Introducing
Scrumpy Dad
Personal growth
I’ve always had a deep desire to grow, both professionally and personally. The books I read deal with leadership, productivity, psychology, and personal development. The training courses I followed boosted my personal growth with stronger communication, coaching and facilitation skills. I learned to embrace discomfort outside the comfort zone to invest in better versions of myself.
And so I changed jobs every 2-3 years to challenge myself working in different organizations with their unique cultures operating in other business domains applying new technologies. For over 20 years I worked in leadership roles, interacting with individuals, teams and management to build a motivating working environment where people could thrive. I’ve been through the highs of career success and the lows of laying off people, being a workaholic, and losing my job (twice). As a Scrum Master, I finally found the job that makes me happy.
Applying proven practices
My private life was plain sailing at first. Getting married and becoming a parent taught me a lot about vulnerability, empathy, and motivation. The long and painful divorce that followed uncovered my shortcomings and where I needed to step up. The next challenge was creating a happy and safe place for my kids, my new partner, and her daughter. Knowing that blended families have an even higher rate of failing than first time marriages, I’m extremely grateful we made it.
When I first became a full-time Scrum Master, I got hooked on designing and facilitating workshops. I love helping people by creating structure in complexity. Somewhere along that path, I realized the tools I was using as a Scrum Master weren’t just for work. Visual planning boards, retrospectives, and prioritization techniques could help me steer my personal life too. And so I started applying these practices at home. And since I love to write, I began sharing my experiments on Medium, for inspiration on how to navigate the beautiful, messy complexity of life. That’s when Scrumpy Dad was born.
My mission
Over time, I started helping others apply these tools in their own lives. What surprised me wasn’t just that these techniques worked, it was how deeply they connected people. It proved to me that practices based on agile principles can improve more than just team performance at work, they can improve everyday life. And so my mission became to inspire people to create more happiness in their lives and improve the world around them.
I wrote A Scrum Master’s Guide to Happiness to bring all of these tools, stories, and insights together in one place so you can benefit too. It’s a personal, practical guide to help you clarify your values, define your goals, plan your actions, and reflect along the way. It’s not a prescriptive life hack manual; it’s a flexible, principle-based approach that you can adapt to your own situation.
Let’s make life a better place. More human. With sticky notes and a smile.
