Giora Morein

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  00:32

Who is Morein, what’s been your journey when it comes to agile, or this agility world?

Speaker: Giora Morein  00:47

Yeah, so I started off my career as a software tester. So in the mid to late 90s, at the height of the .com boom, I was a tester for a little while, at some point, I tried my hand as a developer and I was a really, really bad developer, like really bad, super bad. And I think for a lot of people like me, who are passionate about technology, but not particularly talented in technology, I started off sort of, I spent most of my project career as a project manager, right, I got PMP certified and I was really good at it. So maybe I think some people think that a lot of the Agile guys went towards agile because they were they weren’t very successful using the old model. And that wasn’t the case for me, like I was a turnaround project manager and I did pretty well in that world.

And somewhere in late 2001, early 2002, I got promoted to head up this professional services group responsible for growing revenue and increasing profitability. And finding new accounts. And this was a little while after 911 and the .com boom and come to a close and I looked around my organization, I realized that we had zero competitive advantage we didn’t have any proprietary software, we could leverage, we didn’t have any IP, we could piggyback we had the best people just like everybody else did. And so we use Scrum to create that competitive advantage. So one of the guys I was working with George Schlitz, he sort of introduced scrum to me and so we use that as our competitive advantage. So at a time when, if you’re one of our customers, you’ve gone to one of our competitors. And in the first three to six months of engagement, maybe ended up with a report or discovery statement or some specification, but in that first three to six months engaging with us, you ended up with the live deployed product and so seeing that transformed our business and seeing how that transformed their relationship with our customers.

But most important for me, seeing how that transformed our relationship with our people, just improve retention and engagement and reduce churn. I decided very early, this is how I wanted to work right now. There’s no way I would have guessed in like 2004 that one day, this is how everybody was going to work. But I decided very early that this is the way I wanted to work. And so in 2005, I became a full time Agile Coach and Trainer. And pretty much since then, I’ve been spending most of my work time either helping organizations introduced Scrum and Agile or improve their adoptions or mature them or scale them somehow and I’ve been fortunate to work with some amazing brands and all kinds of different industries work heavily with companies like Fidelity Investments, and StateFarm and Accenture and Blizzard Entertainment and Nike, an, McKesson and Bell Helicopter and a whole bunch of other companies that probably just can’t think of at this very moment.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  03:46

What are some of the common things that you’ve seen across those companies? Like when you think about the current state of agile a lot has change since 2005, but also law has not changed. So what are some of the things that, reflecting back you’re seeing now and patterns that you’ve seen organizations trying to adopt agile?

Speaker: Giora Morein  04:07

Yeah, I think it’s a great question. I think one of the things that shows up a lot, at least from my field of view, is that there’s a maturity that comes at the overall adoption of agile the way organizations think of it. And that seems to be a pretty common pattern. Some companies fast forward, some a little bit slower. But for example, in most organizations, certainly in the mid-2000s, most organizations started dabbling in scrum because some manager somewhere had to get something done, you know, had to do something impossible, had to do something important, and they got just enough permission to try this new thing. And it was successful. And so all of a sudden, like their peers, other managers somewhere else said, oh, I want me some of that, what he or she did over there and so they started doing, so there was series of skunkworks that usually started off and then eventually somebody usually in some PMO or maybe it’s a centralized methodology office say, well hang on a second, there’s a lot of that stuff going on. We need to somehow institutionalize that, like, we need to create our version of that thing, that agile thing. And they did, right. And so usually, that’s what I call sort of, we go from skunkworks level to sort of institutionalized project level agile, where every project has a fork in the road where there’s a decision, do we do Agile? Or do we do that traditional SDLC approach? And then quickly, organizations realize it’s not that simple. It’s not as simple as how do we do projects.

Because when you shift to this sort of collaborative, adaptive approach from a more coordinated, sort of predictive approach, it changes everything, it changes how we structure teams, it changes how we fund and budget for this work that we do, how we recruit, who we recruit, how we incentivize how we measure success. And so the ripple effects of that simple decision, right? Are we doing this way or this way, is far more than just how you work on a project. And so companies start to realize that and they realize, well, now it’s more of a transformation. And that’s usually where the transformation parts are really kicks in, where we need to become an agile organization, which usually starts at some delivery place, right? Some development, not everywhere, usually not the legacy places, but the places that are maybe more customer centric, where we need to get things out the door faster, and then they start to work that way for the route. And one of the important things that I’ve realized, and I think a lot of organization realizing is that it never ends that.

