowering you to spark conversations that illuminate rather than obscure.

Witness the metamorphosis of a non-technical product owner, whose dedication to technical mastery reshaped team dynamics and garnered deep-rooted respect from developers. This narrative is not just inspiring; it's a testament to the possibilities that unfold when Agile leaders invest in their technical growth. Moreover, Daria extends an invitation to enrich your Agile education through Scrum Mastered, featuring a trove of training classes and practical guides. Whether you’re an Agile aficionado or on the cusp of a leadership transition, this episode equips you with actionable insights to steer through the Agile waters with newfound confidence and clarity.

Connect with Daria on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dariabagina/

Explore Daria's Offerings:
scrummastered.com (Company)
youtube.com/c/scrummastered (Blog)
shop.scrummastered.com (Portfolio)

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Transcript

Mark Metze: 0:06

Welcome to the Agile Within. I am your host, mark Metz. My mission for this podcast is to provide Agile insights into human values and behaviors through genuine connections. My guests and I will share real-life stories from our Agile journeys, triumphs, blunders and everything in between, as well as the lessons that we have learned. So get pumped, get rocking. The Agile Within starts now. Well, welcome back to the Agile Within everybody. This is Mark Metz, your host. Well, welcome back to the Agile Within everybody. This is Mark Metz, your host Today. With me for this episode, I have Daria Bagina. Daria, thank you for coming.

Daria Bagina: 0:50

Thank you for having me.

Mark Metze: 0:56

Well, Daria comes from Toronto, Canada, and I want to ask Daria at the outset so if I were to make a trip to Toronto for a day, what's one thing that you would say I absolutely had to do?

Daria Bagina: 1:04

It depends if you're coming in the summer or in the winter. If you're coming in the summer, I would suggest going to the Toronto Islands because it has this beautiful view of the city from the islands. Definitely a must-see. In winter, though, it might be a bit sad, so probably go to the CN Tower. It's at least warmer inside.

Mark Metze: 1:27

I'll have to do that on my next trip. Well, daria helps professionals to create high performance teams with the help of Agile and Scrum practices. She is a professional Scrum trainer with Scrumorg and an experienced Scrum master. She was my PSM2 instructor as well, so she came highly recommended by me. Since 2019, she's also been an educational content creator dedicated to this topic, and you can go out to the website scrummasteredcom to look for her offerings.

Mark Metze: 2:02

So, for our topic today that we're going to talk about with Daria is we're going to talk about transitioning into an agile role and specifically talking about the technical side of that and what that looks like. So, daria, when we talk about agile roles, it doesn't have to be limited to software. It can be related to hardware as well and other lines of business as well, but more times than not, we see many software teams that utilize agility. So what would you tell people as far as, if you are looking to change roles and you're looking to pivot into an agile leadership role, what advice would you give them as far as, what technical skills do I need to have if I don't have any currently?

Daria Bagina: 2:47

I think an important piece here, and probably something that we'll talk a bit more about down the line, is that my opinion changed over the years on this topic, and I do believe that you need to have some of the skills, some of the knowledge, in order to be an agile leader or, say, a scrum master or product owner. I don't mean you need to be a full-time developer, programmer or have this experience, but I think you need to be technical enough to really be successful.

Mark Metze: 3:26

So technical enough. That's what we want to unpack here today. Tell us more about what you mean about being technical enough. I guess I'll just preface it by saying I agree with you. So, thinking about and forgive me for the sports analogies I am just the person that sports were very influential to me growing up and as I taught my own kids sports, I could see the sports where I really played them growing up and I knew the rules and I knew about them.

Mark Metze: 3:54

I was much more effective as a coach for kids sports teams than for some sports that I was not involved with and really had no knowledge whatsoever. And when I went into those, even teaching young kids you're thinking that's as basic as you can possibly get it. I was definitely not as effective trying to be able to communicate to the player, and it showed in the team's records as well. So I agree with you. Team's records as well. So I agree with you you have to at least be able to relate somewhat, or else how can you really be effective and maybe you can talk to us about understanding what the team members go through to be able to be a better leader.

Daria Bagina: 4:39

Well, kind of going back to the technical enough term, I guess. What does it mean? And it's something that I think I did not realize. You know there's something you've been doing and you understand it's much harder for you to realize that it might be more complex than you think, right For people who've never been, maybe, exposed to it. And I think that is that technical enough. That comes from this understanding.

