Meet the associates: Erin Gray, Scrum Master

In this blog series you'll meet our Tecknuovo associates — the talented community of technologists who work on-site with our customers to help them deliver lasting transformation. This month we talk to Erin Gray, Scrum Master for a large government department. Get to know her here!

What is your role with Tecknuovo?

I’m a Scrum Master on a project for a large government department. I’m one of many Scrum Masters who work together as a small cog of a very large machine. I run two Tecknuovo Development and Quality Assurance teams with Business Analysts (BAs).

My main responsibility is to ensure the team can work efficiently every day, taking away whatever challenges we face and solving them quickly. I also liaise with the customer about the issues we need to deliver on. Other than that, I oversee stats, chair meetings, fight fires, and always make sure to be there for the team no matter what.

What attracted you to Tecknuovo?

My first impression was that the Tecknuovo seemed different to other suppliers. They care about every single person that’s going to work on-site with their customers. A lot of other third-party suppliers care about the quantity of people, regardless of whether they have the skills or not – to be able to fit within their budget. I was drawn to Tecknuovo because it was clear that they’re dedicated to delivering quality with technically excellent people.

"I was drawn to Tecknuovo because it was clear that they’re dedicated to delivering quality with technically excellent people."

What does your typical day look like?

I start off the day by holding scrums with both of my teams and with the customer’s project delivery managers. We talk about what happened the day before, and whether anything needs escalating. We check whether everything is on track, and if delivery needs to be rolled back or the scope changed.

I’ll then run through the delivery roadmap to align activities across the two teams. I will also check with the other scrum masters if there is anything we can do in collaboration or assist each other in any way

The rest of my day consists of refining the backlog with the BAs and running “all Scrum Master” meetings. Here, we align across the teams to see how we can help each other, do burn-ups and burn-downs, and look to future sprints to ensure there are stories for the team to deliver on.

What’s something we wouldn’t find on your Linkedin?

I can make a chicken out of a napkin.

How would you describe Tecknuovo to your friends?

would describe it as approachable, sociable, and human. Tecknuovo treat contractors like human beings, they care, and don’t regard us as “here one day, gone the next” commodities. I feel that we are valued and looked at as potentially long-term partners.

What are you excited about in future?

I’d like to think that my career with Tecknuovo will be a long-term option!

How did you get into tech?

As a child, I was fascinated by my father’s old Amstrad PC, and used to type paragraphs from books into it to hear the sound it made when it saved them to the disk. I also loved watching the cogs of our huge printer turn as it produced a document.

Noticing my fascination with tech, my sister gave me the idea to study IT after A-levels. I found a university course that didn’t require any prior programming experience, and the rest is history! You can find out more about what led me to tech in a Computing piece_ I featured in as a finalist for that year’s Women in Tech Excellence awards.

What is the most important benefit of contracting with Tecknuovo?

I love that we are trusted. Of course there’s an element of proving ourselves, but we’re fully trusted to work remotely, which was extremely rare for contractors pre-Covid.