So I think transformation is a problematic word, because it implies some metamorphosis that starts off sort of in a cocoon and ends up as this butterfly. But I think in reality, it’s a never-ending transformation, transformation is the new norm. And so I think that, where I think a lot of organizations get surprises, they think we’re going to spend this amount of time and this amount of money, and we bring in these coaches and consultant trainers, and then we’ll be there. And I think the reality is, is that there is no there that there’s constantly an evolution, as companies grow as their markets change, as their managers shift. If everything stayed the same, then I think maybe that sort of transformative idea of start to finish might work. But it doesn’t as your organization is adopting and transforming. So is everything around you, the market your customers, if you look at the global pandemic, this is sort of put that on steroids, where you have to adapt really quickly. And so I think this is sort of maturity where organizations start to realize that.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  07:35

Yeah, and I want to talk a little bit about big visible and how you started, I think big visible is, I got exposed or at least heard of big visible, I think from Bob Sarni. Can you talk a little bit about how big visible came about some of the people I think, you know, I was talking to somebody and you have an eye for talent, in a sense, somehow you seek people you understand. And I think if we go back to big visible, there are some great trainers and coaches that work. So maybe talk about how big visible came about how the journey went  as far as selling it to solutions IQ and [inaudible] [08:21] behind it, I think it would be helpful just to record that in the history books as far as big visible, because I don’t know, correct me if I’m wrong, but big visible was one of the first or  agile consulting and coaching companies, maybe I’m wrong, but is that true?

Speaker: Giora Morein  08:42

Sure so, the story big visible is a pretty long one. But if I can condense it big visible, I think we were, I don’t know if we were the first but I think we were certainly in the forefront of what I think we used to call or maybe we still call embedded coaching beside idea that coaching isn’t just something you show up on for two or three days. At the time when we launched big visible in late 2006 2007. The alternative model was what was known as the rally model right, rally at the time was the leading tool provider, they also provided services and they would sell these three pack, five pack and that was essentially three days or five days of coaching. And the goal there was to get you started well enough to use the tool. At least that was my interpretation of it, our interpretation. But there were a lot of coaches out there who were certainly as independents working longer right would show up and be there for the duration. And so, George Schlitz and I we sort of looked around and we realized, well, like I think at the time George was working for ThoughtWorks and he was doing what were a project at Barclays traveling from Boston to San Francisco every week. And then I knew other coaches who were flying from all over the country into Boston every week.

And so originally, it started off with this regional model, right, which sort of said, Look, let’s trade planes for cars, where, let’s take really talented coaches, where they’re located. And let’s see if we can put them to work doing good work at local customers, because then we can support those customers better, we can service them better. And then also those customers arent paying for travel. And so that was sort of the rudimentary initial idea. And that’s how we started off, right, so we start off sort of very localized in sort of the Boston area. And then at some point, George moved to San Francisco. And so we built out sort of the west coast there. But as we started getting larger, and we started working with more and more customers who are more national, or international, at some point, that model had to change that just wasn’t enough, right. So think of your large fortune 500. Client, like they have sites all over the place. And if you’re really going to support them, it’s not enough just to support them where you are, you have to be able to support them where they are. And so the basic idea was just, we call that a talent monopoly, if we could find the best talent, if we could recruit the best coaches, the best trainers, then everything else would take care of itself, right, then it would be easy to sell them, it’d be easy, we wouldn’t have to worry about satisfied customers because they would be. And so it was a very simple sort of philosophy. And quite frankly, we never plan to grow it to sell, it was really just a way to support you know, what we wanted to do, as founders do the kind of work we want to do, if we had a slight larger footprint, we have more choice or selection of the type of work we want to do. And quite frankly, we grew by accident. So I remember. You know, George, and I would talk on the phone and we keep using the reference of 10 people, we have 10 people, we got like 10 people, 11 people, that kind of 11 people.

And then one day I was sitting I remember in a hotel room in Hartford, Connecticut, we’re on the phone. I’m like, you know, we keep saying 10,11 people, but maybe we should count them. And we had 18 people. And so and then got fun. Right then we brought on Jim Cundiff, who’s previously Managing Director of the scrum Alliance, he joined I think, in 2010, or 2011. To help us grow, we’re able to add some other talented folks like Howard Sublette, and others. And so the basic idea is to fill the room with people smarter than me, that was essentially the philosophy. And so we had some amazingly talented people and people who are tremendous coaches, and some of them have gone on to do some incredible things. And, one of my proudest, I think, accomplishments is the idea that I helped create a company that other people want it to go work for, right, this idea of a destination company. I was talking to some former Big visible sort of people, and they say, we feel like we still work at Big visible, but we’re just we’re temporarily assigned somewhere else right now. And so I think that’s certainly something I’m very proud of. And it’s the thing I miss the most about it.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  13:25

How do you come up with the names big visible, think louder, is this something that you come up on your own? Like, what’s your process for, coming up with the names for companies?