Daria Bagina: 5:11

That realization that I had is that how comfortable are you talking about the topics? Or, in the case of sports, how comfortable are you in explaining specific or particular challenges that you might be facing, right when you're playing a course or when you are a member of a team? Do you understand what are some of the common pain points that they need to face? And do you actually know just the terms? Or do you understand what it means in terms of how it affects people's work? And that technical enough just means really having enough of the understanding of the workflow that developers go through?

Daria Bagina: 5:58

Maybe you don't know exactly the details of how to write a program, but do you have a general idea of what it could look like? Maybe you don't know how to write it, but you know what maybe some systems look like what the general process of getting the program like Hello World to run. And just knowing this Hello World, just this thing. Every utility developer, utility programmer, they know exactly what it means. Hello world, right. But if you don't know, maybe you don't have enough of that knowledge, kind of it's not really internal jokes or internal knowledge, but it's just general understanding and general knowledge of the workflow. I guess that would be a way to explain it.

Mark Metze: 6:52

You mentioned that your opinion of this changed over time. What specifically changed your opinion?

Daria Bagina: 6:59

Well, I think it comes back to that realization that I had right, comes back to that realization that I had right. If you look at maybe some of my even older content one of the first videos that I did on this topic do Scrum Masters have to be technical? I think I was very. I was just general thinking you don't have to know anything. You are focusing on the people, you're focusing on the processes. You need to know Scrum and very, really minimum of that technical knowledge that is needed.

Daria Bagina: 7:30

But what I've realized throughout the years is that I was always interested in technicals and I think, maybe after having spoken with Scrum Masters who didn't have any kind of experience or understanding of the technical side and who also believe that they don't need to know any of that. And then I saw a lot of people who wanted to enter the tech industry without any prior experience. Right, which is fine, you can switch industries, that is absolutely normal but they wanted to enter immediately into a Scrum Master role. So not only you don't have, maybe, the experience as a Scrum Master, which is fine on its own, but you're also trying to enter a role coaching people how to be more effective in their job without understanding their job. So I've always kind of been close enough to tech and I thought, okay, well, I'm not really technical right, so why is it harder for other people who are not technical to do this job? And I just realized that I'm technical enough. I think that's going back to that.

Daria Bagina: 8:44

Chris explained that. Well, yes, I'm not a developer, but I know some of the code right. I did do some website programming for my website. I even was interested in game development at some point and I learned how to write code in C-sharp for my mini games, you know. And I went through an introduction to computer science course that also included some coding, and so I understand some of the challenges that you might be facing when you're writing code right. And then through my work with developers, and then through my work with developers, I also was able to learn from them more kind of specifically about what their workflow looks like and learn some new terminology as well that I'm much more familiar and comfortable with using now.

Mark Metze: 9:45

I feel like if you don't have at least some knowledge, like you're talking about, it can almost just feel like complaining. Right, you're hearing all of these problems and if you aren't, if you can't put yourself in and feel the pain that's happening y'all. Maybe your attitude is more like these people all they do is complain why can't they just get their job done? But when you really have those same problems, it's not complaining. They truly are things that are keeping you from doing your work or doing your best work, right.

Daria Bagina: 10:15

Yeah, exactly, I think that is exactly it right, because you have the development or developers, right.

Daria Bagina: 10:25

People doing that coding, qa, all of that work and then you have management or leadership team or business and they live in two completely different spaces and, as if you're more of a humanitarian, less technical person, you will naturally be drawn towards that business side and it will be much easier for you to understand the business side. But you need to understand both, right, and you already have business who doesn't understand. Developers who say, well, it's not as easy as you think, it takes longer because it's complex work. Right, they already don't understand. If you are kind of a mediator between the two, you need to understand the two sides and create that connection, you know.

