Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.
When trying to help Scrum teams, we may get stuck in discussing what to do to improve. In this story, Mahesh shared how he went about working with a team to improve even when they didn’t know what would be the “right” solution for their problems. This is a story that emphasizes the importance of working continuously, even if in small steps, to help the teams we work with.
About Mahesh Jade
Mahesh is an Agile evangelist dedicated to championing the cause of building winning teams and winning products. A facilitator by passion, a coach, and an agilist at heart, he works to bring agility to the organization and humanizing the workplace.
You can link with Mahesh Jade on LinkedIn and connect with Mahesh Jade on Twitter.
Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.
Mahesh started to work with a new organization, and there were several people and teams that were not familiar with Agile. When focusing on continuous improvement, one of the people in the team constantly pointed out mistakes in others, which caused resentment in the team. This helped Mahesh learn a very important lesson about the difference between being kind and being right.
In Evolvagility: Growing an Agile Leadership Culture from the Inside Out, Mahesh found guidance on how to look at the agile adoption process.
About Mahesh Jade
Mahesh is an Agile evangelist dedicated to championing the cause of building winning teams and winning products. A facilitator by passion, a coach, and an agilist at heart, he works to bring agility to the organization and humanizing the workplace.
Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.
The lessons that Mahesh learned in one organization, were not applicable when he changed organizations. That story brought Mahesh an important lesson that all Scrum Masters should pay attention to. We must learn to apply the “spirit” of servant leadership and not only the tools we might have learned in the past.
About Mahesh Jade
Mahesh is an Agile evangelist dedicated to championing the cause of building winning teams and winning products. A facilitator by passion, a coach, and an agilist at heart, he works to bring agility to the organization and humanizing the workplace.
You can link with Mahesh Jade on LinkedIn and connect with Mahesh Jade on Twitter.
Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.
Download the first chapters of the book Shift: From Product to People at: https://bit.ly/shift_book
About Peter and Michael
Pete Oliver-Krueger is an entrepreneur, speaker, trainer, and consultant for Agile, Lean Startup, and Teal management. He specializes in the psychology of building product development teams, following the principle that “how one introduces techniques is more important than which techniques.” He works closely with startups and enterprise organizations exploring the question, “What should we build?” He started his career as an engineer at Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute, helped launch the first accredited online university, and has lead Agile transformations for USA Today, TD Ameritrade, the IRS, and more. He is also co-organizer for the DC Lean Startup Circle.
You can link with Pete Oliver-Krueger on LinkedIn and connect with Pete Oliver-Krueger on Twitter.
Michael Dougherty, “Agile Mike” has over 25 years of experience with software development and product leadership. He is published under the “Built for Success” column in CIO.com magazine and held the position of Vice President in the Agile Leadership Network.
Michael has taught multiple SAFe courses for over the past three years to over 400 people. He is certified SAFe SPC5, AWS Cloud Architect, ICP-CAT (Coaching Agile Transitions), AHF (Agility Health Facilitator), Scrum CSP, and PMP.
You can link with Michael Dougherty on LinkedIn and connect with Michael Dougherty on Twitter.
Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.
From the “starving the team” anti-pattern to the PO that was able to talk to, and be understood by both the technology and the business teams.
This PO was a very experienced PO, who had worked as an analyst before and had a technology background. This gave the PO the ability to speak both business and technology language as serve as a bridge between the two sides. On top of that, this PO was able to keep the team informed, and help them think from a customer perspective.
This was a part-time PO that ended up letting the team starve by not feeding them enough content for their work. This kind of PO can stop the Agile transformation and affect the overall adoption in the organization.
We also talk about other anti-patterns in the PO role that Scrum Masters should keep an eye out for.
Are you having trouble helping the team working well with their Product Owner? We’ve put together a course to help you work on the collaboration team-product owner. You can find it at: bit.ly/coachyourpo. 18 modules, 8+ hours of modules with tools and techniques that you can use to help teams and PO’s collaborate.
About Leigh Griffin
Leigh is an Engineering Manager in Red Hat working with distributed Agile teams. His focus is on the Agile mindset through proactive Coaching and helping teams to grow.
You can link with Leigh Griffin on LinkedIn and connect with Leigh Griffin on Twitter.
Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.
Releasing software regularly is one of the aspects of success for the team, and for the Scrum Master, but - as Leigh shares - many teams struggle with the mechanics. Leigh suggests we set up the structure with Scrum, to help teams deliver reliably at first, and predictably later.
Finally, Leigh likes to focus on the mindset growth in the team as a measure of progress for his work as a Scrum Master.
Leigh shares a retrospective format that works well for remote/distributed teams, the Starfish retrospective. He mentions how this format helps teams find what is worth continuing to do, instead of only what needs changing. A great format to help reinforce positive behaviors.
Check out what other guests have said about The Starfish Retrospective.