Speaker: Giora Morein  13:38

I wish I could tell you that it was like, I meditate for 30 minutes, and then some light bulb moment goes off, and there’s the name. So I think big visible was a product of a we had no money. So like we couldn’t buy someone’s brand or buy someone’s domain. We didn’t have any money to spend on it. And so I wish I could tell you that big visible was the first one we came up with, and that’s the one we did it wasn’t there was a long list of things that we were looking for big visible just happen to be available when we look forward. And so it wasn’t the only domain we bought, like we bought through a four and I think we just said well, big visible is related to agile, right? This idea of big visible charts and big visible information radiators, so it had some association with agile, but I think more than anything what I liked about the name and sort of my current company, which is think louder is the name is aspirational, right? So it’s something that you want to aspire to you want to aspire to be big and to be visible you want to aspire to be able to sort of think louder. And so I think what I like about those names is aspirational, but I got to be honest with you. There were other names that were nowhere near as successful. So I think we just got lucky that was available.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  14:58

Nice. Yeah. I just think both of those names are pretty cool. And they are inspirational like in the way that you said, you mentioned, Howard, what would you do if you switched places or you were in our shoes as far as the Chief Product Owner, or the president or whatever you want to call it, somebody that leads this from the alliance? What would you do if you were Howard?

Speaker: Giora Morein  15:26

So I think Howard, as the head of the scrum alliance is right now in a really challenging spot, and full disclosure, when they were looking for a CEO, prior to the when they hired in the previous round from when they hired Howard, I was one of the candidates for that role. I think I was one of the two finalists for that role. It’s a job I really wanted. And ultimately, I think the board decided that I was the right person. And I suspect because A. I was too expensive maybe. B. I was pretty adamant that I wanted to bring in my own team, that I thought that ultimately that the team at the time that the scrum Alliance had lacked certain leadership in specific areas. And so I think the board was looking for someone rather, that was really excited about working with people who were there.

I also think that the board at the scrum Alliance is a challenging one to work with, for anyone for any CEO, mostly because there’s a lot of turnover, right? The way it’s structured is, there is a lot of new community members coming in like every six months, there’s a vote or some like that, and then every two years, there’s another vote. And so it’s very difficult to work with them. Because it’s very unstable. There’s new people, so they don’t go through protracted periods of stability where they can operate as a unit, you have to keep introducing new people, reorient them to the mission, reorient to the people. And so that coupled with the fact that for the longest time, we had interim CEOs, right, we didn’t have permanent CEO roles where even one of the CEOs prior to Howard was previously on the board. And so historically, the board took a much more heavy handed approach, like they were responsible for a lot of decisions, and which might be okay. But then when you add the fact that it’s so dynamic, its membership in some flux, it’s very difficult to see any sort of consistency in that. And so that was certainly and so I think that that was the right decision, I think that I wasn’t the right person, for that job, as much as I wanted it. And I recommended Howard for it.

So when Howard was applying, so I was one of the people who recommended him. And I think that Howard’s done a commendable job. I really do. But I think that the scrum alliance has been on a path for a while that not just Howard, but I think his predecessors have been very hesitant to move off of right. And so I think there’s a number of challenges that historically it’s had is number one, what is the value proposition of the organization, right? Like, why are they around and unfortunately, so this idea of transforming the world of work, although it’s a cool soundbite, but it doesn’t actually at its surface mean anything, like I don’t know what that means. Other than that, it sounds good. I like the word transforming. And we certainly like the world of work. And so it seems like it means something. But also, I think that the products that the scrum Alliance has are rather disconnected right, like coaching and training, there’s very little relationship, at least in terms of how the scrum aligns position them, if you go to the scrum Alliance website, you can get certified or you can go Agile, and one means coaching and one means training.

And so I think if I were in Howard’s position, I think number one is there needs to be sort of rethinking of some sort of unified product strategy that should be connected. And so that’s the first thing the second thing is they fall into a trap where we need to make our different products somehow look the same so we can somehow market them right and so everything now is like, CSM, ACSM, CSP, right CSPO, ACSPO CSP so now there’s going to be a CSD and ACSD. And so it implies that the pattern that the product roadmap is the same for all products, which is highly unlikely if you think about any other product space that’s trying to solve a particular problem. Like they need to be looked at, sort of as independent products trying to solve specific problems for specific customers. Because if you look at those different product sets, they have different customers, they’re they have different goals, they have different users. And so just like we advise our customers and we coach them or train them, I think the scrum Alliance needs to reexamine that. And I think it needs to sort of revisit what its ultimate what’s its business model, right because it’s starting to look more and more like everybody else. It wasn’t always the case. But it’s very difficult now to differentiate the way the scrum Alliance, the role that it plays in the market versus some of the other alternatives that are out there.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  20:12

Yeah. What do you think as far as the Scrum Alliance, and the trainers and coaches that are part of Scrum Alliance are highly qualified, right, the process that everybody goes through, is scrum Alliance doing or maybe how would you read or do you think Scrum alliance is leveraging trainers and coaches, effectively, for branding?

