Nobody Asked the Team

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