QualityMinds from the mind’s perspective? Tine works in the Agile team, where she is mainly involved in customer projects as a Scrum Master or Agile Coach. Flexible working is very important to her; she works part-time, mostly from home, and can organise her working hours as she wishes. For her as a mother, her part-time working model with a very high proportion of remote working offers a number of advantages, allowing her to benefit from reduced commuting times and more time for her family.

How did you find your way to QualityMinds?

Tine: My journey at QualityMinds started when I met my former team leader and current Managing Director. She believed in me back then that I could become a Scrum Master at QualityMinds, even though I had hardly any experience in this field.

That opened the door to a whole new world for me, in which agility and Scrum frameworks play a central role. I am now completely absorbed in my role as a Scrum Master and Agile Coach and I am driven by the desire to further develop organisations with agile methods. Supporting and connecting people is my passion and I get to pursue it every day at QualityMinds.

What advantages do you see in your part-time model?

Tine: My part-time model makes my day-to-day work much easier, as my children are still small and I take over their care from the afternoon onwards. Part-time work gives me the flexibility I need to combine work and childcare. Working from home is another key success factor and provides me with very pleasant working conditions.

What do you like about your working model with remote work?

Tine: I particularly appreciate the short distances. The childcare centre is very close to my home, so I can get back to my workplace more quickly. In total, I save about an hour and a half a day that I would otherwise spend commuting. In addition, my workspace at home is set up in such a way that it doesn’t constantly remind me of work, which helps me to find a good balance between my private life and work.

The peace and quiet of the home office also suits me very well. I make a lot of phone calls at work, which works better at home than if I always had to find a quiet corner in the office. The lower potential for distraction in the home office compared to an office with colleagues who are not directly involved in the project makes it easier to concentrate and focus on my work. When I go into the office, I really enjoy seeing my colleagues again and chatting with them over a cup of coffee.

At home, my husband is also often in the home office and we are both in work mode. We meet in the kitchen and sometimes talk about work. I’m interested in his assessment and vice versa. As we both come from different backgrounds, these exchanges are very interesting.

How family-friendly do you think the working environment at QualityMinds is?

Tine: We have a very family-friendly working environment at QualityMinds with five children’s sick days, which I have unfortunately already used up for this year. Reconciling work and private appointments works really well at QualityMinds. Thanks to the flexible working hours, I’m not tied to office hours and can juggle a lot of things. Daycare meetings, tax advice, doctor’s appointments – most of these appointments fall within regular working hours.

Working from home also gives me the opportunity to respond flexibly to family requirements, such as attending medical appointments or taking part in parent-teacher conferences. Thanks to my flexible schedule, I can also attend these appointments during regular working hours, which is often a challenge for employees with a traditional working model. This promotes my work-life balance with work and family enormously, as I get a lot of things done without stress.

Were there also challenges with regard to working from home?

Tine: The spontaneous, casual conversations in the coffee kitchen in the office are too rare in the home office. In the office, such encounters often happen casually in between when you meet someone in the coffee kitchen. Conversations are then more focussed on work remotely and there are clear time boxes for meetings, which also brings structure and efficiency to the meetings.

Such spontaneous encounters can also take place online if the team consciously creates space for them. We have now introduced a “We’re just chatting” meeting in the team to deliberately only talk about things that have nothing to do with work once a week, so we can get to know each other even better and strengthen our team spirit. We also meet in the office at regular intervals, so that the valuable personal, direct contact is not neglected.

Appointments can be easily arranged in the office. A quick glance or a sentence like “Do you have a moment later?” can initiate a new appointment without much fuss, which is very practical.

But even in a remote setting, it’s perfectly possible to casually ask: “Hey, do you want to have a quick chat?”. I also often meet up with colleagues for a spontaneous call, with a brief warning beforehand as to whether the other person is available, which is very straightforward with QualityMinds.

How important are communication tools for your daily work as a Scrum Master & Agile Coach? What does QualityMinds offer you for this?

Tine: Communication is a key function Key function in these roles. Sometimes I talk all day. I regularly hold feedback meetings, talk to customers frequently and also work closely with other teams at QualityMinds. But we also communicate a lot within our team. Very good communication tools, such as our internal company tool Slack for written communication or video calls with teams, are therefore essential in my day-to-day work.

I have found that QualityMinds attaches great importance to providing employees with state-of-the-art, high-performance communication tools. We are also constantly being given new communication tools to try out that make our day-to-day work easier.

What ideas have you already been able to contribute to QualityMinds?

Tine: I have already been able to contribute some ideas, such as the optimisation of internal team structures or a guest post for our blog series. My blog ‘Working remotely as a Scrum Master‘ is about how a Scrum team can find the best way to collaborate remotely and how important it is to actively shape virtual collaboration.

What technology/hardware did you get from QualityMinds for your home office workstation?

Tine: At QualityMinds, great importance is attached to providing employees with all the technical equipment they need to work efficiently wherever they are. After returning from my parental leave, I got everything I wanted.

You are an expert in learning. Do you also take advantage of the training programmes offered by QualityMinds?

Tine: In particular, I use the Communities of Practice (CoPs) for Scrum Masters. The abbreviation CoP stands for Community of Practice. Learners organise themselves in a group and are supported by the community in the learning process. The focus of a CoP is on voluntary, social learning.

I also regularly enjoy doing agile learning coaching with my coach Nora. There are so many exciting training programmes at QualityMinds and if I had more time, I would certainly take advantage of even more.

Is there a topic that you have been able to develop further through QualityMinds or that you are currently working on?

Tine: I recently had the opportunity to further my training in the area of agile frameworks and approaches for larger organisations. As part of the Leading SAFe® 6 training certification, my team and I received a comprehensive introduction to the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe®). This framework is often used in larger organisations to scale agile practices at an enterprise level.

I also found the Certified Agile Organisation Designer training very rewarding, both personally and professionally, as this approach to agile organisation design enables organisations to develop their agile frameworks to meet their needs. At QualityMinds, I feel that I can always evolve and learn something new every day, whether intentionally or unintentionally.

Conclusion

Tine usually works from home, which saves her commuting time and makes it easier to look after her children. She appreciates the advantages of working remotely, such as the increased concentration and the opportunity to spend time with her family in a flexible way. From her point of view, the various training opportunities at QualityMinds are also a great benefit for employees and she tries to take advantage of as many of them as possible.

Would you like to find out more about the role of the Scrum Master at QualityMinds? Listen to our Podcast QualityHeroes.

Want to read more from our minds? Click here for the interviews with our colleagues Nora, Max, Bettina, Klaus, Mario, Katja, Tobias, Richard and Lukas.