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Nobody Asked the Team · The Lagging Team

• 0:00
  Katrina L. Coker: And what I had to give feedback on is, I'm
• 0:02
  like, they're giving threes or fours, but it's because they're
• 0:06
  all in it together. It's not because they're actually happy.
• 0:09
  I said, so those are the hidden things that y'all need to be
• 0:12
  aware of. They might even be giving fives, but it's because
• 0:14
  they're like, well, I'm not fired. I still have a job. I'm
• 0:19
  still getting paid.
• 0:21
  Devon Morris: This is the Lagging Team. Falling behind is
• 0:25
  a position, not a verdict. Today's episode is "Nobody Asked
• 0:30
  the Team." Hello, everyone. I have really an extremely special
• 0:44
  guest with us today, and I want to make sure we jump right into
• 0:48
  whoever who she is. So, and then we're not starting a
• 0:52
  conversation because we've had a whole conversation already that
• 0:54
  we just won't let you all into. But let me tell you about
• 0:57
  Katrina. Katrina L. Coker is The Scrum Mother on TikTok, on
• 1:02
  Instagram, on LinkedIn, on YouTube. She's a CEO and a
• 1:05
  business owner, and she's the author of two, not just one.
• 1:09
  Right? ScrumMaster Application and Interview Process, and the
• 1:14
  Scrum Master First 90 Days: The Scrum Mother Approach. That one
• 1:18
  is coming out here in 2026. So there's a November time frame
• 1:23
  for that. So make sure you go out there and grab that book.
• 1:26
  She's got a master's in conflict management, which I don't have,
• 1:29
  right? So we're gonna make sure we get into that, and a
• 1:31
  bachelor's in international business, both out of Kennesaw
• 1:34
  State. And I ask Katrina here because she walks into teams
• 1:40
  where the job already changed and nobody said anything out
• 1:45
  loud, and she's built an actual system for finding out how far
• 1:51
  behind a team really is. Welcome this amazing guest. Now, here's
• 1:58
  what I keep coming back to, Katrina. Nobody announces it.
• 2:04
  It's probably the pattern that I see all the time. The reorg
• 2:08
  happens. The tooling changes. The customers start asking for
• 2:13
  something else, and the work in front of the people quietly
• 2:17
  comes to a halt, being the work that they actually agree to. But
• 2:21
  things are starting to change. There's no meeting, and a team
• 2:25
  is behind before a word is ever said about it. I would love for
• 2:32
  you to begin this conversation here by telling me about a time
• 2:38
  you actually watched the ground move under a team.
• 2:44
  Katrina L. Coker: Thank you so much for having me, Dr. Morris.
• 2:46
  I really appreciate it. And I would say every Scrum Master
• 2:53
  role that I've had, it just happens to be that there was
• 2:57
  already a Scrum Master that was in the role before me, and the
• 3:01
  team was reforming every single role that I've been been in. So,
• 3:05
  team reformation is my expertise. I think accidentally
• 3:10
  fell into my lap that way, which ended up having to be really
• 3:13
  good at it. So, I'll give you all the a few different
• 3:16
  examples.
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  Devon Morris: Okay.
• 3:18
  Katrina L. Coker: In one example, the very first team I
• 3:20
  had, the team started out with doing some security remediation
• 3:26
  after a security break, and then their product changed to cloud
• 3:32
  services. Okay, in the second teams, they were doing a rebuild
• 3:40
  of a website. It was supposed to be lift and shift, meaning take
• 3:45
  what you already have and move it. It did not end up that way.
• 3:50
  It ended up being they were doing a full rebuild. In the
• 3:55
  next teams that I would went, you talked about tools. So there
• 3:58
  were two situations related to tools. For example, one of my
• 4:03
  teams. This is very important. They their backlog management
• 4:08
  tool was ServiceNow. They special the team experts of
• 4:14
  ServiceNow. The company changed their backlog management tool,
• 4:19
  so the team was like, "Why are we changing it? This is our
• 4:23
  tool. Did we do something wrong, right? And then in the last
• 4:27
  situation, we had a team that was new to. They went changing
• 4:32
  from Peoplesoft, which was an HR technology tool, to to Workday.
• 4:39
  So when I by the time then I got to the team, they had only been
• 4:43
  using Workday for about a year. So and all of the questions we
• 4:47
  had to ask is not how just how the team is working together.
• 4:50
  It's does the team know the product that they're building,
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  and that was an area question that had not been asked. It was
• 4:58
  just hey, you're going to start using the product. Go with it.
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  There was there was little to no training. There was no questions
• 5:05
  asked about how. What is your experience with this tool? So in
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  all of my experiences, it was where somehow the team didn't
• 5:15
  have a choice, and things changed, and there was no
• 5:20
  assessment. Even this last teams that I were on was on. They knew
• 5:24
  the tool. They were picking up the speed, but their timeline
• 5:30
  was not their choice. And so much so that the timeline was
• 5:36
  you're missing the timeline. And the teams go, but we didn't
• 5:40
  choose that timeline. You didn't ask us what it took to do the
• 5:44
  job and how long we thought it was going to do. So I actually
• 5:48
  go off of that one because that's my most recent. And I'll
• 5:51
  tell you what we started with is asking a whole bunch of
• 5:53
  questions, figuring out what was working, what wasn't working
• 5:57
  from the team's perspective, and when we took it back to
• 6:00
  leadership. We said, "Hey, how did this timeline get selected?
• 6:07
  And they said, "Because we took what needed to be done and we
• 6:11
  divided it by the number of sprints that we had, and we said
• 6:16
  this is the timeline that we need to be done. So these are
• 6:18
  the number of features. These are the number of stories
• 6:21
  basically that you need to do between now and then, and so we
• 6:26
  did a deep dive into the metrics and saying this is how
• 6:31
  historically how many features we were able to get done. This
• 6:36
  is how long it's going to take us. They said, "Well, if we go
• 6:39
  by the number of features in our history, we're not going to be
• 6:41
  done for two to three years. I'm like, exactly, right. So when it
• 6:47
  came down to the teams of they, we asked a lot of questions. We
• 6:53
  asked them, hey, this is what our timeline is from your
• 6:57
  perspective. How can we make this happen? And the teams then
• 7:02
  came back with an answer of, "Well, then, if we get to say
• 7:05
  no, these are the things we don't think that we should have
• 7:07
  to do. We don't think that these are the top priority. And in
• 7:11
  some of the instances, the leadership was receptive, but
• 7:14
  there were other instances where leadership said, "No, we can't
• 7:17
  take that out. That's a must.
• 7:21
  Devon Morris: Yeah, I, you know, you first of all, Miss Scrum
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  Mother, those are amazing examples. They really, really
• 7:31
  are because it just reminds me and tells me about your
• 7:36
  experience. Like you're talking about real projects that you
• 7:39
  have actually experienced. So, here's my question for you: What
• 7:45
  did you see in the first week that told you something about
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  what was going on? That is a common thread across those
• 7:57
  efforts.
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  Katrina L. Coker: I would say there are two key indicators.
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  One is everybody's saying we're fine, everything's fine, there's
• 8:11
  no problems, and and I but and all the teams I will say all the
• 8:16
  teams I've worked with people actually got along. There was
• 8:19
  only one in situation where people called out an individual
• 8:25
  as an issue, but for the most part, every team I've worked
• 8:27
  with, people enjoyed working with each other. So for the most
• 8:30
  part, working together was not the problem. But what they
• 8:33
  didn't know is there was nobody asking hard questions. There was
• 8:37
  nobody coming in and saying, breaking it down into not
• 8:44
  saying, "Hey, do you have problems? Right. If you say, "Do
• 8:46
  you have any problems? Most people will say, "No, have any
• 8:49
  problems. But when you start saying, "Hey, how is the team
• 8:53
  communication? How are the dynamics? Are there any? What
• 8:57
  are the blockers for you? Right. What are the pain points you're
• 9:01
  having, which goes into my approach? These are the
• 9:04
  questions I ask when I first get with a team of saying, I from a
• 9:10
  from a communication people perspective, what's going well,
• 9:13
  versus what are some pain points? Who tends to be a
• 9:17
  blocker for you intentionally or unintentionally, right? Or from
• 9:22
  a process perspective, what what process or meetings works really
• 9:27
  good for you? Meaning that you you find that it's super
• 9:29
  valuable for you. You get a lot of information because you would
• 9:32
  think most people would say, "I hate meetings. Take me out of
• 9:34
  all meetings. That's actually not the case. Most people will
• 9:37
  tell you what time of day is the most productive for them versus
• 9:42
  what are the time of days that they feel like is a complete
• 9:44
  waste of time, and then the finally is when it comes into
• 9:47
  technology. How is your? Do you like your product? Do you like?
