Women in Tech – Interview with Bianca Schobel

I love working with people and I think that's what makes me a great Scrum Master (or Scrum Sensei as some people like to call me). Becoming a better coach has always been really important to me and that comes with experience. Being passionate about my job, I'm constantly looking for new ideas to improve but also keeping the fun and motivation alive in my teams.

Every time I meet someone new and we get to the “what do you do?” question, people ask: “Scrum what? What does a Scrum Master do and how did you become one?” Thinking of the best answer always brings back lovely memories and all the stories that I have to share. So please let me tell you a story today:

"Once upon a time, in a very beautiful place in the heart of Transylvania (the land of Dracula), there was a little girl that took the decision to move to a bigger city and attend the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science ... three years later, she graduated, together with other young students eager to start their careers. The girl was keen on Quality Assurance and she wanted to become a QA ninja. That's how she started: working closely with the development team, business analysts, designers and other avengers, dealing with difficult or very friendly clients, acting as an analyst when needed and being there to give a helping hand. She had an amazing time!

One day, she was offered a new challenge: become a Scrum Master. And she said YES. She got certified and has been playing this role for more than four years. She learned that Scrum is simply an agile way of managing a project. Using Scrum, which relies on a self-organizing, cross-functional team. She was teaming up with the Product Owner - representative of the business, customers and users to the team towards building the right product - and of course with the Dev team - the hardworking builders.

As a Scrum Master, she was looking after the team, helping with impediments and blockers, doing anything possible to assist the team perform at their highest level. Being a facilitator of all the team meetings, she was looking for better techniques to try, whilst adding fun to everything she did. Her main role was to coach the team into Scrum values and principles. How did she do that? By playing games (her favourite way of teaching), along with having open conversations, care and love for the wellbeing of the team. As Mike Cohn said: think of the help from a Scrum Master as similar to a personal trainer who helps you stick with an exercise regimen and perform all exercises with the correct form. She was loving the job (which suited her perfectly).

Life brought a new challenge when prince charming took the lady to London in 2014, where she continued working with other wonderful Scrum teams, gathering experience. Life in London was great and she managed to work in different castles around the city. Running, dancing, playing football and traveling are her favourite activities. Oh, wait, I forgot to add coffee (who doesn't love coffee?). But most of all, she travels a lot! Traveling to different destinations and being able to get to Paris in less than three hours made her think about Eurostar. "It must be a place where magic happens" she thought.