Reshaping Perceptions: The Scrum Master's Advocacy Journey with Jessica Bahr

Uncover the transformative power of Agile roles and how they can revolutionize your team's dynamics with the guidance of Jessica Bahr, a seasoned Scrum Master from Austin, Texas. Jessica joins us on The Agile Within to reveal the hidden strengths of Scrum Masters, their pivotal role in enabling team success, and the fulfillment derived from serving rather than shining in the spotlight. We promise an eye-opening discussion about the servant leadership that sets Agile apart from traditional project management, providing actionable strategies for Scrum Masters to showcase their value while keeping the team front and center.

During this episode, we navigate the complexities of advocating for Agile roles across different levels of an organization and the art of balancing one's workload with effective communication strategies. Learn as Jessica imparts her wisdom on coaching teams through the Agile adaptation process, fostering trust, and deftly managing conflict. Her insights on the importance of support systems, respecting a team's expertise, and positioning oneself as a trusted advisor are invaluable for anyone looking to thrive in the Agile environment. Tune in for a candid exploration of these intricate challenges and the roadmap to becoming an integral part of your team's success story.

Connect with Jessica:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicagbahr

View Jessica's Services:
https://mentorcruise.com/mentor/jessicabahr/

Link to "Scrum Master : It is a Full Time Job" article by Chris Li: https://www.sparkplugagility.com/blog/scrum-master-it-s-a-full-time-job

Click the link below to join the Alliance!

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. Hey everybody, Mark Metz, back here at the Agile Within. I have a guest today by the name of Jessica Barr. Jessica resides in Austin, Texas. She's a senior Scrum Master. She is also an Agile mentor and coach for aspiring Scrum Masters, and she is also a recently certified expert in Agile coaching with IC Agile. So congratulations and welcome Jessica.

Jessica Bahr: 1:03

Hi, thank you, it's great to be here.

Mark Metze: 1:05

So, jessica, let me ask you, if somebody was coming to Austin for a day, what would be one thing that you would tell them they absolutely had to do?

Jessica Bahr: 1:13

Well, you know, I think there's so many wonderful things to do in Austin, but if you only had one day, you absolutely need to go down and swim in Burton Springs. That is one of the old Austin and prehistoric Austin things that locals find really great and really fun, and it's cool water all year round, which is great, especially in the heat of Texas summer.

Mark Metze: 1:40

OK, so I'll add that on the list. We definitely want to plan a trip to Austin at some point in the future. Jessica, as we lead into our session here, what we're talking about is advocating for your role in an organization that isn't sure what to do with you. Why do so many of us, as an Agilist role, whether it be a Scrum Master or an Agile Coach why do so many of us find it difficult to advocate for ourselves and for our role?

Jessica Bahr: 2:06

Yeah, that's a great question, Mark, and it's something that I hear from people time and time again. Seasoned Agilists as well as newly minted ones, scrum masters are constantly trying to figure out how to express the value that they bring to an organization, and I think sometimes it can be a little tricky for scrum masters because a lot of the value that we provide to an organization is intangible. So we're talking about helping people change the way they think about work or change their mindset. We're helping them have better conversations, but there's no easy metric that can really be pointed to to show the effectiveness of a Scrum Master. So we're really left to kind of advocate for ourselves and provide some type of a compelling vision of what benefit we offer an organization, and I think sometimes it can be really challenging to share that intangible value that a scrum master provides with a leader who is mainly used to living in the tactical realities of the job.

Mark Metze: 3:12

I try to not generalize and think that everybody is like me. But thinking about the servant leader role, we inherently find greater joy in seeing others in our team to be successful, more so than ourselves. So we don't necessarily want to be the ones on the front page. Do you see that and do you identify with that as well?

Jessica Bahr: 3:33

I feel that strongly. I really do. I am one of those people that I consider myself to be an enabler of others, which on the face of it, sounds like I don't necessarily do much. But when you consider that a scrum master really needs to be like a force multiplier for a team, the value that we bring to that is incalculable almost. But yeah, we tend to want to give all of the glory and the esteem and the recognition to our teams because I think we all know that they're the ones that are really doing the hard work in this organization and we want them to be recognized for the experts that they are and we want people to see the great teamwork that they have. But yeah, I feel that tremendously, the servant part of the servant leader, where we're wanting to promote the group, that's definitely something that I feel strongly and I think I've heard that from others as well.