Speaker: Giora Morein  20:36

I mean, I think that there’s definitely a lot more opportunity, right, so I’m not a certified coach from the scrum Alliance. So I’m hesitant to comment on sort of what that community is like. But certainly, if you look at the trainers, we’ve got like maybe 300 Certified Scrum trainers or somewhere there about us. I’m willing to bet you if you were to check those contacts, those people have they probably spend like the fortune 5000 right across those 300 people in terms of the companies that they’ve worked at, or served or people that have gone through, it’s pretty far reaching. And so I think the network of those trainers could certainly be better leveraged by the scrum Alliance. And so I don’t know exactly what that would look like, or how that would look like. But I think there’s a tremendous opportunity there to do more. I think the scrum Alliance from my perspective, and I don’t feel like I’m in it, so I can look at it sort of slightly more, external. Like, I think that the scrum Alliance has a tough time with the coaching value proposition. Right? And is it always been the case like, what’s the value, not of a coach, but a certified coach.

And that’s the problem, right? I think that unit formerly we understand what the value of an agile coaches are, maybe more and more people do and in a scrum coach, but then there’s a question about why, like, what do I get it from certified? Like, what’s the benefit there? And so I think part of the problem is the scrum Alliance isn’t promoting coaching, right. They’re promoting certified coaching, and quite frankly, even I have a tough time, sort of articulating that value proposition, right, like, so I think that I don’t know how well the scrum aligns vert the people that go through, right, I don’t know what that process is. But I’ve always thought that if you’re going to have sort of a model, sort of a triangle model with the people at the very top are supposed to be the experts of all experts, then you better make sure that they are right, and then build a brand around that. So, you know, CC should be the best of the best. And, you know, CSTs should be the best of the best, and that’s the brand. And I’m not sure that that’s the there’s a universal consensus that that’s the case. 

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  22:54

Yeah, I agree. And I mean, it may have been you or somebody that mentioned, you know, like, as a CST, you used to be able, like, the brand of CST was lot more influential, you know, 10 years ago, then what it is today, and I think Same thing goes with the CC brand or product never got to that level. But they are I went through that process. And the vetting is rigorous as for the CST, and you do have to have the background. It’s just I think, from a positioning like, you know, you should have all of these companies are looking for qualified coaches, knocking on CC, CDCs doors, saying like, we want to work with you, because we know what you went through and what you represent, in a sense, from experience from knowledge standpoint. So that’s something that. 

Speaker: Giora Morein  23:49

Yeah, I think that maybe looking at the trainers and the coaches and treating them the same as part of the problem, right. And so if you go back 10,12, 13, 15 years on sort of history, first of all of the CSTs and I’ve been I’ve been in that community long enough where I can remember and then how the what was then the was CSCs, how to get started, right, the Certified Scrum coaches before we had a CC and a CTC. So prior to all that, the CST was the coach right like understand that. You couldn’t become a CST at least back then, without being showing deep deep practitioner not just as a scrum master and not just as whatever but as a coach, which meant you brought the coaching capability when you hired that trainer. And so when we talked about the best of the best, it was the best of the best practitioners, right? These are the best of the best of practitioners in this field. And so when you hired a CST Yeah, they were calling Hold the trainer. But what you were hiring was an expert, right? You were hiring the best of the best in this field, when the CSC got started in order to differentiate the two, right? That’s when sort of that this idea that bifurcated, well, one is a trainer, and one is a coach, and they’re different.

They didn’t have to be different, like they’re different in terms of function, but they didn’t have to be different in terms of role. But at the time, I think when the CSC first came about they had a really tough time promoting that value proposition. And so I think that put it on a path where once it got split into two, it became very difficult for those two things not to be competitive, because I don’t know how it is today. But for the longest time, the overlap of CSTs. and CES or CSCs was something like 70%, or 80%, which means 8 out of 10 people who are certified as a coach, were trainer. And so I think anybody else looking at that would be like, well, why do they need to be separate? Why not make that the requirement for being a trainer? And I think one of the reason was, because we wouldn’t have enough coaches maybe or some like that we needed more volume.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  26:11

Also, I think still we struggle with defining what Agile coach is, right? Like, in a sense, so what is an agile practitioner? And if you look at it, like you said, it’s both of those things, it’s also understanding organizational design. It’s understanding, you know, the concepts. So you know, from lean, it’s like, you’re the expert, right, like you said, and I think as a community, we’re still struggling, ask, you know, 10 people, how they define Agile coach it’s different, even in the CC community, or CSC. there have been discussions where we need to sit down and redefine, what does it mean to be an Agile coach?

