Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be an online trainer?

I’ll take you behind the scenes of the life of a Professional Scrum Trainer. From morning preparations to interacting with students and managing other tasks, get ready to dive into a day in the life of an online consultant and trainer.

Morning Preparations

Bright and early, I kickstart my day by preparing for the upcoming class. Since most of my classes are conducted online, I ensure my working space is set up just right.

⏰ It’s 9 AM

I head to my office (my home office, that is), raise my desk to start the day standing, and turn on my camera and microphone. Using OBS Studio, I set everything up in my software. After that, I double-check my class material, ensuring that all the necessary links have been sent to the students and that my Miro board is ready.

Also, I open up the trainer guide on my second screen as a quick reference. Making any last-minute adjustments to my Miro board is essential, even if I should have done it beforehand. If I have some spare time, I quickly check my emails and sync up with the ScrumMastered team, knowing that my full attention will be dedicated to the class throughout the day.

Engaging with Students

At 9 am sharp, my class begins, and I warmly greet my students 😁 I usually have a lot of admin and introductions to get out of the way at the beginning, which usually take up the first hour. For smaller groups, we engage in a fun round of introductions, allowing everyone to get to know each other.

During this time, we also dive into a quick exercise, and while the students discuss amongst themselves, I observe their interactions. 🤓

This initial part of the class typically lasts around 1 hour 15 minutes before we take our first break of the day.

Break Time

As we take a break, I adjust my desk to a sitting position. Usually, I stand until almost the end of the day, but circumstances may require me to sit earlier, like the time I hurt my foot during exercise.

During the break, I grab my coffee ☕️ and take a few minutes to catch up on additional work. I communicate with my team on WhatsApp, providing instructions to my designer for image-related tasks, and check any tasks assigned to me on ClickUp.

WhatsApp has proven to be a lifesaver for our communication, easily accessible across platforms and aggregating all my notifications in one place. While my team handles a significant portion of the work, tasks still require my attention, such as selecting the winners of a challenge we ran in May.

After the break, we dive into the second section of the class, which continues until lunchtime. This part involves a lot of interaction and exercises, where I actively participate as a student myself.

Keeping up the engagement during class

During the exercises, students work in groups, and I facilitate and participate alongside them. As groups present their insights on specific scenarios, I take quick notes on stickies, ensuring I capture important points without interrupting their flow. This engaging exercise and presentation session lasts until lunchtime, providing a comprehensive learning experience for everyone involved.

🍽️ After Lunch

Once we return from lunch, we resume the exercises. If it’s a straightforward exercise and I don’t need to participate to balance the teams, I sometimes take the opportunity to attend to my emails while the students are engaged in the exercise.

We do one more break after lunch.

HINT: If you are running a full day session, or anything that takes the group after lunch, I recommend giving everyone a break no more than 1 hour after liunch or you’ll start seeing people disconnecting and getting distracted.

Post-Class Administrative Tasks

As the class nears its end, I delve into administrative tasks behind the scenes. While students work on a lengthy exercise in breakout rooms, I periodically check in with them. On my middle monitor, I have the main room in Zoom open.

Some of the things that I need to do at the end of the class is to add all of the student contact details into the class system, upload the class materials.

I need to make sure that all of the links I’m sharing are working, and of course, I need to pay some student fees.

I’m also exporting the Miro board into a PDF. Even though my students have access to the board, it’s good to have all of the information in a PDF instead.

Before I actually export the file, I go back to review all of the slides and rearrange the sticky notes create by the students during the class.

Sometimes there are notes that are outside of the frames so they won’t export if I don’t rearrange them. Or sometimes notes are on top of each other blocking the text.

All of those small adjustments that I need to do to make sure the classroom materials are readable and useful.

Updating my class templates

I have a Miro template that I just copy for every class which saves me a lot of time.

Almost every class I run brings in new ideas and adjustments I can make to my class material to make it better. So if I have time I take to do just that.

For example, I may notice an error I need to fix in my template. Or maybe I decided to change an exercise and I want to now run it using this new method going forward.

All of those small changes need to added to my original Miro board if I don’t want to re-do it all again during my next class.

Scrum Master Mentorship session

I’m finishing my day with a one-on-one mentorship session.

Depending on who I’m working with, it may be a hard one where I need to do a lot of teaching and explanation. Sometimes, of course, I leave the floor to my mentees to bring in their ideas.

With my trusty little reMarkable tablet to take some notes. If you want to get a $40 discount, use my referral link.

I have a Miro board opened on the screen that we use to track our progress and exchange the information, I also use it to teach specific topics that we need to cover during our sessions.

Wrap-up

This fascinating sneak peek into the world of an online consultant and trainer shows us the commitment and planning needed to create an exciting learning adventure. From getting ready in the morning to leading activities and handling extra tasks, it’s clear that a day in the life of a Professional Scrum Trainer is all about constant learning and juggling multiple things.

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