• 9:52
  Do you know what your product is? Do you know what the
• 9:54
  product's vision is? Do you enjoy coming to work and
• 9:56
  building this product? Sometimes the answer is yes. Sometimes the
• 9:59
  answer. No, it's actually really boring. In one instance, there
• 10:03
  was we were building a product for our for customers, but the
• 10:09
  own company wasn't using that product. So people, so the team
• 10:14
  again, this was actually separate than the one I told you
• 10:16
  before, where they changed the product. This one was a company
• 10:20
  never used their own product, and so the team, when they found
• 10:23
  that out, they felt really defeated. They're like, "Why is
• 10:26
  our company not proud to use what we're building, even though
• 10:29
  they're recommending it to other customers? Right? Or it can be
• 10:32
  from the backlog management tool. How is it working for you?
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  What do you enjoy about it? Because again, they'll tell you
• 10:39
  what what works for them versus what doesn't. So the key
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  indicator is often people are saying it's fine, it's fine,
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  everything's fine, and just going through the motions and
• 10:49
  doing what people are telling them to do because they're good
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  team players, right? They want to be good employees and they
• 10:55
  want to. They are working together well, so they're like,
• 10:58
  hey, we're all in this together. I actually had somebody say that
• 11:03
  from a positive, like, "Hey, we're all in this together.
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  Somebody was like, "Well, at least we're all in this
• 11:06
  together, right? So I think the key indicators are everybody
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  saying we're fine, we're fine, and it doesn't mean that they're
• 11:14
  not necessarily fine. It just means that there hasn't been
• 11:18
  anybody who's asking the questions. There hasn't anybody
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  who's really stopped and asked the team, "Hey, you're not just
• 11:24
  a cog in a machine. You're an individual with a talent and
• 11:27
  expertise that we hired, right? You're not just you're not just
• 11:32
  an intern, and even interns have expertise, right? But you're we
• 11:36
  hired you because you've been in 10, 20 years of experience. We
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  hope you know what you're doing. So let me get your point of
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  view, right?
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  And whether it's shifting from traditional project management
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  or just people want to get the work out the door, so they're
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  doing what they're told to do, but not always. What do we say?
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  Doing the right thing and doing the thing right. And normally,
• 12:01
  my first week on the job, that's the, that's the primary key
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  takeaway, is everybody's working together great. They want to be
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  good team players. They actually might even love working
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  for the company. It's just a matter of nobody's really
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  stopped to to really evaluate in detail and assess how's this
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  working. Are we going in the right direction?
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  Devon Morris: So, so then, one of the things that you brought
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  up was that there there wasn't a bunch of big conflict in the
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  beginning, which doesn't get you get a chance to really work that
• 12:29
  conflict management degree that you have. But but I want to take
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  a slightly different perspective because I know you was just
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  talking about the team, right? So what did the leader actually
• 12:42
  think was happening versus what was actually happening.
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  Katrina L. Coker: Okay, so that's a really good question, and I want
• 12:51
  to have empathy for everybody involved because this is where
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  change management is hard. Leaders are surprised when the
• 12:58
  issues still exist. Every so, my process is no matter how long
• 13:04
  the team has been together, I assume they know know more about
• 13:08
  the situation than I do, right? So on day one, I walk in saying
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  I have my expertise, but the people who have been there can
• 13:14
  tell me what's going on. In every situation, when I ask
• 13:17
  these questions and I do this assessment, and I come back to
• 13:21
  leaders. They go, "Oh, that's old news. And sometimes they
• 13:27
  they literally say, "That's old news. That's not current. I'm
• 13:29
  like, I just asked them. Like I just asked them. These are
• 13:32
  questions. Or sometimes they feel defeated. They go, "That's
• 13:36
  old news. I thought we had, I thought we had worked that out.
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  And and so that's usually mostly the case, right? But we also
• 13:46
  have sometimes leaders go, well, it doesn't matter. This is what
• 13:49
  we told them to do. I also I I had I can think of one situation
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  where, and I and basically from the leader's perspective, their
• 13:58
  perspective is we may we did an assessment at the time. As
• 14:02
  leaders, we made this decision. Going back and telling the team
• 14:07
  why we made that decision really isn't a productive use of our
• 14:09
  time because we're not changing that decision. We don't want
• 14:12
  flak. We don't want them to believe that they have choice
• 14:17
  when they don't have a choice. I have some respect for that. I'll
• 14:20
  be honest. Don't ask questions you don't know the answer to.
• 14:23
  But at the same time, people are people, and they have emotions
• 14:28
  and feelings. And sometimes you need to address those. It's like
• 14:33
  the basic human needs, the hierarchy of needs, right? You
• 14:36
  got to address the heart.
• 14:38
  Devon Morris: When you think about that, right, and you name
• 14:43
  that thing in the room, right? Whether it's a leader, you know,
• 14:48
  not being a good leader and just like just go do it, right? And
• 14:51
  not even saying good or bad, just like go do it, regardless
• 14:54
  of what people's emotions are, and even if the leaders that say
• 14:58
  go do it, you brought up the idea that we are human, and
• 15:04
  there is the socio, the emotional. There's all those
• 15:08
  other things that come with being human. When you're able to
• 15:11
  get a leader to recognize that, what actually happens versus the
• 15:16
  leaders that don't recognize that?
• 15:19
  Katrina L. Coker: Oh gosh, immense progress. Immense progress.
• 15:23
  Their teams see that they have a point of view. So we, we, I,
• 15:30
  I've had seen two things. So from the leader's perspective,
• 15:34
  when the leader can either say, "Okay, let's go, I hear them
• 15:39
  out. Let's move forward. Then change happens because the
• 15:42
  reality is sometimes people that are building they have no
• 15:46
  authority; they can't make change. So when a leader says,
• 15:51
  "I got you. What do you need? Change happens, right? But then
• 15:57
  we also have then when the change does happen, the people
• 16:03
  that you're asking, they keep giving their feedback. They feel
• 16:07
  like I matters. It makes sense to answer the employee survey.
• 16:12
  It's not a waste of my time when people say in a retrospective
• 16:16
  what's working, what's not working, what can we do
• 16:18
  different, right? I'll give you a very specific example of
• 16:22
  someone that I have an immense respect for, based off of this,
• 16:26
  and and it's a simple example. So again, I do I do the same
• 16:31
  process every single team I start with, and sometimes
• 16:34
  multiple times, right? Multiple times a year. So I have these
• 16:39
  questions, and I say, what's working? How are team dynamics?
• 16:43
  A team said, "It's actually going really well, but I feel
• 16:47
  like I would like to hang out more. The team said, "We would
• 16:51
  like to have more social time. Okay. In conjunction with that,
• 16:56
  in meetings, I was finding that there in this particular team,
• 17:01
  the senior the dev lead had direct reports on their same
• 17:07
  team. Okay, that's important because in the meetings, what I
• 17:11
  was finding is this particular dev lead was the primary one
• 17:16
  talking. Okay, and that in every single meeting, and so then then
• 17:23
  that mixed with the team saying we kind of want to hang out
• 17:27
  more, we want more social time. I then was concerned that for
• 17:34
  whatever reason the their man they were seeing the dev lead as
• 17:39
  a manager and that they didn't feel like overruling that
• 17:43
  person, and I was starting to see it as a personnel concern.
• 17:47
  So I went to each individual person for another round of
• 17:50
  one-on-ones and said, "Hey, I noticed that the he's the only
• 17:56
  one that talks, and y'all don't talk when he's around. Is there
• 17:59
  a concern with you not being able to push back in the
• 18:03
  meetings with your manager. I ended up. I ended up then
• 18:07
  bringing this up in a retrospective to everyone,
• 18:10
  saying, "Hey, this person only talks. What ended up happening
• 18:16
  is they said, "One, we value him. We like him, but this
• 18:21
  manager also said to me personally, "I'm not their
• 18:25
  friends. That's not what I come to work to do, right? He, but
• 18:31
  what he did say is, he said, "But I don't want to block them.
• 18:36
  And what ended up happening was two things. One is he went out
• 18:40
  of town. He had an emergency. It was not his fault, but he went
• 18:44
  out of town. The team stepped up, and they took control. And
• 18:50
  they were, they're all really experienced, fun people. And he
• 18:55
  showed pride in them. He allowed them when he came back and saw
• 18:59
  things changed. He said, "Cool, keep doing that, right? In
• 19:03
  addition to sometimes he would say, "Hey, I know that they need
• 19:09
  this. I hear you. I hear them. I'm not a nurturer. Can you help
• 19:14
  me with this because you're better at this than them? So we
• 19:18
  had a people issue on the team, and he said, "I hear you. I'm
• 19:23
  afraid this is going to go bad if I handle it right. And then
• 19:27
  when we had a social event, he joined the social event, and
• 19:31
  everybody was shocked. And I use that as an example because it
• 19:36
  had, I mean, has vital impact. He didn't need to change his
• 19:40
  approach necessarily. He didn't feel like he needed to be
• 19:43
  authentic, inauthentic. He didn't need to be buddy buddy,
• 19:47
  but he he was able to listen and say, "Okay, so how do I get them
• 19:52
  what they need in a different way? And he still encouraged
• 19:59
  them to step up, and to this day, that team was the most most
• 20:03
  organized team I've had. Because of this person's thought
• 20:07
  process, this person was a developer by trade, but also
• 20:10
  wanted to be an architect.