Do you wish you had decades of experience? Learn from the Best Scrum Masters In The World, Today! The Tips from the Trenches - Scrum Master edition audiobook includes hours of audio interviews with SM’s that have decades of experiences: from Mike Cohn to Linda Rising, Christopher Avery, and many more. Super-experienced Scrum Masters share their hard-earned lessons with you. Learn those today, make your teams awesome!
About Leigh Griffin
Leigh is an Engineering Manager in Red Hat working with distributed Agile teams. His focus is on the Agile mindset through proactive Coaching and helping teams to grow.
You can link with Leigh Griffin on LinkedIn and connect with Leigh Griffin on Twitter.
Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.
When Leigh started to work with this team, he wanted to help them focus on improving their process without pushing Scrum or Agile on them. This was a startup team, they were already pretty “agile”.
Leigh started with a Futurespective, to help them get a sense of the direction they wanted to go in. Leigh then used different data sources to help the team improve, and the outcome of the Futurespective to help them prepare for some of the difficult situations they would have to face.
About Leigh Griffin
Leigh is an Engineering Manager in Red Hat working with distributed Agile teams. His focus is on the Agile mindset through proactive Coaching and helping teams to grow.
You can link with Leigh Griffin on LinkedIn and connect with Leigh Griffin on Twitter.
Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.
“Not all things that matter can be measured, and not all the things that can be measured are important” is a phrase that summarises this conversation with Leigh. He shares the story of a team that was stuck in the perfection self-defeating loop. Focusing on seemingly important metrics that, in the end, did not allow them to improve as a team.
In The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance by Timothy Gallwey, Leigh found a book that inspired his own approach as a Scrum Master and coach. He reflects on the similarities between the mental aspects in sports and product development.
About Leigh Griffin
Leigh is an Engineering Manager in Red Hat working with distributed Agile teams. His focus is on the Agile mindset through proactive Coaching and helping teams to grow.
You can link with Leigh Griffin on LinkedIn and connect with Leigh Griffin on Twitter.
Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.
When Leigh was working on this project, he tried his best to keep all the stakeholders up to date, including traveling to headquarters to meet up and talk to his managers.
Then, when the news came that the project was delayed, the managers denied ever having heard about any delays. This was a critical lesson for Leigh on how to work with stakeholders and manage their expectations.
In this episode, we talk about the book The Fearless Organization by Amy Edmondson.
About Leigh Griffin
Leigh is an Engineering Manager in Red Hat working with distributed Agile teams. His focus is on the Agile mindset through proactive Coaching and helping teams to grow.
You can link with Leigh Griffin on LinkedIn and connect with Leigh Griffin on Twitter.
Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.
Being a PO is not only about the backlog items, it is mostly about collecting feedback and involving the right people in the product development. We talk about the 5 relationships of a Product Owner
Ben starts by sharing “the 5 relationships of a Product Owner”, and how great PO’s focus on building those relationships, not only on the backlog items they need to create. In this segment, we talk about a PO that spent their time learning the practices that were required to be able to work with those “5 relationships”, and help the team develop a simple initial impact map that would help them throughout the project.
In this segment, we refer to the LeSS framework for scaling Agile and Scrum.
Ben discusses a particular anti-pattern for the Product Owner: the PO that created the backlog alone in their room, without talking to the team. We discuss how this anti-pattern leads to the team feeling they are “out of the loop”, and be disconnected from the real customer needs. In this episode, we also refer to the following anti-patterns:
Are you having trouble helping the team working well with their Product Owner? We’ve put together a course to help you work on the collaboration team-product owner. You can find it at: bit.ly/coachyourpo. 18 modules, 8+ hours of modules with tools and techniques that you can use to help teams and PO’s collaborate.
About Ben Maynard
Ben is an experienced coach, trainer, and mentor assisting senior leaders in medium to large organizations with organizational design and the cultural repercussions.
You can link with Ben Maynard on LinkedIn and connect with Ben Maynard on Twitter.
Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.
Ben reminds us that action, rather than knowledge (not acted on) is the key to being a successful Scrum Master. He then goes through a list of aspects he considers important for Scrum Masters to keep track of.
In this episode, we refer to the Q12 survey, and a few questions Ben likes to ask from the team members.
Ben suggests we use the Lego Retrospective, to help the team visualize their last Sprint. He shares how the construction process using Lego allows the team to “point to something” when discussing the learnings from the last Sprint, and helps us find new learnings that we would otherwise ignore with other Retrospective formats.
Do you wish you had decades of experience? Learn from the Best Scrum Masters In The World, Today! The Tips from the Trenches - Scrum Master edition audiobook includes hours of audio interviews with SM’s that have decades of experiences: from Mike Cohn to Linda Rising, Christopher Avery, and many more. Super-experienced Scrum Masters share their hard-earned lessons with you. Learn those today, make your teams awesome!
About Ben Maynard
Ben is an experienced coach, trainer, and mentor assisting senior leaders in medium to large organizations with organizational design and the cultural repercussions.
