Blake McMillan

I began my IT career working on a Help Desk in the last millennium. I ended up pursuing the Infrastructure path getting certified as a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer for NT 4.0.  I didn't hear about Scrum (or Agile) until 2006.  

My first exposure to Scrum was through a Scrum Alliance Certified Scrum Master class when I was working at Capital One.  I really enjoyed the class and was excited about the ideas and concepts that I learned about, but I struggled to connect it to the work that was I was doing.  I was not a Scrum Master, Product Owner, or Developer at the time, I was the Manager of a DevOps team (before people used the term DevOps).

I was able to see the value of many of the concepts that I learned in the class and it began the transformation in thinking from traditional command and control management, to a servant leadership model and one where I learned to support my team instead of them supporting me.

Over the following years I was able to work with Scrum teams (and non-Scrum teams) in the Product Owner role even when that was not my actual title.  It was in 2016 that I started getting more interested in the Scrum Master role.

I took the Scrum.org Professional Scrum Master class with my friend Ty Crockett at Improving.  That training was the catalyst for me wanting to take steps to get more deeply involved with Scrum.  In 2019 I became a Professional Scrum Trainer with Scrum.org and I am excited to be part of Improving's Training organization.