Mark Metze: 11:15

And so what I'm hearing you say is that a transition to an agile leadership role whether it be a scrum master or an agile coach or what have you is. It's not an entry level position. It's not something that you're just going to say, ok, in three months I'm going to totally transform and I'm going to be this I'm giving air quotes here Agile leader. There's lots of learning, both on the business side as well as the technical side, as well as the I'll say, the people and the team side, and also the process side. So there's many, many different hats that you have to wear as a scrum master, as an agile coach, and it's not easy. It's not something that you know. Even so, if you say, like a manager, I want to be a manager or a director, you don't just say that and then in two weeks, boom, you change positions. Right, it takes a lot of work to get there. So what advice would you give to people who do want to change industries and don't have they don't have a technical background to them?

Daria Bagina: 12:24

Well, I guess the one answer would be training. Do educate yourself. You know, there are so many ways that you can learn now and you don't have to go to university to earn a computer science degree to really learn it. There's lots of courses that you can go to online and that can really help you understand. Obviously, there are various levels and I think you just need to be curious.

Daria Bagina: 13:00

You need to be interested in learning and, by default for me, any Agile-related role. You have to be interested in continuous learning and for me, I'm always fascinated. I'm finding a new model and I get excited. I'm like, oh my God, I can totally use this and you know, it just excites me knowing something. When I was doing recently, a course on DevOps foundations, they were covering so many different models and I'm like, okay, stop the video, I'm going to go and check it out, I want to learn more about it, and just that is what really can help you get to the point where you can be successful. I think so, yeah, it's go learn, do some research, read up some articles, get excited about it.

Mark Metze: 13:51

So it's one of those things that's easy to say that you're a continual learner or a lifelong learner but it's much harder to commit to that. I kind of think you've either got it or you don't. At least in me. It's something that really drives you and you find interesting learning new things, or you don't. And, as we're talking here, my advice to our listeners would be is if you don't have that drive of learning new things, of experimenting, and you know not everything's going to work the first time, maybe you take a course and you said, gosh, I just wasted two weeks of my life and that was not what I expected it to be. That's going to happen. I'm just going to tell you right now, so I'll save you a lot of time. If that's the type of thing that frustrates you, then maybe it's not the the right line of business for you exactly.

Daria Bagina: 14:42

If you're excited about new things and trying out and if it doesn't work out, you're still excited and you take it as a learning opportunity, then you should be good, and if you hate it, then you're gonna hate, probably. Let's be honest.

Mark Metze: 15:06

So that's the part that came fairly natural, at least for me, because I came from a software engineering background. And yeah, if you're the type of person who gets very frustrated because things don't work out the first time, then yeah, you just have to have lots of patience and, again, it's got to be something you find fun, you find enjoying to solving these puzzles and learning new things and advancing your knowledge. It just has to kind of come innately in you. So I want to shift our conversation a little bit. And what if you're in a position, dario, where you're working with a team and all of a sudden the technical discussion starts really rising and it's very important and detailed information and you're not understanding a word of what these engineers are saying? What do you do then?

Daria Bagina: 15:52

Well, what do you do? I think it depends on how the conversation is going. If it maybe is a very deep discussion that is going on, you don't really want to interrupt it. But if you want to take some notes probably some notes on what have you heard and what you did not understand I generally found it really helpful to kind of just take notes on whatever I'm hearing, and that obviously I started doing when I was facilitating retrospectives or discussions. I would usually try to take as many key notes as possible during that time and then reach out to the team and ask them the questions.

Daria Bagina: 16:31

And I think this is where that courage comes in, where you need to be courageous to tell them hey, I have no idea what this means. Can you please help me? Can you explain it? And then ask questions, like clarifying questions, even if you think there might be wrong, like paraphrasing and saying okay, this is what I understood, was this correct or did I completely misunderstood you right? So that would be kind of a way to to approach this.

Daria Bagina: 17:08

I intend just wanting to ask questions, kind of going on and and say, even if you are, maybe the discussion, the discussions in the team are fairly easy. You understand the flow of work or how they work in general, but just reaching out to the team and asking them can you explain to me how you work? Can you explain to me what the process looks like? Can you show me some of the software? Because that's how you can then learn and those skills are kind of transferable as well.

Daria Bagina: 17:48

If you manage like if you are learning, say, new tools, often right, then it will be easier to pick up a tool that you've never used before. Right, like I've never used Azure DevOps until this year, and now I'm working with a team that uses Azure DevOps and somehow I'm practically teaching the team how to use it. I've never used it before, just the fact that I always would be interested in learning more of different tools. I was able to pick it up quite quickly. So it's the same just asking questions, going kind of out of your way to try to understand.

