New Scrum Master Role

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Since leaving Salesforce in 2023 I’ve been working in a contractor role for a health insurance company where I worked full-time from 2011 to 2015. Being a contractor allows me to have a much higher base pay in lieu of things like PTO, benefits, and an employer’s 401(k) match. I’m fortunate to work for a software firm that offers paid vacation (two weeks per year) and has a 401(k), though there’s no employer match. My wife has incredible benefits through her employer, and since we would likely use those anyhow, it’s well worth it to me to stay in a contractor role as opposed to look for a full-time position.

Unfortunately, this also adds to the risk of being laid off again.

I’ve been in a role for the past two years that has been primarily project management, with some account/relationship management responsibilities. I don’t usually enjoy project management roles as they can be painful, but the programs I’ve been on for the past year or so have been a lot of fun and I love working with the people I interact with on a daily basis.

We’ve had some reductions in our organization over the past six months or so and the client made the decision to move me into a Scrum Master role to safeguard me from being impacted. While I was searching for new jobs after the tech layoffs, I noticed that most of the Scrum Master roles I was seeing wanted to SAFe certifications, which focus on a framework for scaling agile delivery methods in an organization. I don’t have this certification and I have limited experience with it to fall back on. 

So, I took a certification course last month and passed my SAFe Scrum Master certification exam, adding that to my Certified Scrum Master and Certified Scrum Product Owner certifications.

I love the new role, and until the client starts to hire full time positions again, I’m perfectly happy coaching teams toward better productivity levels.

Synology NAS for home backup operations

Home Backup Process

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Over the years, I’ve had an evolving process for backing up things that are important to me. Not unlike many others, I started off creating backups on CD or DVD media, with the presumption that I could archive data (e.g., documents, photos, software) permanently this way. We now know, of course, that optical media is nowhere near permanent, with a life expectancy of 5-20 years, depending on type. I later relied on encrypted volumes in a second internal hard drive, mirrored with an external hard drive. This is certainly an improvement but also not optimal.

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Apple Shortcuts application on iPad

Creating Deep Links in Apple Notes

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I’m in a really weird place with my workflow lately. I capture tasks in OmniFocus and use that as both my digital inbox and task management application. In the past, I used Evernote as my primary reference solution, adding both long-term storage (articles that I found that I know I’ll eventually need to refer to again) and project content (e.g., brainstorming personal goals to understand motivations, incremental targets, capturing status updates). I also used it for meeting notes from 2011-2015 while working for a company that had assigned me a Mac as my work laptop.

When I started working another company in 2015, they only used Windows machines, and since I was in a role that was more prone to HIPAA controls, it was not an option to have Evernote on my work laptop. I started using OneNote for capturing meeting notes and relied on Evernote only from my personal computers for personal content.

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GTD tags and contexts used for organization

Rethinking GTD Contexts

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I recently read the article A Fresh Take On Contexts by Sven Fechner, a Twitter user that I used to follow (he stopped posting), on his blog, Simplicity Bliss. It’s an older article, posted in 2011.

Sven talked about the evolution of GTD both as a practice and from a system perspective. Where he lands, is that contexts have become somewhat ubiquitous in the past several years with online accessibility blending between home and work, and with contexts like “Computer” no longer meaning you’re at home using a desktop. His point is that whether you’re laying on the couch, sitting in your office, or waiting in the waiting room of a doctor’s office, there’s a good chance you have access to the same computer-based tasks, as well as office and phone tasks.

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Apple HomeKit used for smart home automation

Using SmartThings With Apple HomeKit

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I’ve been using SmartThings for a number of years now. For several months, I’d found that I would leave for work, get halfway to the office, and realize I had no idea if I’d closed the garage door when I left. When you get 20 minutes away and have to drive back to look, it’s pretty disruptive. The garage door was only open once, early on, and I had only been a few minutes away. In attempt to stem this problem, I had tried to create a new routine: Back out of the garage, watch the garage door close completely (causing the event to more likely register in my memory), and then drive off. This helped some, but there were times I was just not sure.

For Christmas in December 2015, my wife bought me a SmartThings hub and a door contact sensor. Her thinking was that I could put the sensor on the garage door, and I’d at least be able to check the status of the garage door remotely. By the time we left her parents’ house to head back to Florida a few days later, I had assembled a list of Amazon items that would not only allow me to set up a home security system, but open or close the garage door remotely as well. In her words, she had created a monster.

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Salesfore Trailhead levels

Zero to Ranger in 56 Days

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I changed jobs last summer, leaving the workers’ compensation industry for Big Tech. I love my new company and it’s hard to find anything negative to say about it. It’s huge — there are 62,000 employees globally — and the onboarding process is no joke. In addition to the normal computer-based training that centers on compliance, security and other “CYA” topics, there’s a ton of information thrown at you about the company’s culture, which is omnipresent in everything you do in the organization. And while you don’t have to remember where to go for everything you need (e.g., changing 401k contributions, ordering a new mouse) you do have to know how and where to find answers, so a significant amount of time is spent on this as well. It’s truly the most robust and successful onboarding I’ve ever seen.

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Agile theater costume mask

Well, This Doesn’t Seem Agile

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I’ve worked in Agile Theater before. It’s pretty ineffective and disappointing. Most companies that claim they’re “doing Agile” are just trying to avoid requirements or accountability for delivery altogether.

I’m not the first person to write about their distaste of Agile when companies do it poorly. One of my favorite quotes comes from this article by Michael Church where he discusses the false dichotomy when compared with waterfall:

Waterfall replicates the social model of a dysfunctional organization with a defined hierarchy. Agile, quite often, replicates the social model of a dysfunctional organization without a well-defined hierarchy.

https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2015/06/06/why-agile-and-especially-scrum-are-terrible/
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David and kids, hiking at Moses Cone Park, October 2020

Life Reorganized

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Life has been different here lately. Like basically every other family in America, the coronavirus pandemic has forced significant changes to the way we live. I haven’t traveled for work since January. My kids haven’t played with friends since March. They haven’t seen their grandparents in eight months.

Since my son is in virtual classes, he’s in school here at the house all day, and at six years of age, requires a fair amount of hand-holding. Throw my toddler daughter into the mix, and the day is a chaotic rodeo from about 7am until they’re in bed around 8:30pm each evening. Then my wife and I finish the work we didn’t get a chance to complete earlier. It’s exhausting.

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Backup button on computer keyboard

cPanel Backup

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One of the services I perform for web clients is periodically making backups of their web site. This includes backing up the web directory (all of their HTML files including WordPress and any accompanying theme files and plugins) and taking a backup of their site’s MySQL database.

Rather than doing this manually, it’s easier (and more reliable) to just schedule the process in cPanel.  Unfortunately, if you’re using a reseller account like mine or if you have multiple sites, you can’t select a single web site in the native cPanel Backups module.  You’ll have to write a bash script and run it at your desired frequency through Cron.

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