Your First Scrum Team
Aspiring Scrum Masters who are not already working in tech have a big hurdle to clear when applying for their first Scrum Master job:No experience.While many have been sold the dream of a high-paying career in tech that requires only a two-day certification course, the reality is much different.No certification course can adequately prepare you to do the job of a Scrum Master. Scrum Mastery is tacit knowledge - like riding a bike, you can only truly learn to do it by doing it.
An icebreaker on the team whiteboard during the Team Kick Off.
Many working Scrum Masters agree that this position is not truly entry-level, and the best pre-requisite is to work on a Scrum Team first. Often people find their way into a Scrum Master position after working as developers or QA testers on Scrum Teams. But if you are truly interested in Scrum Mastery, this would mean learning an entirely different skillset for a job that may not interest you.The Your First Scrum Team program gives you the experience of working on a Scrum Team. You'll get to see what Scrum actually looks like in practice as you and your team build a real product together, acting as Scrum Masters, Product Owners, and Developers.The intention of the program is to make you stand out head and shoulders above your competition for the entry-level jobs that are available for Scrum Masters, and also to more adequately prepare you for the job itself.
About Me
I'm Jeremy Randall, an American Scrum Master living in Lyon, France.I spend a lot of time thinking and writing about Agile and Scrum, and I wrote the Scrumify Your Life framework for personal Agility.If you have any questions, please connect with me on LinkedIn and send me a message. If you don't have a LinkedIn account, you can also send me an email through my personal website.
How do I join?
This program is available to anyone who
It is highly recommended that you join only if you have already received a certification (CSM or PSM I), but not mandatory. You will be expected to have a decent understanding of the Scrum Guide.
Rotation Enrollment allows you to try all the roles - Scrum Master, Product Owner, and Developer.The price for the full program is $1500 USD. If chosen, you'll have the option to pay all at once or to pay $550 per month for 3 months.
You may also join the team as a full-time Developer, but at a more affordable price. You will have a fly-on-the-wall view of everything that happens with all the accountabilities, but will not be part of the rotation through Scrum Master or Product Owner.The price for the full program is $500 USD. If chosen, you may elect to pay all at once, or $185 per month for 3 months.
The team talks through Product Backlog Items in Sprint Planning.
A full program can accommodate up to 4 Rotation Enrollments, and 4 Developer Enrollments. The program will run as long as we have at least 3 Rotation Enrollments and 3 Developer Enrollments.There is no set start date for a Your First Scrum Team cohort. If you are interested in joining, please complete the form below. When there are enough people from your geographic area interested, you'll be contacted about joining a cohort.You may also want to join the Scrumify Community Discord channel to ask questions and be notified of news and changes.
Schedule
The team will meet every week for 5 weeks.Week 1 will be a Kick-Off week, full of workshops to learn some Scrum basics, meet each other, and make decisions about the product the team will build together.Weeks 2-5 will be a series of one-week Sprints. Each week, a different person will act as Scrum Master and Product Owner. The entire team will meet twice a week for 2 hours at a time, plus 15 minutes per day on all other days, at a minimum.
The team meets with Stakeholders during the Sprint Review.
All participants will be contributing to the creation of a real product, intended to solve a real problem. It is expected that you will spend additional time each week working on the product in the capacity of whichever Scrum accountability you hold for that week.This program is a serious commitment of your time. Previous participants have reported spending an average of 10-15 hours per week.The exact schedule will be based on the common availability of the participants. Please click on "Join" below to sign up.
benefits
It's important to be clear on the benefits of this program.This is not a certification program, and there is no certifying body that will state that you did anything.However, I will happily write you a recommendation (at your request) after completion of the program.There is no guarantee you'll be hired after completing this program. Companies with which you interview may or may not consider this experience to be significant. We cannot control how they view it.However, previous participants in this program have subsequently been hired as Scrum Masters and Developers. They added this experience to their résumés and LinkedIn profiles, and they spoke about it in their interviews. They attest that the lessons they learned in the program played a part in making them more attractive candidates. Hiring company executives have reported that participants significantly outperformed other candidates in the interview process.