• 20:11
  So they were very organized, and the team took their lead, but
• 20:15
  were able to work together and be friendly and have some of
• 20:19
  those extra social activities. But if it, but I'll tell you the
• 20:23
  alternative. I had gone to the manager and said, "Hey, you're
• 20:26
  the only one that's talking, or "Hey, you're coming off kind of
• 20:31
  harsh right now, and he said, "Well, they're just gonna have
• 20:33
  to suck it up. That's just not what I do. I think that that
• 20:37
  would have been much. It would have had a much different
• 20:39
  outcome. And even when I told other people who knew this
• 20:42
  developer, hey, they showed up on the Pictionary when we did
• 20:46
  Pictionary. People are like, really? Nobody expected that
• 20:49
  from him, and and I just really appreciated that it was an
• 20:52
  example of how you can be a leader without having to do
• 20:57
  things that you don't feel is you.
• 21:02
  Devon Morris: You, you, you, you said some, you said I want to
• 21:05
  unpack an element of that that I think that you are an expert at,
• 21:14
  and this concept and the leader that you just talked about
• 21:17
  sounds like there was some transition with them, but I know
• 21:20
  you had this thing happen with other leaders, and it's a it's a
• 21:24
  part of what you write about, right? Voluntold, right? So,
• 21:32
  what happens to a team when the person leading them is behind
• 21:38
  and they're just voluntelling them all the time?
• 21:44
  Katrina L. Coker: Well, I think that's a really good question because I
• 21:46
  would say it depends on which type of leader you're talking
• 21:50
  about and what role the person has in leading them. Because we
• 21:54
  have, where in my situation, I had actually where you had scrum
• 22:00
  somebody who took on the Scrum Master role, that was not their
• 22:04
  responsibility. Or you had people who were made a manager,
• 22:09
  a people manager, and that wasn't what they asked for. So,
• 22:14
  at this perspective, which is the most? Which are you thinking
• 22:17
  about?
• 22:18
  Devon Morris: I like I like both of them, but I was initially
• 22:21
  thinking about the person that's a leader that's voluntelling
• 22:24
  people. But I think both of them would actually be valuable for
• 22:27
  the audience.
• 22:28
  Katrina L. Coker: Okay, so you're saying what about the leader that's
• 22:30
  that's voluntelling other people, not the leader that got
• 22:33
  voluntold?
• 22:34
  Devon Morris: Well, I like both perspectives. Is the point I'm
• 22:37
  making to you. So
• 22:38
  Katrina L. Coker: Okay.
• 22:39
  Devon Morris: I'd love to hear about the the leader that's doing the
• 22:43
  I'm voluntelling you, and then hear how that feels from for
• 22:47
  them being voluntold as well. Because I think there's
• 22:50
  parallels in the two, in terms of how people are.
• 22:55
  Katrina L. Coker: Well, I'll give you an example of something that
• 22:59
  happened more recent to where we'll just talk about even
• 23:02
  sprint goals, right? The sprint goal is something that the team
• 23:08
  is to decide and the team is to push back on, and but what we
• 23:16
  found is that there is a reality that sometimes there are
• 23:19
  timelines that is not up to the team, okay? And that might be
• 23:22
  something small, meaning, hey, we have this major bug that we
• 23:27
  have to fix security remediation by a certain time, but we also
• 23:31
  can't start it by a certain time, or we have a feature that
• 23:33
  the person who's paying us said don't start it, but you have to
• 23:36
  deliver it by a certain time, okay? How that impacted us is
• 23:40
  well, some things were ended up slating for ended up being in a
• 23:45
  sprint because we say, hey, this is this is a priority from the
• 23:48
  product owner's perspective. This is priority from the
• 23:50
  customer, and what ended up happening is the product owner
• 23:56
  or product owners at the time were the ones writing the
• 23:58
  sprint goals. Okay, and so when we were going through the process
• 24:03
  of writing a sprint goal, we had teammates who said, "Why are we
• 24:08
  even doing this? If you like, what's the point of a goal if we
• 24:11
  know what we have to do? Right? If we have no say so, we can't
• 24:16
  tell you no. We can't tell you yes. We can't tell you, you
• 24:19
  know, going back to that timeline of hey, we have this
• 24:22
  overall timeline that they told us that we can tell you to say
• 24:28
  no to everything that's not the highest priority, but you're not
• 24:31
  allowing us to do that, right? And from the team's perspective,
• 24:36
  they were feeling like it was a waste of time, and to some
• 24:40
  extent, they felt like it was a waste time even to come to
• 24:42
  sprint planning to figure out what we were going to do for the
• 24:44
  next two weeks because they're like, you already have it laid
• 24:48
  out. So what's the point of doing this? When we shifted to
• 24:52
  say, you know what, you're right, you're right. The sprint
• 24:56
  backlog and the sprint goal is up to y'all to be. To tell what
• 25:00
  we can do, so where I came in is I say, look, this is what we've
• 25:04
  historically been doing from a numbers from a numbers
• 25:08
  perspective, story points, throughput, whatever. This is
• 25:12
  what is from a from a product perspective the highest
• 25:15
  priority, and we would say, is there one? What do you think
• 25:19
  about this? Is this actually the highest priority? We would ask
• 25:22
  them from what you're hearing. Is this the highest priority? We
• 25:25
  would confirm that. We would say, based off of this, is there
• 25:28
  anything that you don't think is a highest priority? We would
• 25:31
  allow them to take it out, and we say, hey, is there anything
• 25:34
  else that you, as an individual, has been asked to do that we
• 25:38
  need to talk about that is not yet in our backlog that we need
• 25:40
  to figure out if it's a priority. Now we're going to
• 25:44
  probably have to come back to that point because a lot we had
• 25:46
  a lot of it's only five minutes of of work getting done that was
• 25:50
  not documented. So because that was the opposite, we had to be
• 25:54
  like, okay, we got sprint goals, but then y'all were going
• 25:58
  against your sprint goal that you're you're suing. So we'll
• 26:00
  talk about that later, but that's an example of voluntold
• 26:03
  where the shift was when they felt like, and I can think of in
• 26:08
  this particular situation multiple situations to where
• 26:11
  when the team actually said this, like this is not a
• 26:15
  priority. I don't know how we got we even committed we
• 26:18
  committed to this in sprint goal, but I'm telling you, as
• 26:21
  I'm figuring it out, this is not a good use of our time. When we
• 26:24
  took that back to leadership, and they said, "Okay, get done
• 26:26
  with it, the team was like, "Oh, oh, I actually do have control
• 26:31
  over this, and they felt they had control over their career.
• 26:35
  Right? It's not just a matter of I have control over this moment.
• 26:39
  It means that I can choose. We actually can choose as a team in
• 26:43
  this two-week sprint to make sure that we are delivering our
• 26:47
  expertise.
• 26:48
  That and I know I'm putting a lot of effort on that because
• 26:51
  it's not just about building a product that people want and
• 26:54
  need. It's about we are building careers. We are building
• 26:57
  expertise to share with the world, right? And when you start
• 27:01
  voluntelling people, they lose that struggle, and it would be
• 27:07
  fine if they didn't get punished for it, right? But you start
• 27:12
  telling them, voluntelling, and then they're not doing it the
• 27:15
  way you expected, or they're not doing it in the time that you
• 27:18
  wanted, and then it's their fault that they're not living up
• 27:23
  to the expectations that you set for them, and not agreed upon.
• 27:27
  Devon Morris: After we recorded, Katrina followed up to sharpen
• 27:32
  this. She's clear that tight, immovable deadlines are a part
• 27:38
  of business. Her concern is expecting more velocity when the
• 27:44
  tools, the people, and the processes all stay the same.
• 27:49
  Let's get back to the episode. You know, you you got a thread
• 27:54
  in that that I think is so important, and I don't I don't
• 27:57
  want to miss it. And you you said the word, and then you you
• 28:03
  did just talk about how you got them past it. But what are some
• 28:07
  of the things that you actually notice when you recognize that a
• 28:12
  team feels defeated?