Speaker: Giora Morein  26:58

Yeah, I think, you know, I certainly we as a community over the years, we tend to find stuff to debate, right. And it’s more of a mental exercise than sort of a real market facing one, right? Like, why is Kanban better different from agile or why whatever. And so, like, this is this is largely, in my opinion, just a fun exercise that we like to debate and argue internally, because one of the things we do really badly, and maybe it’s one of those things where the cobblers kids always have no shoes. But we don’t apply the same market facing thinking to our own products and our own community, the way we recommend and advise and consultant coach our customers to write like we don’t, if you think of sort of your product owner class, maybe you do an empathy map of your users or your customers, or maybe you sort of think about what’s the job to be done, like, what’s the job that someone’s hiring this product to do? We don’t do that with coaching, right? And so instead, we debate well, what’s the difference between a consultant and a coach and a mentor, and an advisor, and whatever. And at the end of the day, if we just stopped and looked at it from the perspective of our customers, and define our product that way, right?

So define the product that the customer needs, not the one we want to deliver or the one we want to produce, like, that’s the classic trap, right? Like if you’re coaching a product owner, the first piece of advice you tell them is, don’t build the product you would use, build the product your user, your customers wants to use, but we don’t do that. And so we end up with this debate of what’s the difference between this and the other thing, but in my opinion, if you put yourself in the position of the customer, the customer is very clear in terms of what they want, right? They want a successful outcome, whatever that means contextually to that company, that organization, but if they’re going to spend money on your time, right, if they’re going to spend money on your services, they’re doing it because they expect some sort of positive outcome at the end of it, right. They’re not going through the same mental exercise we are, like when you show up to do your day of coaching for them. For you, you might make sure like what’s my coaching stands and what’s my whatever, but from their perspective, they don’t care. Right? Like they want to make sure that they get ROI on their time in terms of something tangible, both short term, maybe long term.

And so I think that if we want to have a debate, let’s debate the best way to position that, versus I’m a, you know, coaches and prescriptive and consultant is or whatever, like, honestly as a guy who spends the majority of my time talking to customers, I can guarantee one thing your customers don’t care.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  29:35

That’s a great point. And obviously COVID has changed the game is influenced, you know, and, you know, coming back to talking to the customers, how, from your perspective, how has it changed from a customer standpoint, and maybe how has it changed from our coaching and training perspective? How has that changed the game.

Speaker: Giora Morein  29:55

I think the pandemic has been very interesting experience in so many different levels. It’s also I must say, it’s been surprising how people in our own community have responded, right? Like I remember when as a CST when classes went virtual, and you couldn’t do them in person anymore, right? You saw how some trainers reacted the same way different industries reacted, some trainers said, I don’t know how to do this, I don’t know how to virtual, I don’t want to do virtual. So I’m going to take a sabbatical, I’m going to sit this out for three or four months or six months, I’ll be back at the end of it going back to the same way we did before, right. And so they stopped. And just like some restaurants who were shut down like oh, we don’t know how long this shutdown is going to be. Let’s close our doors lay as many people off as we can take a sabbatical, we’ll ride it out three, four months, six months, how long could this be? We’ll come back at once we know. Right. And so I think that we teach and coach about taking an inner approach to deal with uncertainty, trying to iterate solutions to adapt when you don’t know what the future holds.

And yet, it’s so interesting to see how people in our own community, right when put to the test, I think are really exposed in terms of how what their tendencies are, right, and what they’re going to do. I’m going to go take a full-time job to ride this out, because I don’t know what it’s going to look like, or I’m going to sit it out and write a book, I’m going to sit the next six months writing and doing things. And so essentially, the bunch of people treated us as temporary. And so one of the first things I teach or I coach, my customers is, beyond the crisis, once you get past the crisis, be careful not to apply any solution in the short term that you can’t live with in the long term, right? Because that’s a surefire way of too crazy, sort of unsustainable solutions. Like if you decide, like, for example, in the pandemic, I’m going to keep my kids at home for the next three months, because I’m afraid to let them out. But then after that, you know it will be fine. If you can’t live with that for a year, then then don’t implement it as a three month solution either, right?

Like you have to commit yourself that this might be a long-term thing, not just a short-term thing. And I think a lot of instructors, a lot of trainers, a lot of coaches said, well, this is just temporary, right? So we’ll be back. And I think if there’s one thing that we’ve learned is that it’s not temporary, and we’re not going back like, Sure, a year from now isn’t going to look like today, just like it’s not going to look like a year ago. But like 2019 isn’t coming back. Right. It’s not coming back and anyone’s model on, we’re just waiting for that to get back to that, I think is setting themselves up for failure. And so I think we’ve got customers who’ve realized that we’ve got practitioners and coaches and trainers who are realizing it. And I think in the process, we’ve realized that we can get really good at doing things virtually Right. Like before, even for me personally, like there are services and coaching that if you would have asked me in January 2020, can I do this for you virtually I’d say no, there’s just no way it would be done. But the reality is, I was just never forced to explore it, right that I’d gotten, I had 15 years of experience of showing up at your doorstep and helping you in front of you. And so I got really good at that. I didn’t get good at doing it virtually. But the pandemic has forced us to get good at doing it virtually where there’s the tools or the approach or the cameras and lighting or the things that you use. We’ve gone over the last year.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  33:30