Jessica Bahr: 4:33

I think it takes a certain amount, a certain temperament to be a scrum master and that temperament I find the trend is that we're there to see others succeed. That's part of I like the way you put it that's part of the joy of the role is helping to see others succeed.

Mark Metze: 4:49

I'm just talking about my experience here. I have seen those project managers that refer to when things go well as I delivered my project on time and under budget, and that's the antithesis of this servant leader role and being an agile leader, where you're propping yourself up. And I'm not painting with broad strokes here to say all project managers are like that, but I can definitely say I have seen that happen in the past, at least enough to know that I don't want to repeat the same pattern. So maybe it's best if we just leave that there.

Jessica Bahr: 5:23

I will say that I did get my start before Agile even was an option for me. Someone told me you'd be a really great project manager, and so that kind of turned a light on in my head and so I started looking into it and that's when the Agile mindset really kind of started coming into view for me, because as I was learning project management and learning agility kind of simultaneously, I started gravitating more towards agility, because scrum masters operate on more of an opt-in type of approach where we're trying to get teams to self-organize and decide for themselves how to control their destiny.

Jessica Bahr: 6:04

And and for me that that was a much more compelling vision of what I wanted my future to be. But I absolutely have known some really great project managers. In fact, I have my accountability partner is a project manager and, you know, sometimes we all just really need someone to keep us on track. So no, no, no problems here with project managers. I know they have a tough job too.

Mark Metze: 6:30

Yeah, so we talked about why we find it difficult. Jessica, can you give us some tactics, some strategies? What are ways that we can advocate for ourselves without really not being true to ourselves?

Jessica Bahr: 6:43

Yeah, that's really great.

Jessica Bahr: 6:45

You know, I think, like most things, it starts before there's a problem.

Jessica Bahr: 6:52

Advocating for the role of the Scrum Master really has to start with not creating resistance, and that is something that I learned from Cherie Silas, who was the instructor that I took my advanced certified scrum master through.

Jessica Bahr: 7:06

She had presented a talk and that was the central point of her discussion was how a scrum master can avoid creating resistance, and so, for me, that really has become my step one is to be part of the solution and not position in someone's way or as a blocker to something, um which I think for me as a scrum master you know, learning about scrum and learning about agility and understanding all of the various ways that that these systems work I think it's really important for us to not die on a religious battle hill, if that makes sense. It's all contextual. You know, I truly believe that everyone is trying to do their best work, and so when I go into a situation expecting that I'm going to be dealing with people who are all trying to do their best work, it really changes the way that I approach them and it really helps me to avoid creating that resistance, because I'm coming in as a partner, not as someone who's trying to change them.

Mark Metze: 8:09

So just a quick plug. You mentioned Sheree. Silas coached you through this. Sheree is going to be a future guest. We just lined her up this week. What are some other ways that we can advocate, and who are we advocating to? Because we could have different audiences right. So we could be advocating to our teams to make sure that we're accepted, as well as to our bosses, or even to the executive members of the company to advocate for ourselves. Could you explain to us the difference between advocating of the different levels?

Jessica Bahr: 8:42

Yeah, sure, let's start with who you're reporting to as a scrum master, because what I have found, at least in my most recent history, is that, working with managers in the engineering space, a lot of those managers were promoted from engineering roles themselves. Some of them come from a people management background. Some of them have really great leadership qualities, but more often than not, I'm finding that they are incredibly talented engineers who have then been given this role as a leader, and so what tends to happen with me interacting with those people is that I will just kind of get handed any ad hoc work that they need to delegate, which, in you know, in the past has meant then that I was incredibly overloaded. Because, as a scrum master, I'm trying to find ways to bring, you know, bring my team's maturity up and help coach them through difficult things and keep track of of things to try, and, you know, bring my team's maturity up and help coach them through difficult things and keep track of things to try and, you know, be a mirror, to show them what's happening so that they can make the right decision. And that takes time and that takes a lot of attention to the team, and it's difficult to do that when things are just kind of being tossed over the fence as busy work, and so for me, the way that I found best to resolve that is to sit down by myself and just start listing out all of the things that I am doing and the value that I think that they're providing, not just to the team but to the product, to the product owner, to the customer, to the manager, and really just think about, you know, the things that I do, the tangible things that I'm doing as a scrum master to help move the needle for the team, and I will rank them in priority order.