• 28:17
  Katrina L. Coker: Oh, those are unspoken burnout. People start getting
• 28:22
  sick more frequently, physically sick. People are calling out
• 28:26
  more frequent. They are in in the worst case scenarios. They
• 28:31
  stop talking. They stop talking. They stop. We come to meetings
• 28:36
  and they're like, it doesn't matter. And and when I said
• 28:38
  earlier, where people go, there's that one side. Well,
• 28:41
  we're all in this together. That happened recently, where they
• 28:43
  said we were in a retrospective of like, look, we keep giving
• 28:46
  you all this feedback. You keep asking us the same questions.
• 28:50
  You have the information box. Are you looking at the
• 28:53
  information box? Right. We don't even know. And they literally
• 28:56
  said, well, at least we're all in this together. And so it's
• 29:01
  interesting because at that particular place we were
• 29:05
  highlighting happiness metrics, which I actually happen to love,
• 29:08
  by the way. Right, saying on a scale of one to five how you
• 29:11
  like in your role on this team, the role at the company, and
• 29:15
  this project. Right, and what I had to give feedback on is I'm
• 29:19
  like they're giving threes or fours, but it's because they're
• 29:23
  all in it together. It's not because they're actually happy.
• 29:26
  I said so. Those are the hidden things that y'all need to be
• 29:29
  aware of. They might even be giving fives, but it's because
• 29:32
  we're like, well, I'm not fired. I still have a job. I'm still
• 29:36
  getting paid, but that doesn't mean that five is the same as
• 29:40
  man. I am like so excited to be here. I am building a product
• 29:44
  that people are excited about. It's very different. So I'm
• 29:47
  like, you're put, you're seeing fives. I'm telling y'all, that's
• 29:49
  not how it is.
• 29:51
  Devon Morris: Well, here's the thing that's curious, right?
• 29:53
  Because now, now, now I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go to you on this
• 29:56
  one, right? Because I, you've seen it. You've worked with.
• 30:00
  That have had that that issue of being defeated. Have you been
• 30:07
  that person that has felt that way when working in an
• 30:10
  organization? Tell me a little bit about that.
• 30:14
  Katrina L. Coker: I get to a point to where when I'm getting to the
• 30:17
  point that my primary job is keeping people from quitting,
• 30:21
  and there's nothing else I can do other than keeping them above
• 30:24
  board. I am often talking to my manager, being like, "I I feel
• 30:30
  terrible. I feel terrible. There's nothing else I can do. I
• 30:34
  don't I I don't like seeing humans used as pawns. And when I
• 30:40
  feel like their careers on the line. I'll give you one very
• 30:43
  specific example. How do I say this? Try and this is going to
• 30:49
  be publicized. So don't
• 30:52
  Devon Morris: don't get no names. Don't get no companies.
• 30:54
  No, no,
• 30:54
  Katrina L. Coker: no. I I I'm trying to I'm trying to give a scenario
• 30:57
  that others may have experienced without being too specific,
• 31:01
  okay. So just think two departments, okay. I'll give you
• 31:06
  an example. I'll put it this way: Imagine developers are in
• 31:14
  one completely department. Department quality engineers are
• 31:18
  in another completely different department, and when they are in
• 31:22
  two separate departments on two separate teams, what do we have?
• 31:26
  What do we find? We find that there's blockers, there's
• 31:29
  dependencies. They can't work. They can't complete their thing
• 31:33
  without each other. But there are some instances where
• 31:36
  developers don't need quality engineers. There are some things
• 31:39
  that quality engineers do that they don't need developers, so
• 31:42
  we understand that happens sometimes. But then, when we do
• 31:45
  a deep dive, and I do six months of work, looking through every
• 31:49
  single user story, and looking at how many how many times did
• 31:53
  they actually work together, and it was one team very low, and
• 31:59
  then like 25% and the other team was 75 to 90% of the time. Okay,
• 32:04
  and this was across the board where we found the majority of
• 32:06
  the time they could not deliver their thing without each other.
• 32:09
  Okay, do this deep dive, and when I'm talking departments,
• 32:14
  meaning multiple developer teams, multiple quality teams.
• 32:18
  Okay, so then the leaders decide of these two departments, we
• 32:23
  can't do things without each other. It would be best if we
• 32:26
  combine the teams so that we have these teams that have what
• 32:29
  they need with minimal expertise. So I'm on the teams,
• 32:37
  and I'm giving you an example. Example, right? It's not the
• 32:39
  exact same. So then, I'm the scrum master for the developer
• 32:43
  teams, for example. Okay. Quality engineer teams get
• 32:48
  combined. We reform to some extent, and we have a kickoff.
• 32:53
  And I ask all my questions again. We have these intro. We
• 32:56
  have. We're starting to pick a team name. We are doing the team
• 33:01
  formation things. Welcome, people. We're getting. I
• 33:07
  actually don't know how long it was. We'll just say we're
• 33:10
  getting to our 90-day mark, which is we're like awesome. 90
• 33:13
  days is what I have found. We're getting in the groove. I'm
• 33:17
  seeing it in our metrics. People are saying, you know, in our
• 33:20
  retrospectives, are like, whoa, gosh, we're so happy to have
• 33:23
  you, quality engineers. Meanwhile, quality engineer
• 33:28
  department has new leadership, and said we're sending in the
• 33:35
  cavalry to take back our power, essentially, and decide quality
• 33:42
  engineer teams are going to do their own thing, are going to
• 33:45
  get removed from teams. So quality engineers did their own
• 33:52
  thing, were working with us sporadically, then joined the
• 33:55
  team full time, and then were taken away again. Quality
• 33:59
  engineers, that was not their choice, and if it was up to
• 34:03
  them, they would have stayed with us because they agreed that
• 34:06
  they were able to get more done. I, I can, I to this day, I even
• 34:13
  remember, I remember a senior leader coming to me, and they're
• 34:16
  like, "So, I hear you're having a blast. I hear you have a. I
• 34:21
  hear things are going real well, right? And that was a situation
• 34:26
  to where when it came to performance reviews, and they
• 34:29
  said, "How did the last year go? What were your top three
• 34:32
  strengths? I'm like, nobody quit. Nobody quit. And I and I
• 34:37
  found that actually as a to to an extent pride because I'm
• 34:40
  like, hey, I kept, I kept our teams together, I kept us
• 34:44
  through it all, but that's on seriously, that's only can go
• 34:48
  for so long. I can.
• 34:51
  Devon Morris: We love the cat in the in the picture.
• 34:55
  Katrina L. Coker: This is Fiona.
• 34:56
  Devon Morris: Hey, Fiona.
• 34:57
  Katrina L. Coker: This is my this is my empath cat. Like if she feels me
• 35:01
  getting riled up,
• 35:03
  Devon Morris: getting riled up here. So,
• 35:05
  Katrina L. Coker: and you see how I'm. So when I, so how long is this
• 35:09
  gonna last? How long is this gonna last when I'm hearing
• 35:13
  again people's careers? They're not giving an opinion. They're
• 35:17
  not allowed to give their opinion. They're not saying what
• 35:22
  helps us make better. They're not allowed to say what helps
• 35:24
  make us better products. And then you have people start
• 35:28
  going, "There, don't don't ask me for what you want me to do.
• 35:32
  Don't ask me my opinion. Don't ask me what you can do better
• 35:38
  when you're not going to do any of it. And what also makes me
• 35:43
  sad is, to some extent, I wish people would quit. They deserve
• 35:48
  better. They deserve better. And I've told leadership this. I
• 35:51
  say, I hope we don't lose good people because we've got really
• 35:55
  good team members. We've got people who know their stuff, and
• 36:00
  I hope they don't go somewhere, but on the other hand, I hope
• 36:03
  they do, yeah, because they deserve that.
• 36:05
  Devon Morris: I I can, you know, if if there's any, I've been at
• 36:08
  places where I felt completely defeated, so I can completely
• 36:12
  relate to that. Fiona came in at the perfect time for that
• 36:17
  conversation, so that's super amazing. Now here's the deal.
• 36:21
  I'm I'm gonna talk to you and switch beats a little bit
• 36:27
  because you know there's a lot of great and unique things about
• 36:31
  you when you are able to diagnose things. You've had that
• 36:34
  type of experience. You have a master's in conflict management.
• 36:39
  So you brought up something that that that caught my attention.
• 36:44
  It was just one little piece of that conversation that you just
• 36:48
  had, and that is 90 days, because the 90 day roadmap is
• 36:57
  not truly about onboarding. And so my my question for you is,
• 37:04
  what are you actually doing in weeks one through four to find
• 37:10
  out how far a team is behind and how that team feels?