[cross talk]

Speaker: Giora Morein  33:34

But what I mean is like, over the last, I mean, your lighting is actually looking pretty good. It matches your virtual background, it blends in nice. But what I mean is like I literally have spent only the last year doing things virtually. And I’ve seen, you know what I can deliver be so much better in just 12 months or 13 months, I had 15 years prior of doing an in person. And so if you think about as our capabilities grow, how we’ll be able to deliver services and coaching virtually, I’m pretty excited about that. Like I think there’s a lot more things that we can do, which all of a sudden means that we become more accessible, right? Like you can now support teams that you couldn’t before, there are organizations that you can now work with. That just wasn’t feasible before. And so I think that creates tremendous opportunity. I’m pretty excited about that.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  34:27

Yeah, and you’re big on data analytics. You’re big, obviously talking to consumers. Yeah, I think in my opinion, you’re really good at reading the market. You experiment a lot. What do you think is coming in next couple of years that probably many are maybe not aware of yet or don’t fully want to admit it?

Speaker: Giora Morein  34:47

I don’t know if I’m right or not, because I tend to you know, I think the reason why I experiment a lot is because my base position is usually that I’m wrong, right? So I tend not to value my own opinion maybe as much as others do. But my opinion, first of all, I think in the next three to six months, we’re going to see a lot of volatility in our marketplace. Right. And especially as trainers, I think that there’s a world of people who’ve been sort of spent the last year closed in doors. And so now that they can go out because of vaccines because of sort of a changing landscape, I don’t know that they’re going to want to sit home and do virtual classes, but I’m not sure they’re running to get into a class either. And so I think there’s going to be a period of volatility when there’ll be, it’s very unpredictable, right? So we’re going to see the level of complexity in our marketplace, sort of significantly increase over the next three to six months. A year ago, the answer was easy, right? It wasn’t easy to figure out. But at least the question was, we knew we couldn’t do things in person, we’re now going to be doing virtual. That’s the only option. So that was the answer you didn’t have to consider well, if it’s not virtual, what’s the alternative? There is no alternative.

Today, I think in the next three to four months, you’re going to see that change a lot. Right. And that I think that once we get past the next three to six months, I think we’re going to find some new normal, where I do think that there’s a segment of the population that doesn’t want to take classes, virtually, maybe their expectations are pretty low and not something they want to experience. I think the last time I saw the scrum Alliance numbers around their certifications from you know, from January 2020 to 2021, I think they were down like 9 or 10%. But if you consider the fact that they’re all of a sudden part of the 2021 numbers included people who couldn’t before go to a CSM class, right, because they weren’t close to a location that like trainers would go to, right, they were somewhere, you know, more than 60 minute drive from someplace where people go do trainers, and all of a sudden, so those people started taking classes, whereas before they couldn’t plus, the price point has gotten low enough where it’s become more accessible, right? There are people now who can afford to take these classes that you know, because they’re 600 Pop, or 500 pop that just couldn’t or wouldn’t spend $1,000 or 1100 or 1200 a pop when it was in person. And so I think that, even though the numbers are still only down 9 or 10%, I think because it includes a brand new set of customers that weren’t part of the set a year ago, that there’s a group of people had COVID never happened and the growth would have would have continued.

There’s a big chunk of people who have held off on getting this training on going down this path that now when it starts opening up again, the question is, will their resume, will they want to come back to it? Right? And I think they would. It’s just, it’s unclear how and what interest level and what that’s going to look like. So I think the next three to four months, five months, I think past the summer until we get to sort of late q3 or q4, I think we’re going to see a lot of volatility, my opinion into how I see what I think is going to happen, say next year. And again, I’m heavily involved more in sort of the training market than other things. But I think that I think there’s going to be three types of like CSM or cisbio classes, I think the markets heading towards two to three types of experiences. The first is what I like to call the special experience CSM, right because you want to go to that class because of that instructor. Right. You want to go see Mike Cohn’s class because it’s Mike Cohn. And so you’ll travel to go there, you’ll pay a premium to go there. Or maybe it’s a special experience, like we’re going to do a CSM with 3d printers. Right? And so yeah, because it’s a physical product thing, we’re going to go somewhere because the experience is what the value proposition is, and I’m willing to pay more for it. I’m willing to go somewhere and travel somewhere to get it. And so I think that those people who can put on that type of experience that special experience, right, for hardware for gaming, right we’re going to go do a Minecraft CSM.

