On October 29th, 2019, I had the honor and privilege to become a Scrum Trainer (ST), getting my certificate from Dr. Jeff Sutherland, the co-creator of Scrum Framework at Scrum Inc Headquarters in Boston. This is a major step in my life and my professional career and allows me to bring the true Scrum to communities that I work with, by providing Scrum Master (SM) and Scrum Product Owner (SPO) Workshops.

 It has been more than ten years since I first acknowledged the Scrum and Agile mindset. For me, that moment changed my life, but I didn’t know it at the time. Later on, I was lucky enough to get involved in one of the hardest projects I have ever been involved in, as a Project Director. All stakeholders told me that there was nothing to do but accept that the project was a failure and canceling the project would be the best thing to do, saving as much as I could of the company’s money. But because I saw the value that the product could bring to the company, I didn’t want to give up, at least not without giving it a try first.

So, I managed to get three months’ extension approval though I knew all my managers were thinking, “your days here are numbered”.  In those three months, I was blessed to work with the best team ever. They agreed on everything that I came up with because they all believed in the product.

Long story short, we started using Scrum and in the first month, we already had a working product. It wasn’t perfect, but it worked, and though we didn’t follow the upfront “plan”, we concentrated on what was more important to organization and we delivered that. At the end of those three months we had a big part of the product done. And because the product was actually a platform to build other products on, the company had already started to use the platform. It was a success and I can say that even today the company continues to deliver products based on that platform.

Later, I was invited by the management to help other teams from that organization to become Agile and to do Scrum. That was the moment when I realized Agile changed my life for the better and my wish now is to spread that feeling to as many people as possible.

My passion is my mission, which is to help others uncover better ways of doing what they do, by providing a self-learning environment at my workshops, so everyone can assess as much as they need. It is not about me teaching, it is more about participants tasting and experimenting what it means to be Agile and how to use Scrum.

From the moment I found out about Agile and up to today, it has been a great journey for me, and I wasn’t alone. Because being Agile means to support others in their journey, I also had the privilege to be supported by great people:

• Dr. Jeff Sutherland, co -creator of Scrum, who had the patience to answer all my questions and allowed me to discover what Scrum stands for.
• Peter Stevens, who constantly challenged me, which allowed me to learn and actually believe that I can fly over the bar.
• Cherrie Silas, who guided me to discover myself, to forget about climbing the ladder and to take the escalator instead.
• Jessica Larsen, Heather Timm, and all my colleagues at Scrum Inc who made the Scrum Training program and guided me to this moment.
• Tobias Mayer, who had a different kind of voice in the Agile community.
• Evelyn Tian, who provided me with the knowledge and the focus to became a trainer.
• Scrum Ambassadors Group, World Agility Forum Committee, Personal Agility Group, my fellow trainers from the first Scrum Train the Trainer cohort, The Agile Talks Timisoara Community, and all my Agile and Scrum community friends and students that share their experience with me and allow me to be part of their journey
• My family, especially my wife and my two little girls that support me and remind me to smile every day.

For all that I mention above and for the rest that I didn’t, I lean in front of you, and I thank you very much, for helping me during my voyage and for being a part of my Agile and Scrum family.

“True friends challenge us and help us to be faithful on our journey” – Pope Benedict XVI

Looking forward to continuing this great journey!