Jessica Bahr: 10:35

Sometimes I'll, you know, include whether it takes me a lot of time or effort or how impactful it is to the team or how important I feel it is.

Jessica Bahr: 10:43

But then I take that to my leader and I say, hey, I'm getting a lot of ad hoc work that I'm wondering if you know where it falls in this list of priorities that I have, and we'll go over it. It's an opportunity for me to bring visibility into the things that I am doing in service to the team and in service to my management, but it also has a dual purpose of giving them a window into what I'm actually doing all day and what value that provides to them specifically. And so I've found that, the more I'm able to have those conversations about the things that I am doing in a practical sense and how they are improving the team, and then just offering that as a token to say, hey boss, manager, whoever, where does this ad hoc task fit into this list of things? Is it more important than attending a scrum which is fine if it is, but that conversation can happen than if you've sat down and thought through your priorities and can tie them to business?

Mark Metze: 11:47

value? How about the manager that doesn't answer but asks you where do you think you should be spending your time?

Jessica Bahr: 11:55

Well, that's actually.

Jessica Bahr: 11:57

I love working for managers that ask me that me that I really do, because then there's an open dialogue that can happen and there's a partnership that can be established and a relationship built from that, and so, as a scrum master, my job is to help the team, and this is my own personal feeling, and people can agree or disagree, but in my opinion, my job is to make it so that my team no longer needs me, and so everything that I do is in service to them being able to self-serve and self-organize, but still keeping high quality and still being able to deliver in a timely fashion.

Jessica Bahr: 12:40

And so whatever I think is the issue in the organization or on the team or in the system that needs to be addressed in order for them to be self-sufficient with high quality and speed, those are the things that I tell that boss that I should be focused on, and so it's contextual, right, like it's different for every team, it's different for every organization, it may be different for every manager or boss that you have, but it's about me knowing what my role is in the first place, and for me, the quick elevator pitch is I want my teams to no longer have to need me.

Jessica Bahr: 13:20

And so everything I do is in service to that goal.

Mark Metze: 13:23

Do you have any examples, Jessica, of not thinking necessarily about a boss, but it could be. Thinking necessarily about a boss, but it could be. But when you're making this list of things that were relegated to you instead of delegated to you, think of things that somebody doesn't want to do or doesn't, or feels like that's below them. I'm just going to let Jessica she's a scrum master, I'm just going to let her handle that. What are some examples and how have you handled that?

Jessica Bahr: 13:50

Yeah. So there's one example in my current organization where we have to create kind of like a checklist before we do a release, and all of the training on this creating of this checklist, all of the training documentation indicates that it would be the role of the product owner to do this, and I tend to agree with that, because I believe the product owner should know exactly what's going on in the release and should have all of the details about their own product. However, the way that it is playing out is that the scrum masters are the ones who typically get relegated to creating this checklist, and it is what it is. I fought it at first, but another point that I wanted to make in this call was around. Sometimes you just have to do it, sometimes you just have to bite the bullet, and in this case, what I found was that I was able to bring organization into that space. That was really needed. That was really needed Because this checklist it isn't just a busy work checklist, it's for compliance and we are in a highly regulated industry and so making sure that this piece is really locked down and everyone was super clear about how to do it, why it was being done and that we needed to generate this checklist basically fresh every single time we released, because our contents wouldn't be the same in every release.

Jessica Bahr: 15:16

I was able to kind of start training them to understand why this was such an important thing for them, and what has happened over the weeks and months since I've been doing this is that I involve the team now every single time I create this checklist. So now there are questions about the contents of the release that I don't have as a scrum master, because I'm not in the code, I'm not looking at the repos, I'm not, I'm not building the release branches, and so I don't necessarily know. And so now I've involved the team in helping me create those and that kind of has this dual benefit of one. The checklist is accurate, based on the experts who are releasing, but also the team is getting practice doing this and answering these questions every single release so that if at some point I have to leave or take vacation, they're already familiar with the questions that they need to answer to be able to fill that out themselves.

Jessica Bahr: 16:16

And so sometimes you have to play the long game and just know that you're going to just gently be nudging in a direction and it might take months, but sometimes that's the path we have to take as scrum masters.