And so I think or someone with a very well-known brand, I want to go and experience Mike Cohn’s class, I want to experience Jeff patents class. And so I think those will, you know, will be one setting, they’ll be able to charge a premium and get people to go, I think there’s going to be a pretty significant what I call the backyard classes, right? The my backyard classes, if you’re a trainer who’s fortunate enough to live in an area that a lot of people you know, are interested in training, right? So if you living near Manhattan, San Francisco, Chicago, Dallas, if you live close by you’ll be able to put on a class locally. And you won’t have to travel somewhere so it’ll still be sort of profitable, right? Like you if you can avoid spending the 2000 or 2500 bucks to travel somewhere and hotel and shipping materials and all that stuff. Then you’ll be able to do it in your backyard. You’ll be able to find a cheap venue probably because you know you’ll be experienced doing classes there. And so I think that they’ll still be sort of these localized classes that exist. And then I think the third tier will be the big room class, right? The 60, 70 Person class, and the biggest driver of this is ultimately the price point will be, if the price points don’t rebound, much from where they are today, then the only way that you can make these things profitable is if you make if you fill them with enough people to lower the cost of acquisition and delivery. And so think of 60, 70 people in a room. And that would make it worthwhile for you to travel somewhere to deliver that and then come home and ship your materials. But I don’t know how many trainers want to are capable of effectively doing an effective class with a large volume. And also, I don’t think there’s going to be that many companies and trainers that will be able to get 70, 80 people in a room.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  41:01 

There is no way  scrum alliance would actually allow that right, in a sense, but before it was. 

Speaker: Giora Morein  41:06

Well, previously there were no restrictions on size, right? So prior to virtual, the in person classes had no cap, I don’t know why they would have a cap. I think that the scrum Alliance as a trade organization, it gets very precarious, when all of a sudden you create limits on what your members can do, right? So think  of the International sort of thing of this sort of Board of Realtors, right. Like if you’re a realtor, and you’re part of that sort of association. Imagine if the Board of Realtors came out with a rule that said, you’re not allowed to have more than 10 listings at a time or you’re not allowed to sell more than five houses in a month. Like that would be ridiculous, right? Like because these trade organizations are intended to exist to promote the opportunities for its members not to make sure that everyone is it has the same right but that everyone has the same opportunity so that the best can thrive like trade organizations aren’t supposed to make everyone’s income the same. They’re supposed to make an environment where if you’re better, you’ll perform better. And so just like if you’re a realtor who’s really, really good, you’ll get all the listings, you’ll get all the customers just like if you’re a trainer who’s really, really good. Why would a trade organization want to limit access of students to that trainer that wouldn’t be in line with its mission, it wouldn’t be in line with quite frankly with  I’m not sure sort of what their nonprofit, not for profit status would allow. And I’m not really sure there’s much appetite for that. Like why would we do that?

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  42:38

Yeah. And you’ve gotten decent amount of heat for the prices, right? Like there’s been a lot of discussion, at least in our community about the pricing, and what is it that people don’t get, like, you know, in the sense like about the pricing and current pricing model and why the prices have dropped?

Speaker: Giora Morein  42:58

Well, so I think what some people have it wrong is some people blame the scrum Alliance and say it’s a scrum alliance is fault that pricing is low. And maybe the Scrum Alliance turns on, no, no, no it’s the trainers fault, because the trainers are the ones who actually set the prices. But the reality is the market decides the market decides what is the value of something. And sure, if  the market is selling these things at half the price that you are, you’re not getting any customers and to say like, well, I’m not going to lower my price, but I’m not going to have any customers. That’s a ridiculous concept. And so I think that the market is performing the way the market is supposed to perform. This is a high volume product, right? There are 1.3 million certificates  around the world. And you know, and 10s of 1000s of them getting more every month, this isn’t a premium product for a select few.

This is a bulk product for everyone. And I think that’s happened I think what a lot of people don’t understand is with the lower price point. You get people more diverse backgrounds, like in my classes, for example, today, consistently, half or sometimes more than half of people don’t come from software technology. They come from marketing, a lot of military veterans are coming through these classes, right like I recently had a class when the same class I had someone who was a NASCAR pit crew chief, another person who was a an officer of a military special forces unit and a third person was an opera singer, all in the same class. And the only reason you can get that that diversity is because the price point aligns with, these aren’t people who already get paid $150,000- $120,000 a year. Let me get more like they are not nurses and intrapreneur isn’t like these aren’t people who are…. $1,000 is a lot of money for these folks, and most more and more of them. There’s not some other company paying them to be there. And so I think what people are missing is with the low prices, it opens up for new opportunities for new people that we can reach that that prior they never would have been in your class.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  45:13

