Skip to main content

Seeking career change from Non-Tech PM to Scrum Master - Please Advise

Last post 09:21 pm September 23, 2019 by Uma Tirukonda
4 replies
09:23 pm September 22, 2019

This is Uma, I am currently working as a Non-technical PM managing ATM deployments for a ATM service provider company. I am interested in becoming a Scrum Master and got my PSM I but due to lack of experience have not been able to get a role. I was keen on getting PSPO I but decided against it until I got a break through. 

I tried to gather information at my company but they use Waterfall and there is no opportunity to apply Scrum within our team. Please advise on how to seek job shadowing opportunities or an internship to learn and get hands on experience as a Scrum Master. I live in the DFW area. 

 


09:38 am September 23, 2019

Hi Uma.

 

Thanks for your post. This is something of a pet peave / topic that annoys me that I like to discuss about. I was in a very similar situation that I had passed my PSM 1 and was looking for opportunities and couldn't find any.

In the end I was lucky, that my now current boss found me on this very forum, and gave me the chance at an internship, and now I am working as a Scrum Master.

Maybe a good idea would be to find some people (maybe on this very forum) who are willing to take you as an unpaid understudy so you get experience of working in a scrum team, and take it from there .

For me the traditional way of applying directly didn't work. Either way keep us posted on your journey!


07:37 pm September 23, 2019

Uma, congratulations on achieving your PSM1 certification.

You said you were stuck in a waterfall environment.   One of the many skills that Scrum Masters need to develop is how to influence without authority.

I'm not suggesting that you will be able to change anything by yourself, but you can certainly pose some powerful questions to the rest of the department about their waterfall practices that can perhaps open their minds to considering alternative ways of working.

Keeping empiricism as a fundamental keystone of Scrum, what might some of those powerful questions be?


08:10 pm September 23, 2019

I'm sure that whomever works on the software for those ATM use Scrum or something similar   I was part of a similar project   my role was installation,logistics etc...    but there was a dev team that worked on the software   in my case it was outsourced but if interested I could of investigated on who was doing the software     just an idea.


08:56 pm September 23, 2019

Thank you for all your suggestions.

I am part of the ATM deployment team and had reached out to few technical people in the company and was informed that they use the Waterfall methodology. Our company recently implemented Oracle Cloud and had numerous post implementation issues and from the business side, I have been interacting with the development team to have the issues fixed. Not being part of the dev team, it may be difficult to influence but can definitely give it a try.  


By posting on our forums you are agreeing to our Terms of Use.

Please note that the first and last name from your Scrum.org member profile will be displayed next to any topic or comment you post on the forums. For privacy concerns, we cannot allow you to post email addresses. All user-submitted content on our Forums may be subject to deletion if it is found to be in violation of our Terms of Use. Scrum.org does not endorse user-submitted content or the content of links to any third-party websites.

Terms of Use

Scrum.org may, at its discretion, remove any post that it deems unsuitable for these forums. Unsuitable post content includes, but is not limited to, Scrum.org Professional-level assessment questions and answers, profanity, insults, racism or sexually explicit content. Using our forum as a platform for the marketing and solicitation of products or services is also prohibited. Forum members who post content deemed unsuitable by Scrum.org may have their access revoked at any time, without warning. Scrum.org may, but is not obliged to, monitor submissions.