Mark Metze: 16:29

See if you agree with this, jessica.

Mark Metze: 16:31

So I've found in situations like that where you really need to pull your bootstraps up and just do it, that's an excellent time for us to act as a mentor for the team.

Mark Metze: 16:41

If it's a quote, unquote, menial task that people just don't want to do and just kind of slap it together, maybe that's a good opportunity for us as scrum masters to say you know what? I'm not going to put an excessive amount of effort into this, but I'm going to make this something that I'm proud of, something that's easy for people to understand. I'm not just going to list everything. It's going to be structured, nice, it's going to be organized, it's going to be grouped, it's going to be easy to read, and when somebody gets that, then the light bulb comes on. So it's not just a matter of just throwing a bunch of of sentences on a page that say check, check, check, check, check, because if it's just a straight, sequential list, it can be really hard to to comprehend comprehend. But for me, that's one of the stances that I try to take when I see things are just being thrown together is to try to be a true professional and do a really good job, to give other people a model to follow.

Jessica Bahr: 17:38

No, I absolutely agree. You know, being a model is much more impactful, I think, than people realize, because we all know how easily a bad model can kind of ruin a system, right? So if someone comes in and exhibits bad behavior in some way, it makes it a lot harder for everyone around them to also keep their good behavior in check, right? The idea that one apple spoils the bunch well, it's partly true. Right. Idea that one apple spoils the bunch Well, it's partly true, right? If you go in and you model bad behavior and there's no natural or mandated consequence to that bad behavior, then other people around us start thinking oh well, then it must be okay. And so we absolutely know that bad, bad behavior modeled can can really be a detriment to a system.

Jessica Bahr: 18:34

And I would say that even in my own life separate from agile and separate from work just even in my own life, I recognize how I am affected when I see people behave with integrity and and when they they uh are have attention to detail or they absolutely value honesty and truthfulness and openness over their ego, those people really have an impact on me and really make it easier for me to then follow in that lead. So I 100% agree that modeling is kind of the underdog of our toolkit.

Mark Metze: 19:13

So, Jessica, what do you do when you've talked about doing a nice job of organizing all your priorities and these are things that I'm doing going to your boss and saying, okay, these are responsibilities that I have, Help me to ensure that I'm doing the right things and not doing the wrong things? What do you do when you have, let's just say, a more a progressive team member or somebody on the outside that walks up to you and just says you're a scrub master, right? I mean, what do you even do?

Jessica Bahr: 19:46

Yeah, absolutely so. I. It's funny you ask that because if you were to look at my work calendar, you would think that I was busy all day, every day, um, in multiple meetings, um, and so maybe just a simple screenshot of your calendar would would be uh, would be compelling enough. But I also want to point to another resource that when I get this question, I love to send people to the Sparkplug Agility website. Chris Lee has a blog called Scrum Master. It's a full-time job and that blog is just so eloquently laid out for what a scrum master does in a sprint and how much time it might take them to do that.

Jessica Bahr: 20:37

Addressing issues, you know, intra-team issues, creating effective retrospectives, finding ways to bring teams together and build relationships with them. There's a number of things that we do all day, every day, in service to team maturity, and I always point them to that blog because it just lays it out so well. But if I was going to answer, if I was going to give the short answer, I would say you know I'm, I am a team coach. I am here to make sure that the team has what they need to be successful, and sometimes that takes the form of telling people no, they're busy and you can't have this thing.

Jessica Bahr: 21:26

Sometimes it comes in the form of running crowd control or conflict management. It comes in the form of running crowd control or conflict management, and sometimes you just have to be listening, to answer or to ask the right question at the right time, right. So that may not necessarily sound like it takes a lot of time, but it means placing yourself where the conversations are, and those conversations could be happening at any time. And if you're not available to be in those conversations, you're not also available to help the team grow. That would be my short answer.

Mark Metze: 21:55

And you have to be savvy about that, right, because I've had people before that just get bent out of shape and just like, well, why wasn't I invited? Why am I just now knowing? You kind of have to have your radars on and you kind of have to know through maybe second or third hand sources and be like you know what. I think I probably should be part of this and insert yourself and not always just wait to be invited to the table, right, yeah?