Mark Metze: 18:33

That's really impressive. So I want to continue that line of thought and ask you and well before I ask you, I want to stop and tell a story, if it's okay with you. So back in my developer days I was working at a company where there was this one person who had been with the company a long time and he kind of knew all the secrets. He had been with the company, he was very smart, he knew pretty much the product, everything inside out, and anytime there was this really hard problem to be solved, the advice was to go to this person to ask for help. It's like this is the last line of defense. If you need to have an answer to your question, this is the person who's going to know the answer to your question. But there was only one small gotcha.

Mark Metze: 19:24

This person was very gruff we're talking very gruff. So while he had the answers, many people would not to go to him because they didn't want to be belittled or didn't want to be yelled at, and so I made sure, before I asked the question to him, that I did as much research as I could and then came to him with some different options of hey, I tried this, I tried this and I tried this and it didn't work. I don't know what else to try, Can you help me? And when I told him that, the look on his face just absolutely transformed and said he said, Mark, I can't tell you how much I appreciate you going through and at least trying things to figure out what the problem wasn't before coming to me or what the solution wasn't before coming to me to ask for the solution. He said so many people come to me and they want me to just teach them everything and to solve their own problems.

Mark Metze: 20:23

So that was a lesson to me, that when you do ask others for help, when you ask them for can you explain this to me? You've got a responsibility in that as well, and not be a lazy question, asker, right, Because it's very easy to. Well, I don't understand what Azure DevOps is. Can you give me a two-day training course, Daria, and show me how to use it? How far would that go?

Daria Bagina: 20:49

Not far. I'll charge you some. Double A lot of money double, just for that time.

Mark Metze: 21:01

So let's talk for just a minute about what are some good questions to ask. Maybe give us some examples of what are good questions that you can ask in these types of situations where you're trying to learn from somebody, and maybe what are some not so good ones, so that our listeners have an idea of maybe what not to ask and how to ask it a different way.

Daria Bagina: 21:25

Well, that kind of comes back to do your research beforehand. You might be say, well, an easy question, right? If you are coming in and asking developers okay, can you explain to me how you work and what is your workflow? And I think that's something that we discussed before that is a very broad question. Like if you come to me and ask me just about, not specifically development, and say, okay, what is your workflow? Well, what do you mean? What exactly are you talking about? Can you be more specific? And it's the same way when you are.

Daria Bagina: 22:04

If you want to learn how the developers are working, you need to come in with more pointed and specific questions. If I want to understand a bit more about the workflow of a new team, for example, I'm working with, I'm going to ask more specifically okay, do you have dev environment, QA environment, uat environment? How does it work? Is it automatic or do you have to push the changes manually? Okay, is there a validation step? If I talk about CICD, I will also ask questions. Okay, is it a separate department that has to create your pipelines or do you have just? You know, you need to kind of know those questions and you, just, if you ask me, do I actually understand how to create a pipeline? No, I have no idea, but I know that there is this step in some processes, right, I know that there might be manual testing, automated testing.

Daria Bagina: 23:04

Okay, I know what unit tests are, and so small things like this where I can ask specific questions like okay, well, we're talking about unit tests. Okay, what's your coverage? And if you're listening to this, I'm like I just heard 10 million words. I have no idea what it means. Okay, well, you need to do some research to be, because those things aren't hard. Once again, I've never written a unit test in my life. I don't know exactly how it looks like, but I understand the concept of what it is and how it's supposed to kind of help you test, right?

Daria Bagina: 23:41

So those would be, I guess, some of the things that you need to change in how you ask the questions. And, to be more specific, why are you asking this question? What exactly are you trying to get at, right, when I'm asking questions around? Okay, do you have DevQA, uat environment? What I'm really asking is okay, how much time does it actually take you to get from an idea to production, right? Is it difficult for you to go through the steps? Is there a lot of manual work involved? Are there other teams involved? These are the real questions that I'm asking. I'm just asking them in a more kind of going through the tech door, I guess.

Mark Metze: 24:32

So, as you've been building your tech skills, have you noticed a difference with how the team interacts with you?

Daria Bagina: 24:40

I think it helps that developers have trust in me.

