What is your role at Hadean? What does an average week look like for you?
I’m a Scrum Master at Hadean. My main responsibilities are to support the development teams to work with the Agile methodology effectively. An average week for me is organised around several meetings. We start each day with a quick standup to inspect progress towards our goals and have several refinement sessions with the Product team during the week. There are also meetings to discuss the high-priority work that needs to be done, reviews where stakeholders, senior managers and other departments can give feedback, and retrospectives where we assess what went right and areas for improvement. I am also involved in our engineering support.
What do you enjoy most about your job?
I have really enjoyed the various changes in my role so far. This is my third role at Hadean and all of them have been connected to the Agile methodology in some way. I have really enjoyed solving the various challenges that come up in developing our technology. We always try to adapt to changes, even if we have to drop something we built for a while. It is important to be adaptable in a startup environment and I always see challenges as new opportunities for me to develop.
What led you to the role of Scrum Master at Hadean?
I spent years in big, well established organizations in various roles and of these, I mostly loved the ones where I had a chance to create something new and exciting. Therefore, Hadean was exactly what I looked for. They had interesting technology and what felt like impossible challenges – a chance to be part of something that could be a huge change for our industry! I initially started working in the engineering team before moving to Product for a short time. Today, I am excited to take on the role of Scrum Master and hope to have a great impact on our agility.
What top three skills or traits do you think someone needs to pursue a role as Scrum Master?
You need to be passionate about agility! You need to be happy to change things quickly and you need to be prepared to change and adapt yourself. You also need to be able to own up to mistakes and admit where you were wrong, otherwise you won’t be able to change and improve with the team and environment you are working with.
What are some of the most exciting challenges you face day-to-day and how do you overcome them?
As our teams continue to grow and as we are all working from home, one of the biggest challenges is communication and productivity. We are no longer sitting in the same room and can’t hear and know about everything that is happening. We need to document and administer our work but we also need to let the engineers work on the most impactful aspect: our software. So the biggest challenge is to collect and present as much information as possible and do this with the least amount of meetings and calls. To achieve this, we try to automate and standardise our processes and work with well known formats.
How would you describe Hadean’s culture?
A group of very talented individuals always open for some fun! We have faced many challenges together as a team but as we have worked towards each milestone, everyone was always happy to help and get stuck in.
What would you say is the most fulfilling part of your role at Hadean?
I love to see all of the changes and our improvements. When I first arrived in Hadean, it was an early stage startup. Since that time, we have improved a lot. Today, our product and our services are available for our customers and they can achieve amazing things with it. To be part of this journey has been a really satisfying experience and I’m glad to be part of it.