We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Bethany DeCola a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Bethany, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What do you think Corporate America gets wrong in your industry?
Corporate America tends to put the cart before the horse when it comes to the development of products and services. I have worked in several industries and the number one issue I’ve noticed is that everyone tends to be so excited to get their new idea or product out to the public that they fail to do the behind the scenes work that it takes to make product launches a success. The pattern I’ve seen is that those in the highest positions at a company will come up with a great idea or hear of a new product or service that a competitor has put out and IMMEDIATELY JUMP to implementation of that idea within their own organization. They want this to be released as soon as possible so they cut corners on the important research phase: analyzing their current processes, interviewing employees and current clients to see what is actually wanted, needed or is even feasible, doing cost analysis, checking with the engineers who will be building the product to make sure that the time frame imagined is actually the timeframe that this can be completed in. Because this is usually skipped over, the results are: time and money wasted developing a product or service that falls short of what customers actually want and need, stressed out employees striving to meet unrealistic deadlines, and upset stakeholders who don’t see the results they were promised.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
For me it all started at the age of 5. My parents got their first computer for the home and I was obsessed. I was always a very inquisitive child, so at first it was just an obsession with playing games on the computer. Then I wanted to learn to type. It finally became an interest in how the computer works. So I taught myself from programming books in middle school. By the time I was halfway through high school I had built my own computer, and I ended up graduating at the age of 16 as a Certified Webmaster. Immediately after high school I enrolled in college for IT, but the focus was hardware. Since I had already built a computer from the ground up years before, I quickly got bored. I took pause from college to pursue a career in the corporate world, and worked successfully across many industries such as Legal, Financial, and Government, just to name a few. Because I am a very fast learner, I found that work in the corporate world couldn’t hold my attention either. While at my last corporate job as a technical analyst, my colleagues really encouraged me that the tech space was where I really belonged. So after almost 15 years, I decided to go back to school and pursue my first love, programming.
While in school for programming I discovered the Scrum Framework as a means of managing projects and quickly realized that this was the way I had always been working from my school years all the way through my corporate career: I prioritized my tasks, broke them down into smaller tasks, competed against my best personal times to speed up my production over time, and as a result was saving my employers money. I even convinced one employer to let me work half days since I was working twice as fast as my colleagues! As a result of this eureka moment, I decided upon completion of college this time that I would pursue a career in project management.
It was always in the back of my mind that in every position I held in the corporate space, I always worked on teams of people who were frustrated and disillusioned with the way things are. Products and services were constantly being released before proper testing was done and with little to no research of customer needs or the impact the changes or releases would have on the current employees. The backlash would be that employees were inundated with complaints from dissatisfied customers and this in turn led to employee/management frustration, and resulting retention issues.
The Scrum Framework solved that problem, managing product/service release projects in the correct manner: by doing thorough research on both the employee and customer side first to see what is feasible, organizing and prioritizing the tasks that needed to be done, using cross-functional teams that were capable of getting the entire project done, breaking down the project tasks incrementally, and doing proper testing and revisions before releasing the product/service to the public.
Many people don’t know this framework exists or how to use it, so I established my business Scrum As You Are to provide technical project management using the Scrum Framework so that businesses can manage their projects to save time, energy, money, and in a way that just makes sense.
Currently, I am focusing more on small businesses and showing them how to manage their projects like larger, Fortune 500 companies do. Google, Facebook, and other large corporations shouldn’t have the monopoly on good project management, and they don’t! We can all use the Scrum Framework as business owners and really should be as it is a best practice.
How do you keep your team’s morale high?
One thing I noticed from my time working in corporate America was the lack of good communication from the top down. Higher-ups would usually only communicate with entry level on special occasions or if something was wrong. Middle management would always be the liaison between upper management and entry level team members. Entry level would be shaking in their boots for fear of saying the wrong thing and upsetting the powers that be. Because my business operates within the Scrum Framework, open and transparent communication between all members of the team is strongly encouraged and fostered.
Teammates shouldn’t be afraid to be honest about problems they see, and management should be humble enough to listen and take these things into consideration.
I teach the teams I manage to attack the problem, not each other. We listen to what the problem is and evaluate together what we can do to remedy it.
Transparency when working on a project together as a team is so important. Any member of the team should be able to see what the status is of the project being worked on: What tasks there are overall, what has been completed and what still needs to be completed. If the team is behind, everyone knows it and can quickly huddle together to figure out a plan. If the team is on time or ahead of schedule, this serves as a motivating factor.
Wins can and should be celebrated!
Have you ever had to pivot?
Just recently I had to pivot from being a solopreneur to building Scrum As You Are into an agency. Because I work in technical project management, I would often manage projects for teams that consisted of web developers and designers, social media managers, and the like. My clients would come to me seeking advice, and would often ask to be referred to a web developer, or a branding strategist, etc. There was a time or two that a client would be sent to me as a referral and would already be working with developers or designers that were unknown to me.
That got me to thinking: There are extremely skilled brand strategists, web developers and designers, and social media managers that I know and trust to always get the job done right the first time because of how thorough they are. Since my clients tend to ask referrals for these people anyway, I decided to make Scrum As You Are a one stop shop for business owners to get everything they need to run the digital side of their business online.
We now offer Web Development/Design/Maintenance, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media Management, Brand Strategy, Technical Project Management, and soon we’ll be adding an Online Business Manager (OBM) to our team. We pride ourselves on getting the job done right the first time, using the Scrum Framework to manage each and every project, and we build custom packages to fit each client’s needs and budget.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://scrumasyouare.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/scrumasyouaretampa/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/scrumasyouare
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/scrumasyouare/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/scrumasyouare
Image Credits
Caitlyn Padmore, The Glass Frame Photography