Jessica Bahr: 22:24

You know, as we're talking about advocating, that's one of the things that I have to do with my teams, especially if I'm joining a new team, because usually what happens is the team does not understand the value that I provide to them or that I could provide to them, and so they are not always sure what to involve me in and what to leave me out of.

Jessica Bahr: 22:44

And so that's why I spend usually the first sprint just watching them, just observing how they're interacting, observing what, where the churn is, where the energy is, and then I am able to say, okay, so you're having these kinds of conversations, here's how I might help to facilitate that, or here's my, what I might suggest.

Jessica Bahr: 23:05

Of course it's your option to pick it up or put it down, but you know I start kind of coaching the team on what kinds of things I can help them with. And then you know the most important thing is, if you tell a team that you can help them with something, you need to follow through and help them with that thing, because it's about trust, it's about building that relationship. So part of what I do as advocating for my role with the team is to just show them how I can be of service to them, show them how I can help them work through pain points. Show them how I can help them do do more with less effort and just really try and and and and. Meet them where they're at and understand where their pain is, so that I can come in and promote a better way of doing things or help take something off their plate or whatever it is in the moment.

Mark Metze: 23:56

I believe that is a very important distinction that you make, and one that's not to be taken lightly, is being able to meet people where they are. And if you're aspiring to be a scrum master and you start looking at your own personality, and if you're the type that, after you think about it, you like to be the ones calling the shots and you like to tell people what they're supposed to do, it's probably not the best role, because quite often it doesn't take you long to learn that preaching to others and trying to instruct, to say here's how you need to do your work, doesn't get you very far in the role, because you're not a trusted advisor. At that point You're an adversary.

Jessica Bahr: 24:40

Right. Well, you're coming in, and the most important thing to understand, at least from my perspective about working with people, whether they're in a team or not, is that people have a sense of identity wrapped up in whatever they're doing. Even if that thing is broken, even if it is hard and it's painful, if they know how to do it, that is preferable to them in their mind, over any change that you might make where they're not sure how they would be successful, where they're not sure how they would be successful and so, coming in as a scrum master, you are inherently a change agent.

Jessica Bahr: 25:15

Right, that is the role that you're in, and it's a delicate balance to say, yes, I'm a change agent. Yes, we are going to have to examine some of the things that we're doing, but everything that we do is because you, the team, you want to do it, and I'm only going to be here to provide you with information so that you can make the best choice for yourself. In fact, this was one of the biggest lessons that I had to learn as a scrum master, because I did feel like you know, I went from being a subject matter expert of many years to being a servant leader, and it was a difficult transition for me, and I really only turned that corner when I was able to detach myself from the team's decision and be someone who would support them and help them learn, regardless of what their decision was, and you know when you think about it. You mentioned you mentioned trustworthiness and credibility.

Jessica Bahr: 26:19

Scrum masters, to get your first certification, you go through what a two day course and you answer maybe 35 questions on a test and then you get a certification. Many of these engineers have been doing this. You know they got a four-year degree. They may have a master's degree. I've worked with a team of like PhDs, so like. The fact is that the people that we are working with are absolutely experts in the domain that they are in, and so coming in and acting like you know better than them is a recipe for them immediately writing you off.

Mark Metze: 26:58

Especially those that don't have a technical background, right, yeah, I think that is even more important, and so something you said really resonated with me, too thinking about even if someone knows they're doing something wrong, that they identify with it. I can't recall the exact same, but it's something along the lines of there's probably a principle aligned to it about choosing the devil you know over the devil that you don't know.

Jessica Bahr: 27:28

Yes, yes, for sure. Well, that's, and I see this time and time again and again. It points to what I said earlier about people want to be successful, they want to do good work, but they, more than more than wanting to do good work, they want to feel like they're doing good work in a broken system, even if the thing that they're doing while it may have been successful or necessary in the past and may no longer be relevant now. It's really difficult to let go of that thing because you know how to do it right, you know what the outcome is, you know when to check the box, you know what it looks like when it's done and you feel a sense of accomplishment when you're able to do it right. Regardless of whether it is the right thing to do, it feels good and it gives the person a sense of accomplishment. So we should honor that.