• 37:19
  Katrina L. Coker: I mean, I'm be honest. I don't necessarily like the
• 37:23
  thought of saying that the team is behind, right? I don't. I'm
• 37:27
  gonna push back on that because that's often how they sometimes
• 37:31
  they feel. They feel like they're behind, and there's a
• 37:33
  lot of times where when we do these assessments, I'm like, you
• 37:36
  just one, you've done what you could up to this point. It's
• 37:39
  just maybe not serving you anymore, okay? Or, or you just
• 37:44
  didn't know, right? We're we're continuously growing, which is
• 37:48
  often what I tell leaders. Those leaders that are defeated when
• 37:50
  they go, "I thought we already worked through this. I'm like,
• 37:53
  "Well, maybe you did. Maybe you did get better. It's just
• 37:56
  there's more room for improvement in this area, right?
• 38:01
  So, so I'm going to push back on that, but I would say in the
• 38:05
  first four weeks on a team, you know, I'm going to have to give
• 38:10
  my mom credit for this one, who's been in the back of my
• 38:12
  mind. She's an accountant. She's a practice administrator for a
• 38:16
  doctor's office. She's managed a lot of people, and she's like,
• 38:19
  be careful making changes too quickly, right? Now, so
• 38:23
  basically, just be careful, right? Don't observe to some
• 38:27
  extent, right? So I'm going to say that's probably I'm going to
• 38:30
  give her just a little bit of credit there, but I find that it
• 38:34
  it depends on the situation. So if I'm coming new to a team and
• 38:39
  new to a company, there's a lot that's going on in the first two
• 38:42
  weeks, anyway, right? I'm getting my equipment. I'm
• 38:45
  learning the lay of the land. Depends on if it's a virtual
• 38:48
  job, in-person job, even virtual job. The first week, usually I'm
• 38:52
  in in meetings with people trying to just figure out what
• 38:55
  our product is and just doing some introductory stuff, right?
• 38:59
  So the first two weeks are observation, learning, just
• 39:04
  watching. Right? You might even. It also depends. Do they already
• 39:07
  have a scrum master? Do they already have? Are they already
• 39:10
  have scrum, or are we are we getting this startup? But I told
• 39:13
  you my experience has primarily been there has already been a
• 39:16
  scrum master. There, the team is already running scrum to some
• 39:20
  sense. So in those instances, I was seeing what did they already
• 39:23
  have, what what exists, what doesn't exist, in my mind going
• 39:28
  what probably should be moved around, right? I have that in my
• 39:31
  mind. In the first two weeks, I'm also introducing myself. I'm
• 39:34
  having a kickoff, whether I am new to the company, new to the
• 39:38
  team, whatever. I'm always saying, hey, I'm going to tell
• 39:41
  you who I am, what I'm about, with everybody and anybody that
• 39:45
  I need to know, so that you can one, so that when we do our
• 39:50
  one-on-ones, we don't have to talk about me, right? We don't
• 39:53
  have to spend time talking about me. You also know a little bit
• 39:55
  about me, so that when we go under our one-on-ones, we might
• 39:59
  have something already in common, right? It's also a way
• 40:03
  that this is a leadership role, specifically Scrum Master role
• 40:06
  is a leadership role, and there are people that I'm going to
• 40:08
  need to contact that I don't work with on a regular day. So I
• 40:13
  want people to know my name, so that when I send them an email
• 40:15
  for a one-on-one, or I send them a Slack message or a Teams
• 40:18
  message, they're going to go. At least I know who she is. I don't
• 40:21
  know what she wants, but at least I know she is right.
• 40:24
  Whereas if you never do this, and 90, you get 90 days in, and
• 40:27
  you finally need to contact the CEO sometimes, and they go, "Who
• 40:32
  is this person? Who is this person? Why are Why are they
• 40:35
  even messaging me? Right, and I have had multiple people come
• 40:39
  back to me six to nine months later, and say something.
• 40:42
  They're like, "Hey, in your introductory, you said this, or
• 40:44
  "Hey, I know who you are because I attended that thing. Right. So
• 40:49
  the first two weeks is observing, onboarding with the
• 40:51
  team, general observations, and then this within the first two
• 40:57
  to four weeks, I'm also starting to do my one-on-ones with anyone
• 41:00
  and everyone on my Bit Work chart, it might look different
• 41:03
  to different to different level of who I interact.
• 41:06
  Like it's going to be different with my team members versus CEO,
• 41:10
  who I might have to, you know, just say hello. This is who I
• 41:14
  am, right? And then I'm putting together my my summary of what's
• 41:20
  coming up from the one-on-ones? Because again, my perspective
• 41:23
  is, I'm good at what I do. I know what I do, but they're the
• 41:26
  experts of their situation. They know what's everybody who's been
• 41:30
  there before me knows what's happening. So I'm taking the
• 41:34
  lead, because again, going back to don't change things too
• 41:37
  quickly. There are some things that I know right away that I
• 41:41
  can tell you, I have that observation. But then, when I
• 41:45
  tell you, when I then bring to you an assessment of all the
• 41:49
  questions I've asked, and it's from all these different
• 41:52
  people: the team, their managers, the customers who work with the
• 41:55
  team. That's a very different perspective than hey, this is
• 41:58
  the scrum master who came in and had this perspective and just
• 42:00
  started making all these changes and making all these
• 42:02
  assumptions, right? Some of them I probably most of them I
• 42:05
  probably saw myself, but sometimes not. I'll give you the
• 42:08
  one I told you about earlier with the leader who I had a
• 42:11
  perspective. I'm like, oh no, they're not talking because
• 42:13
  their manager's in the meeting. When that was not, that wasn't
• 42:16
  right. And there's been some other times where I said I made
• 42:20
  an observation and it was right. I saw it day one, right? So the
• 42:26
  first four weeks on the job are observation, me introducing
• 42:31
  myself to anyone and everyone, having one-on-ones and gathering
• 42:34
  their feedback so that we can create a coaching plan and
• 42:38
  figure out what their top priorities. Because again, we
• 42:41
  said oftentimes people aren't asking the right questions, and
• 42:44
  they're going through the motions, and they're trying to
• 42:47
  do the thing. And when we thought when we do these things,
• 42:49
  we're like, oh wait, that's actually that's actually more
• 42:53
  important than we thought. Hey, there's this thing that's coming
• 42:55
  up, and it might be because the teams have been defeated, and
• 43:00
  there's this thing that they are telling me. They're like, "Yeah,
• 43:03
  but you know, nobody listens. I'm like, "Yeah, but you know
• 43:05
  what? 10 other people just said that, and I have it documented.
• 43:08
  That 10 other people, this thing that you've been saying for the
• 43:11
  last six months that nobody's moving on, well, your one voice
• 43:14
  actually has support now, because other people feel the
• 43:17
  same exact way and are keeping it to themselves, and so then
• 43:22
  that. But that's also where my experience comes in. I'm like,
• 43:25
  but you know, where a lot of people go. We've been talking
• 43:27
  about this. I'm. I don't think anything's going to happen. I'm
• 43:30
  like, you didn't have me. I'm very vocal. I'm very much. I
• 43:34
  know what I'm doing. I'm like, I know it's very hard to say trust
• 43:40
  me because I I come in assuming that you don't trust me at all.
• 43:43
  But I'm just saying, right now I'm asking you in these
• 43:47
  one-on-ones what's going on. You're already doing a
• 43:49
  retrospective, right? It's just a small one, right? So the more
• 43:54
  that I follow through, the more they will follow through, and
• 44:01
  the more that they'll feel more comfortable.
• 44:04
  Devon Morris: So, so then, because you you said some things
• 44:07
  here, and there's definitely things to unpack, which I
• 44:09
  really, really find to be super amazing, right? There's some
• 44:14
  things you just can't find in those initial reports. You go
• 44:16
  gather data, you are observing, you're doing a bunch of great
• 44:20
  things, but here's the question: Once you have an idea what's
• 44:26
  going on, and you got that data, what do you do with the answer?
• 44:37
  Katrina L. Coker: You know, this was a hard one because it depends on
• 44:39
  what I'm allowed to do with the answers, because I here's the
• 44:45
  thing. Some of the scrum masters that came before me left because
• 44:53
  they were protecting the team too much. They were seeing their
• 44:56
  job as the. They were saying their job is the Scrum team's
• 45:01
  watchdog. That is not how we can be successful. We are to help
• 45:05
  the system be successful. We are to help the system thrive. So
• 45:10
  we're kind of everyone's friend, nobody's friend to some extent,
• 45:13
  right? In order to help our team, we have to be open and
• 45:17
  receptive to everyone else. We have to be able to listen to
• 45:21
  product and engineering and sales and marketing, and and a
• 45:26
  lot of people aren't doing that right. So what do I do with the
• 45:31
  information, right? I I say that because I understand I don't
• 45:36
  want leadership to have surprises. That's big no no. We
• 45:39
  don't want that to happen, right? But also, again, as I
• 45:43
  said, there are some things I have no authority over. My team
• 45:47
  has no authority over, and I need leadership support. So what
• 45:52
  I tell my teams when I'm doing these one-on-ones, like, "Hey,
• 45:55
  my next step is I'm going to put these into a summary. Your name
• 45:57
  is not going to be attached unless you allow me to, right?