Daria Bagina: 24:47

I'd say faster, just build that rapport with them around this, because I usually come in and say, hey, I'm not a developer, don't really know, I cannot do your job.

Daria Bagina: 24:58

I am an expert on Scrum, agile facilitation, teaching, all of that, but I have enough understanding, right. And so often what happens is they kind of try to say, when I'm doing the initial interviews with people, trying to understand what's going on in the company's team, they kind of dance around a topic, trying to make it very user-friendly or non-technical, right, and that often misses point of that conversation that I'm trying to have because I need to understand the real pain points and so once I switch to those more technical questions, they can see oh okay, so there is an understanding, right, and they are able to use some of those technical terms with me. They know that I will be able to understand, and that kind of breaks the barrier for them as well, because it is hard for someone technical to speak in a business language, right, the same way as it is hard for a business person to speak in the tech.

Mark Metze: 26:07

Do you have an example from someone that came from a place where they really had no technical knowledge and they really were able to build that up and possibly even become more of a technical savvy person, and the effect that they had on a team? Do you have a story like that that maybe you could share with our listeners?

Daria Bagina: 26:29

Yes, yes, I do, and that was not that long ago, pretty long ago Damn, I'm getting old, yeah. So that exactly kind of a story of that happening in one of the teams, and that was more specifically around the role of the product owner, right? So a new person kind of coming into the team as a product owner, fairly new to the role of the product owner but also not technical at all, and in just six months this person got to a point where their technical knowledge of the product got so good that the developers were impressed. And they were impressed when this person left and I was only able to work with him for a really short time before he left they would still remember him six months after that, or if only you know this, our PO was here, if only because he would understand, and that was really. I think that had an impact on them because they really trusted this product owner with the decisions, because they knew that he understood right and the way he did.

Daria Bagina: 27:46

That is exactly like that Coming to the developers and asking questions, right? Can you show me, let me figure out, how our product works, kind of going into the details and trying to figure it out and then asking questions to the developers. Can you explain it to me? How does it work? I want to learn more. And that really helped build that incredible trust environment between that business side, the product owner and the developers.

Mark Metze: 28:20

That's a great story and I like the way that you categorize that. Is that really built the trust of the team, and that's sounds like that's really what they were looking for. So, in a sense, as agile leaders whether it be a scrum master, an agile coach or a product owner or product manager being able to have just enough technical skills really is required so that you can build that trust with your team, wouldn't you say?

Daria Bagina: 28:55

Yes, I think that is necessary. The more and more I see that, the more I feel like that needs to be said.

Mark Metze: 29:05

Well, this has been a fascinating talk, so thank you very much for coming in and joining us. Daria, let our listeners know if they want to get in touch with you, because I know you offer training classes and you have certain offerings, and I am one who subscribed to Scrum Mastered and have purchased things from your store as well. Why don't you tell our listeners the best way to get in touch with you and the offerings that you have?

Daria Bagina: 29:31

Yeah, of course. So on my website you can find all of the information. I have a blog post and a full library of videos that are, of course, free, and if you have questions, you probably will be able to find something on my blog. So that is scrum mastered with ed at the endcom, and I have created lots of guides and templates that you can find in my store that are very specific to different topics and, more, very practical and actionable for different roles, such as the Scrum Master or the Pro. You can find all of that through my main website and, of course, reach out to me on LinkedIn. You can follow me on LinkedIn and Instagram, and we have recently just started the Ask Me Anything kind of deal running on my LinkedIn and on Instagram. So feel free to jump in, ask questions and I'll be able to answer as well. So hope to see you in one of those places.

Mark Metze: 30:41

Yeah, yeah, that, ask Me Anything. Series is great. I've been following those as well, daria, so we'll put all those links in the show notes for our listeners so they can get in touch with you. And again, I can't give high enough recommendations to professional scrum trainer Daria. I think she does a fantastic job. So you have my full recommendation for any trainings and offerings that you have. Well, that brings to close another episode of the Agile Within. We'll see you next time. Thanks for joining us for another episode of the Agile Within. If you haven't already, please join our LinkedIn page to stay in touch. Just search for the Agile Within and please spread the word with your friends and colleagues Until next time. This has been your host, mark Metz.