Jessica Bahr: 28:21

As Scrum Masters, we should give the team what they need to form a new identity around whatever it is that needs to be done to make them more mature or to help them grow in their agility or whatever. So, understanding that we're not just coming in and telling people to do different things and then they're just responding like robots to say, oh okay, you know, merge left kind of thing. We're going in and we're advocating for a better way of doing things to people who are already comfortable or maybe they're comfortable with their discomfort, which is also something I've seen. They've already got a way of working that they know and that they trust and it makes them feel good. So we always have to remember that we have to replace that with something else that makes them feel good. We can't ignore that part.

Mark Metze: 29:15

One of the things for scrum masters and agilists that's a key point is empiricism of learning based off of what you observe and what you know. How much does experimentation build into the equation here of advocating for your teams and making sure that they are truly improving and helping them find better ways to work?

Jessica Bahr: 29:38

Yeah, Experimentation is so critical, not just because you find new and better ways of doing things, not just because that's where innovation is, but because it's low stakes. It's low stakes change that can be committed to in the short term and reviewed to see what works or what doesn't work. And I have found that experimentation with process especially with teams who are needing to work in a different way to be more effective experimenting takes some of the stress out of it because it's just a short experiment, it's time boxed. I usually try and do like if it's a repetitive thing. I usually try to do three iterations in my experiment just to kind of make sure that we don't have you know, that we can establish a trend or examine patterns or whatever, and that outliers are less impactful to the results.

Jessica Bahr: 30:37

When the team is hesitant to make a change, I'm usually able to get them to commit to some short-term way of looking at it and then promising them that we will review it and they will determine if they want to carry it forward or if they want to change it a little bit and try again, or if they want to scrap it and go back to the way they were. I always leave that as an option, because if you don't give them the option to say, no, I don't want this, I want to go back to doing it the way I was, that's when you start getting into the I'm imposing my will on you and I'm changing without your you know, without your approval or whatever, and that's where you start getting resistance. So, from my perspective, whenever I'm conducting an experiment, it's always the team decides what the outcome is they're driving towards, and then they decide whether it was successful and then they decide what their next step is.

Mark Metze: 31:33

Well, Jessica, we're coming up at the end of our time for this session here today. What parting advice would you give to our listeners about advocating for their role?

Jessica Bahr: 31:43

Two things One, learn to promote a compelling vision of what you, of the value you can provide, right. So think about where your team is, think about where your organization is and then talk about where you see them being able to be. And talk about how you see that work and talk about the challenges that might come up and how you might approach them, but get comfortable promoting a vision of the future that is compelling. And the other thing is more of a practical, a practical thing to do. Um, I took a course with Lisa Adkins over her coaching agile teams book. A couple of years ago.

Jessica Bahr: 32:29

Yeah, she was. Of course you know we all love Lisa, but she she gave me advice in that session to create a value ad log. So at the end of every day you talk about like you have in your one note or in a notepad, or maybe you have a journal that you write by hand jot down the things that you did that day that added value or reduced churn or reduced complexity or increased agility, the specific things that you did that day to really move the needle for your team.

Jessica Bahr: 33:05

And then if you can try and put a dollar amount to it I know that's going to be really hard, um, because sometimes we don't we don't always, you know, have like we certainly don't know what other people's salaries are, necessarily, or anything like that but maybe you could ballpark it Right and just say you know, I think maybe I saved five hours of my 10 of my developers time today by doing this thing Right. And so, whatever that dollar amount is, you can do funny math. But over time you'll start building a log of actual tangible things that you can point to to say this is the value that I provide, these are the things that I have done that you can point to and look at and measure, and and here's my estimate of the of what that was worth. And so not only does this help you form a perspective as a scrum master of the value you provide and how to call up tangible things that people would recognize that you did to contribute, but it also is a really good resource for when you're filling out your annual review.

Mark Metze: 34:15

Can't hint, hint, hint. All right, jessica. So our listeners out there, if they want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?

Jessica Bahr: 34:24

Yeah, well, I'm on LinkedIn and I'm also on Mentor Cruise, where I take clients who want to spend some time with me coaching or mentoring. But, yeah, anyone can can reach out to me and message me on LinkedIn. I'm. I love talking about agile, so you could probably catch me in a pretty good conversation if you have an interesting topic to ask about.

Mark Metze: 34:50

Excellent. Well, I add both of those to the show notes, and it's been a pleasure having you here on the Agile Within, Jessica. This has been great discussing how we can advocate for our role as an Agilist. 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.