• 46:00
  It's just going to be these are themes holistically, and I'm
• 46:04
  going to take them to leaders, and I tell them this. I'm going
• 46:07
  to take get get this with leadership because there's no
• 46:10
  point in me coming to the team and saying this is all the
• 46:12
  feedback and make promises when I don't know what I have
• 46:17
  authority to do, what we have authority to do. So I take the
• 46:21
  feedback to leadership first, and I say this is the lead. This
• 46:25
  is the feedback. What's your gut reactions? Are you surprised?
• 46:28
  Are you shocked? Is there anything that you know you want
• 46:32
  to add to this? Any things we need to know? And I said, but I
• 46:35
  I'm telling you, this is the team's feedback. So my intent is
• 46:39
  to go back to the team and say this is where we are, and so I
• 46:43
  get leadership's gut reaction first, and then I say, "Do I
• 46:47
  have your permission to go back to the teams with this
• 46:49
  information? Sometimes they say, "Yeah, it's their information.
• 46:53
  Sometimes they say, "Yes, but can you tweak it? Like, show,
• 46:57
  just put it in a different format. I have had one instance
• 47:01
  where they said, "Do not, do not follow up. And I said, "Okay,
• 47:05
  well, you know that's going to hurt my ability to be effective.
• 47:10
  And they said, "Okay, well, can you do it in 30 days and see
• 47:12
  where we're at? Because they're like, "Some of this is already
• 47:14
  on our radar, so can you go back in 30 days?
• 47:20
  Devon Morris: I
• 47:20
  Katrina L. Coker: that is I and I can tell you from that experience
• 47:23
  that was a terrible decision. Like and yeah, terrible
• 47:28
  decision. So, what I do with the information is ideally I go to
• 47:33
  leadership, say this is where we're at. And when I say
• 47:35
  leaders, sometimes it's the people all like the highest
• 47:39
  managers, and sometimes it's like the dev leads who are
• 47:42
  managers, the people leaders, right? And I get their gut
• 47:45
  reactions, and then we go, you know. So then I go with them.
• 47:48
  What do we have authority over? Such as sometimes they let us
• 47:52
  change our sprint length, and sometimes they say absolutely
• 47:54
  not. We are going to be consistent, and everyone's going
• 47:56
  to be on a two-week sprint. Sometimes they've even said to
• 48:01
  this. I kind of make sense to some. They go, our sprint review
• 48:04
  is combined with a lot of people and a lot of of our customers,
• 48:10
  so you can change the time and date on everything else, but
• 48:12
  please leave that as it is, and we work around it. I'm like,
• 48:16
  okay, I'm like, okay, that's fine. So there are some things
• 48:20
  that they go yeah full complete control over this. You need to
• 48:24
  do a agile Scrum refresher. Shoot, go with it. You need to
• 48:29
  do a product vision session with the product managers. Cool, do
• 48:34
  it. Some things they have told us no to one overall timeline.
• 48:39
  That's not an option. Sometimes the teams have asked to split.
• 48:44
  Sometimes the teams have asked to join each other, and those
• 48:47
  are some things that leadership say no that it is what it is. So
• 48:51
  I go to leadership first before going back to the team. I
• 48:54
  usually go back to the team and in retro maybe a retrospective,
• 48:59
  maybe the next one, and say, hey, this is where we're at
• 49:02
  again. Does this shock you? Does this surprise you? These are
• 49:05
  some of the next action items that I would recommend. Are
• 49:08
  these your highest priorities? And then we get going. And then
• 49:12
  I will tell you when I start. Usually, the very first time I'm
• 49:15
  with a team, I actually do this 90 days later as well. It's just
• 49:19
  not as intense.
• 49:20
  Devon Morris: Okay. To kind of
• 49:22
  Katrina L. Coker: Sync up.
• 49:23
  Devon Morris: I like that, and I'll tell you something because
• 49:25
  again, first thing I'm have to put to the side so you know, I
• 49:30
  want to know about weeks five through 12, but we cannot talk
• 49:35
  about that because I only have so much time with you. Okay,
• 49:40
  okay, we're gonna put that in the pocket for later. So you.
• 49:43
  Katrina L. Coker: Well, can I
• 49:44
  give you a short? It's a short story. The short story
• 49:46
  is five through 12. The short story is five through 12 is
• 49:49
  implementing their feedback.
• 49:51
  Devon Morris: Okay.
• 49:52
  Katrina L. Coker: Implementing. So we're doing deep dives into product,
• 49:55
  doing backlog audits, we're doing metrics. It's just it's
• 49:58
  it's everything we're. We're going through. Hey, these are
• 50:01
  the highest priorities, and that's what weeks through five
• 50:04
  through 12 is. Now, there's more details I could give you, but
• 50:06
  that's the short story. Is we're saying, hey, team, I asked you
• 50:10
  to tell me what you what were challenges for you,
• 50:13
  Devon Morris: yeah,
• 50:13
  Katrina L. Coker: and obstacles. Now I'm, I'm. You told me what they are.
• 50:17
  You told me what your priorities are. It's my job to go remove
• 50:20
  these obstacles and escalate them. So that's what we thrive.
• 50:22
  All
• 50:22
  Devon Morris: good, good, good. So, so I'm glad you helped
• 50:24
  everybody out. But again, there's way more to that than
• 50:28
  you just brushing the top of it. What I, what I want to, what I
• 50:32
  want to go is you. You said something, and it is kind of
• 50:38
  your nickname, right? It's your brand name, right? You talked
• 50:42
  about mothering a team, and I know mothers are different
• 50:46
  across the planet. Fathers, whatever pronoun you want to use
• 50:50
  within the Scrum world, okay? Please do that, right? But when
• 50:54
  we start talking about mothering a team, say more about that
• 51:00
  because some people are gonna hear coddling.
• 51:05
  Katrina L. Coker: Oh yeah, and actually, I've had other professionals or
• 51:08
  industry straight up in a presentation referring to
• 51:11
  everybody in the room and tell them we're nobody's mother, like
• 51:14
  looking at me. They're like, "Hey, we're nobody's mother, and
• 51:18
  it was actually meant as a defensive. It was not a nice
• 51:20
  comment, but here let me tell you how I got the name, and that
• 51:24
  will show you exactly what this means. So I actually got got
• 51:28
  called the Scrum Mother by a teammate. We were this was early
• 51:34
  on my very first team, and we were in an office. This was
• 51:37
  pre-pandemic. We had we had some work remote days, but for the
• 51:41
  most part, we were in office. So we had our daily scrum in an
• 51:44
  office in a corner. We were a big open room, and so each team
• 51:48
  would come to this particular corner to do their daily scrum.
• 51:51
  And my team, the corner just happened to be the the entrance
• 51:55
  of the room, so people had to continuously walk by. So we're
• 51:59
  in this daily scrum, and all of a somebody walked by and was
• 52:03
  talking to one of my teammates, and all of a sudden they started
• 52:05
  swapping more. This was somebody on another team, and I go,
• 52:08
  "Wait, wait, no, no, no, no, no, no. Let's let's finish what
• 52:14
  we're doing. Let's finish this sprint, and then we can figure
• 52:17
  out, you know, if we need to move some things around. And one
• 52:21
  of my teammates go, okay. And I said, so I said verbally, I
• 52:26
  said, man, it's like a parent talking to a child, telling them
• 52:29
  to do their homework or something. And the person was
• 52:31
  like, okay, mom. And another teammate goes, you're the Scrum
• 52:35
  Mother. And I have a background in business and marketing, and I
• 52:40
  was like, I can run with that. I can run with that. I was like,
• 52:44
  it's memorable. I could easily, it you know, turn that into a
• 52:51
  blog. I could turn that into a brand. I I was like, I just
• 52:54
  thought I'm like, hey, I could I can do that. Now, fast forward.
• 53:00
  First of all, everywhere I go, I in a in a in person, somebody
• 53:04
  will tell me, "Yeah, my team calls me Scrum Mom. Somebody
• 53:07
  calls me Scrum Mommy. Somebody calls me Scrum Dad. The Scrum
• 53:11
  Father, like you know, play on the Godfather. There was this
• 53:14
  one person I met that when I told her not only that I go by
• 53:18
  the Scrum Mother, but it's actually the name of my company
• 53:20
  now that I incorporated it, her face like completely dropped,
• 53:24
  and she had a blog, and so I want to give. I always give her
• 53:27
  credit. She had a blog way before me called the Scrum Mom,
• 53:31
  where she used Scrum as actually as a mother, like at home, and
• 53:35
  she never incorporated it. So if I had actually met her before I
• 53:43
  before this, I probably would not have gone by the Scrum
• 53:45
  Mother because I would have thought it would have been like
• 53:48
  stealing it, even though it's different from an intellectual
• 53:50
  property rights. But I had already done it when I met her,
• 53:54
  right?
