Meet Rohiteshwar Singh

CSP-SM™ and CSP-PO™ Rohiteshwar Singh lives in Atlanta, Georgia (USA) and is an Agile Consultant for Cognizant Technology Solutions.

For you, what is the main difference between where you began as a CSM^®, CSPO^®, or CSD^® and becoming a CSP^®?
As a CSM and CSPO, I was able to enhance my experience with in-depth understanding of the concepts and best practices and apply them to the real world.
The CSP provided me with a greater value and credibility to help companies create self-organized, high-performing teams with a focus on value, and to foster business agility while championing creative and innovative minds.

What is your favorite part about becoming a CSP?
Being a CSP, I am able to engage more in the community and meet with other Agile professionals who bring their unique insights to the table and provide me with different ways of problem solving.

Give us an example of how the CSP certification has helped you in your career.
CSP certification has added the credibility of being an Agile consultant and coach who has helped large and small organizations navigate their enterprise Agile adoptions and transformations.

How did you first find out about Scrum?
My first encounter with Scrum goes back to 2006 when I was at McKinsey, and we needed to find a solution for the problem of how to deliver often and always keep stakeholders abreast. That’s when I was introduced to Scrum, and since then it’s been an ongoing learning and sharing experience.

What do you find easiest about Scrum?
Reporting to product owners is no longer an issue, as they are involved all the time.

What do you find most difficult about Scrum?
Organizational culture takes time to transform to Agile principles, and it’s a challenge to manage expectations till that time. That’s where the CSP helps me manage coaching through credibility.

What’s your best/worst work experience using Scrum?
The worst experience has been with a top-heavy political organization that claimed interest in implementing Scrum — but the management decided on the number of stories the team would be working within an iteration, added things mid-iteration, and then pulled them out. They did not give the team the ability to add technical tasks to the backlog. This defied the logic of Scrum and demoralized the team.

How has using Scrum changed you?
With my experience with Scrum, I have coached people on Agile adoption and the relevance of learnings acquired through Scrum Alliance certifications. In fact, I have adopted Agile as the way of life and apply it to our family household chores as well. My young daughter has been learning quite early the benefits of being Agile.

If you could add one thing to Scrum, what would it be?
The beauty of Scrum lies in the fact that it doesn’t stand against improvisation for progress. We have added a weekly product refinement session with product owner, ScrumMaster, and story author. This really helps in ensuring the smooth and successful flow of the four ceremonies.

Do you use Scrum in your life outside of work? If yes, how?
Definitely yes. We use burn-down charts to track our finances. We track against the monthly budget allocated and it helps us figure out where we can eliminate wasteful expenses.

Also, we are in a process to introduce Kanban to our little one (two years old). She will have a board with To-Do, In-Progress, and Done. Once everything moves to Done, she can leverage her rhyme time.

What advice would you give to someone new to Scrum?
Scrum is all about constant reflection and then improvising. Do not get overwhelmed in trying to apply all the principles. Think of it as learning something new and then adapting to get desired results. Sustain the momentum and it will be a happy journey.

What is your favorite quote? And why?
“Never give up your right to be wrong, because then you will lose the ability to learn new things and move forward with your life,” from Dr. David Burns.
Why? In other words, it means inspect and adapt.