Aspiring DM

Well, there I was on a Friday afternoon having just passed PSMI.

Great, but now what, still a lot more learning to do, but where to start next?

Whilst reading and researching for the PSM I course I searched for DM podcasts, unsure if there even was such a thing. That way I could listen whilst out walking. I walk, a lot, it was a no brainer really.

I came across The Delivery Manager Daily , a podcast by Mario Decristofano. Lot’s of great, well thought out subjects on there and listened with interest. I’ve learned, from the few DMs I’ve spoken too, that most have a job in the industry or related fields, project manager, Scrum Master etc. before moving into a DM role. So I really had to question, what would I, as a mere outsider, have to do to get in? What makes a difference, what skills, nuances and extra knowledge could help me on my way?

So, I thought I’d ask someone, and who better than the podcaster himself, Mario.

I don’t know about you but I’ve always been terribly self conscious about approaching people for help and advice, especially complete strangers. However, one thing that I had learned so far on the Agile journey, is that everyone is really nice and helpful, like everyone, seriously. I’m sure there will be a few exceptions to the rule but, so far so good, I’ll also blog about this later. Armed with that confidence and the thought that, if you don’t ask you don’t get, I messaged Mario on X.

I received a reply the next day and we arranged a zoom chat. Unfortunately, that zoom chat didn’t take place but, Mario very kindly put all of the info in an email to me. I’ve been working on that since…

I repeat below, Mario’s advice and links in italics.

As I don’t yet know (& you may not want to share) your personal appetite in terms of whether you’ll do a junior role or not to build experience, I’d loosely recommend;

• Attend some digital, Agile meetups in your area. Some of note include DDD, Notts Agile, Agile Cambridge – these are worthy of note but you get the idea. There’ll be plenty wherever you are. The purpose of these for you is to a) network and b) see what people are speaking about when it comes to Agile, & that will then help you to drive what you learn. It’s also a good opportunity to meet companies who may be looking for Scrum/Agile people – heck that’s how I find a few of my team so if you do nothing else, go to some of these events.

(Further blogs to follow on this but I have started attending meetups and they are great)

• Read some books, a foundational learning track will be
  
  – Scrum, doing twice the work in half the time
  – Surrounded by idiots
  – Agile essentials
  – The Toyota Way

Read from the bottom up. That’s not a random list of books. That list is from me to you, based on my guess of where you are, & who you are. Those books also are not what they seem. They will teach core skills in Scrum mastery & agile, skills often missed in the literal thousands of people I’ve worked with over the years. If you read nothing else, please read those. Then pass the books on to someone else.

(I now have these books, what I do need to do is to find the time to read them)

• Certs, PSM 1 and 2 are solid, & will teach Scrum foundation – don’t go beyond this, you’ll almost never need to. However, I do recommend Nexus, which is scaling Scrum, and you can do the Nexus Certification after you’ve done a PSM. DO NOT GET LOST in the myriad of third party organisations offering you Agile courses. The three above (& you’ve got one) are fine. What you need is EXPERIENCE.

(I’ve already bored you with the PSM 1 journey so you know I’ve done that but PSM 2 is definitely on the horizon, followed by Nexus)

• Now here’s the tough one. To stand out from any crowd, you need to have technical chops. There is a finite amount of conceptual learning you can do about Scrum & Agile, you’ll be working with software engineering teams so you really need to understand software. So it’s more courses I’m afraid & these may be outside of your comfort zone, but in any given interview, having a solid understanding of the software delivery lifecycle will be the difference between you getting a job, & not. So go & do;
  
  – Azure fundamentals AZ900
  – AWS Fundamentals
  – GCP

(I undertook Google cloud fundamentals core infrastructure, blog to follow, but will be doing the others)

To understand the skills you need is to understand the types of projects being asked for in the market. They are on-premise to cloud migrations, ongoing digital transformations, cloud adoption spend ratification, Ai & big data projects, & greenfield software projects. So you need to know your way around this type of technology.

• Do a blog charting your journey, whether it’s a podcast or written blog, you are going to start to need to have some online brand collateral so you can prove your learning, talk about what you’ve learnt & also help others. Don’t underestimate the importance of this. You’ll remember more & have material to look back on if you document it. So video, audio, written, whatever, do something online. Example, need to learn about cloud concepts? Well as part of the courses above you’ll need to spin up some virtual compute containers, so why not use that to build a website.
  
• Be fluent in these tools, Miro, Trello, Azure Devops, Confluence, Jira.

(Well, I’m guessing you’ve worked out that I did indeed start that blog, so here we are! And yes, I will be blogging about blogging, in due course. I also started using Trello to track my progress and organise my learning path, it’s proving to be really useful and user friendly. If you’re not aware of it, find it (link above) and use it, it’s great)

Finally, here are hot 2023 skills any DM I think needs to have to really shine;

• micro architecture & container understanding
• Cloud compute and workload audit, analysis & migrations
• Data science & Ai

(I haven’t even begun to look into these yet, but most certainly will)

Well, that certainly was information overload, so many new things to look at and explore.

A couple of days after Mario’s email I received a message on X from him. ‘Latest episode for you’. Took me a while to twig what he meant but sure enough, when I looked, there was a new podcast about becoming a DM.

How do I become a DM? – The Delivery Manager Daily

Amazing!

There is also a link in the episode description for an earlier blog post with even more valuable information, Being a better Delivery Manager.

All fantastic sage advice and very much appreciated. I really can’t thank Mario enough for sharing this knowledge with me and will certainly put it all to very good use, as you’ll see in the next exciting instalment!

Before you go, dear reader, I would love to ask you for feedback, I’m very open to constructive criticism, hints, tips and anything else you’d like to see in future!