Yeah, and if you look at like the mission of the scrum Alliance, right, the change in the world of work, you would think that, you know, actually like what you just said, getting people outside of software, getting more people trained is actually align more with that mission. And maybe, I don’t know if our community or trainers have gotten too comfortable or to use, you know, the world before this. But when I look at it, it’s in a sense, it’s good because you are getting people outside of your typical software. And I’m seeing Scrum and Agile and construction. I’m seeing it in other industries that you wouldn’t, generally assume, how can they do Agile and Scrum in construction? And yet you know, one of the biggest companies, California, is adopting that. So I think that’s an interesting and important perspective to go back to the mission of Scrum Alliance and say, like, okay, you know, what are we and how are we aligning to that and how are we helping? What do you think is maybe, as a last question here, what do you think is the future for Scrum and Agile outside of software? What are you seeing and how quickly do you think other industries will catch up?

Speaker: Giora Morein  46:35

I think it’s becoming the new normal, right? Like, this is how everybody works. It’s not a surprise. You know, I sometimes joke in my classes that there’s an entire generation of college graduates. And now it doesn’t even matter what field it’s in, it used to be just software or assisted computer science isn’t like that. But there’s an entire generation of college kids that have graduated in the last four or five years, who have no idea what you’re talking about, when you say waterfall, like literally like, like when you talk about the QA phase or the analysis phase, they look at you like you’re talking about the good old days of riding bicycles without helmets, and drinking water straight from the hose like, yeah, the good old like they have no personal experience because they didn’t learn about it in college. The first job they took was for some startup or some agile group or some scrum team or something like that. And those college grads, they they’re getting promoted right about now to frontline managers, right?

And they’re responsible for interviewing and recruiting and leading and managing other sort of entry people, right, other college grads and all of them have no contextual, firsthand perspective or experience about what the hell we’re talking about when we say waterfall when we say these things. And so, in five years from now, those frontline managers will be mid-level managers leading other managers like, we’re aging out, right? And some people thinking like, I used to thinking I’ll be honest, when in 2005, when I was coaching, my first team was at Fidelity Investments, I would joke with them today. It’s a pendulum today I’m here as an Agile Coach 10 years from now I’m coming back as a waterfall coach. But I think if there’s one thing that surprised me at some point that we’ve learned is there is no going back like I don’t think this is the end we’re going to continue finding new ways and adapting and finding new tools techniques. But I know we’re not going back it just doesn’t work for us anymore. We found things better the markets changed our customers have different expectations. And so I think sure that might have started in software but we’re seeing it everywhere marketing today, marketing today any sort of predictive campaign like you think I’m going to spend $100,000 I’m going to upfront decide this I’m going to spend it on these creatives that’s nuts it’s craziness.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  48:50

Or planning yeah head like I’ve been involved in some of the large market initiatives where you put five mil down for the whole year you get your schedule you know exactly when you’re at, we have no idea how it’s running like you set it you know in January for me and especially you know with television like you had been really good way to gaze so

Speaker: Giora Morein  49:14

And television ads used to have a really long lead time so used to fit right. Like it’ll take you four to six months from the time you picked your ad agency the time you picked your director to tell you had your storyboard and your concept like yeah, when it takes four to six months to shoot an ad, but today like their ads being shot on cell phones, right, there ads that are looked like social media, people talking to a single camera. Like during the pandemic advertising didn’t stop it’s just there’s not big camera crews showing up right like there’s somebody ships you a little DSLR camera, you hit the record button and you record it. And so I think that even in traditional areas like TV advertising and radio advertising, we’re starting to see AB test and set based approach in different markets and sort of different demographics targeting different times on different channels. And even then, I think a lot of companies are realizing nobody watches TV ads anymore, right? Because nobody watches TV anymore. And so like now the idea of these creatives even that take recruiting you’ve tried if you’re trying to find candidates, like in the old days, you know, from the time you first talked, put a put out a job description, you talk to a candidate, it was totally cool that two months later is when that process would complete. There’s no good candidates hanging out for two months waiting for you to hire them.

And so if you want better candidates, you can’t take a long drawn out big batch process. Let me let me get all my resumes. Let me look, evaluate them all. Let me set up all my interviews that at the first interview and see who goes through, set up my second interview, it just doesn’t work. Those candidates aren’t going to stick around. And so I think we’re seeing it in everything today. It’s not just software it started in software, because software is easy. Because software, unlike a building, you don’t need to build don’t need to big a dig hole before you do anything else like software is easier because you can start anywhere you want. I think it’s more challenging in some of these areas. I think it’s going to look a little different like to us purist is going to look maybe not how we would do it or that’s the wrong way or the right way. But I actually think that as these industries, explore different approaches, we’ll figure out newer ways of doing these things. And I think that’s great.