• 53:55
  Devon Morris: Job with it, so I would. Yeah.
• 53:57
  Katrina L. Coker: So that's how I. So that's how I became the Scrum
• 53:59
  Mother by showing that example, like that's what we do. We say
• 54:03
  we try to maintain order. We try to give people what they need.
• 54:08
  So, what is a mother, right? Now, I will say no. We're
• 54:11
  nobody's mother, and I tell my teams that I'm not your mother.
• 54:14
  I'm not your assistant, but I'm here to help you be successful,
• 54:18
  right? And I'm help to give guidelines and accountability,
• 54:22
  and to make sure you have what you need for us all to thrive.
• 54:26
  So, if you're asking me, how does it relate to mothering? I
• 54:28
  think that's what a good mother is.
• 54:30
  Devon Morris: Well, well, here's here's a question for
• 54:31
  you, right? Because I think that that is great story, great
• 54:35
  position in here. So, does it risk keeping the team dependent
• 54:43
  on you.
• 54:45
  Katrina L. Coker: Sometimes, I'll give you an example. It depends. It
• 54:49
  depends on what you do. So there's the extent of what many
• 54:54
  scrum masters are known for that they don't. Any people that
• 54:58
  don't know what we do. Think we just bring snacks, and sometimes
• 55:02
  we do, right? Sometimes we keep our teams healthy, wealthy, and
• 55:06
  wise, as you might say. We keep our teams where they're not
• 55:10
  parched and they're not hungry because hungry and parched teams
• 55:13
  don't make good products necessarily, or not happy, or
• 55:17
  not happy teams. But what I will say, there's to some extent I
• 55:22
  have spoiled my teams. I have to where I'll give you one example.
• 55:27
  There were some teams that they have asked for an asynchronous
• 55:32
  daily scrum, and what that is is we post in our team chat. You
• 55:38
  know whatever whatever our daily scrum format is, I actually
• 55:42
  change my format frequently, so it just depends on where we are
• 55:45
  at the sprint. Well, in order for them to have, in order for
• 55:49
  them not to duplicate their information, I would take their
• 55:55
  responses and put it into the backlog management tool. So, for
• 55:59
  example, if we're using Jira and they said, "Hey, this is where I
• 56:03
  am in on this item, and so that they don't have to put it in the
• 56:07
  team chat and the Jira ticket, I would do it for them. I would
• 56:11
  say that's probably coddling, and I would I tell my teams,
• 56:14
  "I'm like, I'm spoiling you by doing this, but I want I don't
• 56:18
  like to do things twice. I don't like somebody telling me to have
• 56:22
  to duplicate my efforts, so this is why I'm helping you. But I'm
• 56:25
  telling you, y'all aren't going to get that from everybody.
• 56:27
  Devon Morris: Okay, but here's the deal, right? Here's the
• 56:29
  question, right? How do you know when to stop, though?
• 56:35
  Katrina L. Coker: When they don't know how to do it themselves, when
• 56:37
  I'm gone and it doesn't happen, but when I've had I've had teams
• 56:41
  where this was now I had been with them a little bit longer at
• 56:45
  this point, but if I go, hey y'all, I'm not gonna be in daily
• 56:50
  scrum. Obviously we don't have to, but I usually am there. I'm
• 56:54
  not gonna be daily scrum, and maybe I might come late, right?
• 56:59
  Or I wasn't supposed to be there at all, but ended up able to
• 57:02
  join. And I see one of my teammates picking it up. They're
• 57:05
  running it. They're like, and even they'll say, "This is what
• 57:07
  Katrina would do. This is how Katrina would run it, and it's
• 57:11
  going. Then I know I can keep, you know, I can help out every,
• 57:15
  you know, on the side every now and then. But at the point to
• 57:17
  where, if daily scrum does not happen if I'm not there. It
• 57:21
  doesn't even happen asynchronously. Then I know that
• 57:24
  they're becoming too reliant on me, and then that becomes a
• 57:29
  problem for the team.
• 57:31
  Devon Morris: So then, when you see that, how do you address
• 57:34
  everything?
• 57:36
  Katrina L. Coker: Oh, specifically with that whole thing of me putting
• 57:40
  things in the in the backlog management tool, I just had to
• 57:44
  say, hey, y'all need to know more of actually what's
• 57:49
  happened. You need to be comfortable with the backlog
• 57:51
  management tool. You know where you all are with this story, but
• 57:54
  you need to be able to. I'm helping you out, but you should
• 57:58
  also be doing this throughout the time. You should be updating
• 58:00
  the comments. You should be providing your own status again
• 58:03
  because y'all are the experts in this. This is your expertise.
• 58:06
  This is your product that you're owning, and I can't do that for
• 58:09
  you. And also, what what was the key indicator is when I was
• 58:14
  getting the information wrong when they either either they put
• 58:21
  the information like they were working on multiple things, and
• 58:24
  so they gave their updates, and I put it exactly as they put it,
• 58:28
  or I mixed up the information, and they're like they would
• 58:30
  message me on the side kindly and say, "No, actually, this is
• 58:33
  what's happening, and that happened one too many times. So
• 58:36
  I go, "Yeah, I don't think that this is valuable anymore. I
• 58:39
  think this is actually hurting y'all, right? This is hurting
• 58:42
  the team. It's hurting you as individuals, obviously, but it's
• 58:46
  hurting the team because the information is wrong, and you
• 58:49
  know the information. So we, as a team, agreed saying, "Hey, I
• 58:53
  just don't think this is helpful anymore, and it's hurting y'all.
• 58:56
  It's not helping. So it's also not the most productive use of
• 59:01
  my time. I was doing it to help you, and at the point, it's not
• 59:03
  helping you anymore. So we talked about it, and that was
• 59:06
  part of a team agreement. It was a team decision that changed.
• 59:09
  Devon Morris: So then, there's always going to be examples of
• 59:14
  these kind of things happening, but ultimately, it turns into
• 59:18
  their job changing. Okay, so when their job changes, and the
• 59:25
  team hasn't really caught up to that yet, what does a leader do
• 59:30
  first?
• 59:32
  Katrina L. Coker: Well, I would say we ask, "What problem are we trying
• 59:36
  to solve? I always one thing that people will hear from me
• 59:39
  personally and professionally: What are you trying to achieve,
• 59:42
  right? And so, using that example of the backlog
• 59:46
  management tool, when they're saying, "I'm now having to use
• 59:49
  this tool, I'm having to create user stories, or I'm trying to
• 59:52
  update user stories. My job is changing. The job responsibility
• 59:56
  is changing. I didn't sign up for that. Okay. But I'll give
• 1:00:01
  you an example using the example that I just told you about, and
• 1:00:03
  I say, but this is your problem. Me entering it for you was one
• 1:00:09
  you didn't have all. You really actually didn't have all the
• 1:00:12
  answers when people were asking you questions about your own
• 1:00:14
  work, right? Also, with me getting it wrong, you were
• 1:00:19
  spending time having to correct me, right, and that's not
• 1:00:23
  helpful to anybody. And so we had to say, even if even if they
• 1:00:30
  were frustrated, they'd be like, you know, you're right. It's
• 1:00:32
  this is what we're trying to achieve is where I know my own
• 1:00:36
  work, and I can be trusted to know my own work. And also, when
• 1:00:40
  they when we go, what happens when nobody enters anything into
• 1:00:43
  the backlog management tool? Okay, then when management comes
• 1:00:49
  to me or you and is asking for the trail of why did this take
• 1:00:55
  six weeks instead of two? Why did it take three sprints until
• 1:00:59
  one? I'm like, we don't have a record of that. I'm all about
• 1:01:02
  CYA, and I'm trying to help y'all by that, right? So
• 1:01:06
  documentation like this is CYA. It's showing your trail. It's
• 1:01:11
  providing your narrative. It's backing you up, right? And so I
• 1:01:16
  use the. I say, hey, these are the problems we're having, and
• 1:01:19
  what is your best alternative? Not doing this is not working
• 1:01:22
  either. Not not having documentation is one not helping
• 1:01:26
  you as an individual, and it's not helping the company. The
• 1:01:27
  company also has to have their history as a business has to
• 1:01:32
  have their business history, and so you saying, "I'm not going to
• 1:01:37
  do that. I'm not entering. You're you're saying you're not
• 1:01:41
  gonna. You're not creating. You're not being part of the
• 1:01:43
  history of the company, and you're saying, telling the
• 1:01:46
  business owner, "I'm not gonna do what the business owner is
• 1:01:49
  telling me is valuable for their business when they're the ones
• 1:01:52
  that hired me.
• 1:01:54
  Devon Morris: I I I love that, and and here's the thing that I
• 1:01:56
  I hear, which a lot of people who do our kind of work are able
• 1:02:03
  to do, and you can almost tell it immediately, is you're not
• 1:02:07
  passing blame out. Like I'm hearing how you're no, and
• 1:02:11
  you're not passing no, and that is a that's a really artful and
• 1:02:16
  amazing thing to do that everybody doesn't actually get
• 1:02:21
  or know how to do right, and it takes it takes time to figure
• 1:02:26
  out how to do that. But more than anything else, based on
• 1:02:30
  what you are telling me in terms of your experience, it takes
• 1:02:34
  being in the weeds and being on the ground and things actually
• 1:02:36
  happening, and you you know getting it right and getting it
• 1:02:40
  wrong and getting better, so I agree with that. So I have one
• 1:02:45
  last question to ask you, right? Okay, because this has been this
• 1:02:51
  has been really amazing, and I actually have loved it. What
• 1:02:58
  would you tell a leader whose team is behind right now and
• 1:03:03
  knows it?
• 1:03:08
  Katrina L. Coker: If you're, I would literally say, see my facial
• 1:03:10
  expression every day. You know your team's behind, and you know
• 1:03:13
  it, and you're not doing anything about it. I would say,
• 1:03:16
  what, what do you know? What does looking, but what does
• 1:03:21
  being behind mean, right? I would say, what is the
• 1:03:24
  definition of that in your perspective, and as a leader,
• 1:03:29
  one if you don't know the answer to that, that would be your
• 1:03:31
  first question: is what's not working for you, team, and how
• 1:03:36
  can I remove? How can I help you? But the next thing was to
• 1:03:40
  see if you know the answer to that. Then the question is, hey,
• 1:03:44
  I know these things aren't working. Team, how do you want
• 1:03:47
  to resolve it? What are your? What is your? What would be your
• 1:03:50
  preferred option to to solve this issue? And we can work
• 1:03:53
  together, and I can go. Let's move forward with it. Now,
• 1:03:56
  that's actually one thing I want to bring up though, that ties to
• 1:04:00
  this, right? I have a master's in conflict management. We
• 1:04:04
  talked about that, right? Conflict is not always about
• 1:04:08
  somebody is doing something wrong, and it's not always about
• 1:04:11
  people. Everything we've talked about today are types of things
• 1:04:14
  being in conflict, right? And what this applies to is even I
• 1:04:22
  think a manager should need to be aware of that. Is conflict is
• 1:04:26
  just another word for blocker, right? So I would say one. This
• 1:04:30
  kind of goes back to if somebody's being voluntold to be
• 1:04:33
  a manager, this is going to be a really strong pain point because
• 1:04:36
  not everybody wants to answer these questions. Not everybody
• 1:04:40
  wants to go to a team and say what's working for you. Some
• 1:04:44
  people just want to be an individual contributor, and
• 1:04:48
  that's okay, right? But then there are other people that are
• 1:04:52
  scared to do those things. Or what if your manager doesn't
• 1:04:55
  have what they need to be successful? Their manager, and
• 1:04:59
  actually. I'll tell you. Anytime somebody comes to me and they
• 1:05:02
  have career issues, usually I'm dealing with Scrum Master, so I
• 1:05:05
  can speak specifically to that. And I say, "Does your manager
• 1:05:08
  got your back? If they say yes, there's room. If they say no,
• 1:05:14
  manager doesn't got my back. Then I say, "You probably need
• 1:05:18
  to move on. Or if if I say hey, your manager's got your back. Do
• 1:05:24
  they have do they actually have influence? Do they have
• 1:05:26
  leverage? Can they make changes? If they say no, I'm like you're
• 1:05:30
  gonna have a really hard time. If your manager either doesn't
• 1:05:33
  have your back or or for whatever reason they do not have
• 1:05:37
  the influence and authority to do what you need, you're gonna
• 1:05:40
  get in my situation where you're just going to try to keep people
• 1:05:43
  from quitting, right? So you need to have managers that want
• 1:05:49
  to be in that role, or at least want to grow into that role, but
• 1:05:53
  also are comfortable with conflict from this perspective
• 1:05:57
  of conflict is just another word for blocker. And how are how
• 1:06:01
  comfortable are you finding out blockers and removing blockers?
• 1:06:05
  I feel to to some extent I say we're all scrum masters in some
• 1:06:08
  respect. Leaders, managers are scrum masters, just at a
• 1:06:11
  different level.
• 1:06:13
  Devon Morris: I agree with that, and y'all, I mean you gotta give
• 1:06:18
  a hand to The Scrum Mother here, right? We've had an amazing
• 1:06:22
  conversation. So, this is the last thing I want to ask you:
• 1:06:26
  Where should people find you, and what's coming up for you?
• 1:06:32
  Katrina L. Coker: Ah, that's a great question. Thank you so much. You
• 1:06:35
  can find me on social media, specifically TikTok, Instagram,
• 1:06:39
  LinkedIn, and YouTube. At the moment, I post pretty much the
• 1:06:43
  same content across all platforms, with the the
• 1:06:46
  exception of photos and images. Stuff like if the book's coming
• 1:06:49
  out, I may not do a video. I may just do an image, so that's not
• 1:06:52
  going to be on all platforms. You can email me at
• 1:06:56
  thescrummother@gmail.com. You can also follow my website,
• 1:07:01
  which is in the process of being updated at scrummother.com. But
• 1:07:05
  I have my book Scrum Master First 90 Days: The Scrum Mother
• 1:07:09
  Approach, which is set to be published on November 22, 2026.
• 1:07:14
  For sure, it will be on Amazon in ebook, paperback, and
• 1:07:18
  hardcover. I'm also going to be publishing through IngramSpark,
• 1:07:21
  which will be a wider audience, hopefully in bookstores. It will
• 1:07:25
  also be available in libraries, at least in the new year. So I'm
• 1:07:29
  very excited about that part because a lot of authors don't
• 1:07:32
  always publish to the get a Library of Congress number, and
• 1:07:36
  it makes it available in all libraries for you for free. And
• 1:07:39
  I'm really proud of that. So those are the ways that you can
• 1:07:42
  look forward to it, and you can also sign, go to my website, and
• 1:07:46
  you can join the newsletter to find all the updates about this
• 1:07:49
  particular book that I am very proud of, and it's all the stuff
• 1:07:52
  that we talked about today. It's all that and more. You're gonna
• 1:07:56
  love it. It is all this, my step by step 90 days, including AI
• 1:08:02
  prompts for everything I do. So you you also have the manual
• 1:08:06
  step by step. You have the automated step by step if that's
• 1:08:08
  what you choose, as well as as checklist and resources
• 1:08:14
  galore. So everything that I have learned in my eight years
• 1:08:18
  as a fully dedicated Scrum Master will be at your at your
• 1:08:23
  disposal come November 22, and I would love for you to join me.
• 1:08:28
  Devon Morris: I would say go out there and grab the book, grab
• 1:08:30
  the resources, and I'll tell y'all a secret. I'm in the book
• 1:08:33
  too.
• 1:08:35
  Katrina L. Coker: Yes, we are very excited. We have a few quotes
• 1:08:38
  for from our lovely host here, and was many other agileists
• 1:08:44
  like himself. Like saying, Dr. Morris is a Scrum certified
• 1:08:49
  Scrum trainer with many many years of experience, and he is
• 1:08:53
  one of the many agileists who know their stuff, who also
• 1:08:57
  provided their feedback, and I'm super excited to have him
• 1:09:00
  included.
• 1:09:01
  Devon Morris: Yeah, that you're making me feel like somebody.
• 1:09:03
  Now I'm gonna say to you, this has been amazing. I appreciate
• 1:09:07
  you taking the time. I honor your experience, and everybody
• 1:09:12
  go out there and grab the book. But I already told you, there's
• 1:09:15
  week five through 12 that we haven't even covered at all,
• 1:09:19
  right? So I'm gonna get back to you, and we're gonna have that
• 1:09:22
  conversation in the future. But I'm gonna say to you, I'm gonna
• 1:09:26
  say to The Scrum Mother, I appreciate you and thank you so
• 1:09:30
  much. And we'll say bye to everyone. We'll catch you in the
• 1:09:33
  next conversation.
• 1:09:36
  Katrina L. Coker: Thank you so much for having me. See you
• 1:09:38
  soon.
• 1:09:40
  Devon Morris: Thank you for joining us. Where every Tuesday
• 1:09:44
  and Thursday we work toward bridging the gap for teams that
• 1:09:49
  are behind.