You can link with Ben Maynard on LinkedIn and connect with Ben Maynard on Twitter.
Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.
We often see Scrum Masters come from the team’s ranks. A tester, a developer and sometimes even project managers take on the Scrum Master role. Ben suggests a different approach and shares his own story. Ben started his Scrum Master role when he was a director of a department, and he explains why senior leaders benefit from, and should also practice the role of the Scrum Master.
In this episode, we talk about adopting Scrum in larger organizations, and the key role that leadership roles play in that process.
About Ben Maynard
Ben is an experienced coach, trainer, and mentor assisting senior leaders in medium to large organizations with organizational design and the cultural repercussions.
You can link with Ben Maynard on LinkedIn and connect with Ben Maynard on Twitter.
Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.
It seems like a “no brainer” to choose the best people available and form a team with them. However, as Ben reminds us, that’s not always the case. Sometimes the “best” people available don’t have compatible personalities, and the Scrum Master must be able to understand and tackle that together with leadership. In this episode, Ben shares the story of a team of “stars” that just couldn’t work together and describes the things he tried (and which worked… or not) to help that team grow.
In this episode, we refer to LeSS and to an episode with Bas Vodde, one of the creators of the LeSS framework.
In this segment, we refer to Deming and the concept of Gemba walks.
Thanks to Bas Vodde’s and Craig Larman’s Practices For Scaling Lean & Agile Development, Ben changed his career. First, he started by applying many of the ideas in the book, and started to like the approach that the authors take in the book: suggesting experiments for readers to try. While reading the book, ben found many ideas that he could try at work, which ultimately led him to become a large scale Scrum trainer.
About Ben Maynard
Ben is an experienced coach, trainer, and mentor assisting senior leaders in medium to large organizations with organizational design and the cultural repercussions.
You can link with Ben Maynard on LinkedIn and connect with Ben Maynard on Twitter.
Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.
Ben reminds us that Product Owners can sometimes focus on their work so much that they forget about the importance of interacting directly with the team. In this story, Ben shares his own experience as a struggling PO and what happened when he tried to create the backlog in isolation, without the team being involved. His intentions were good, but the way we create the backlog can make or break the product development process.
Are you having trouble helping the team working well with their Product Owner? We’ve put together a course to help you work on the collaboration team-product owner. You can find it at: bit.ly/coachyourpo. 18 modules, 8+ hours of modules with tools and techniques that you can use to help teams and PO’s collaborate.
About Ben Maynard
Ben is an experienced coach, trainer, and mentor assisting senior leaders in medium to large organizations with organizational design and the cultural repercussions.
You can link with Ben Maynard on LinkedIn and connect with Ben Maynard on Twitter.
Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.
How to help teams self-organize, and why that matters to Scrum teams. Success stories from self-organizing teams.
Karin shares stories from her recent book: Moose Heads on the Table: Stories About Self-Managing Organisations from Sweden.
The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast is organizing a Masterclass in Self-organization with Karin Tenelius. To sign-up go to: http://bit.ly/selforg_masterclass
About Karin Tenelius
Karin has been working with self-organization as a way to help teams improve performance even before Scrum was in the picture. I met up with Karin in Sweden in 2018 and got very interested in her work regarding the coaching way and self-organizing teams.
Today Karin country-side Sweden enjoying the wonderful fall we have here in the northern latitudes, and we catch up to talk about her work on self-organization, and how that can help us as Scrum Masters
She’s recently written a book about self-organization: Moose Heads on the Table: Stories About Self-Managing Organisations from Sweden. You can get that book on Amazon and other outlets. The link is on the show notes.
You can link with Karin Tenelius on LinkedIn and connect with Karin Tenelius on Twitter.
Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.
How the team acts when the PO is present is a great hint about the PO’s ability to work in Scrum. We talk about two different stances, one that makes the team feel safe, and the other that uses fear instead.
This Product Owner was the classic persona of a great PO, they understood the product, why it existed, and what value it brought to the customers. Furthermore, this PO was available to the team, and responsive to their needs and requests. Perhaps even more important, this PO knew how to give feedback, but help the team feel safe in those moments. In the end the dynamic created between team and PO, helped both challenge each other to be even better.
When the PO is absent, things are never easy. When, on top of that, the PO scares the team into submission, the conditions are set for a disaster. In this segment, we talk about how to work with PO’s so that they understand their contribution to the team, and help the teams engage productively with the PO.
In this segment, we refer to a tool that helps Scrum Masters and PO’s talk about being available and cooperating within the schedule restrictions that invariably hit PO’s: The Prodcut Owner Sprint Checklist.
Are you having trouble helping the team working well with their Product Owner? We’ve put together a course to help you work on the collaboration team-product owner. You can find it at: bit.ly/coachyourpo. 18 modules, 8+ hours of modules with tools and techniques that you can use to help teams and PO’s collaborate.
About Jacy Ong
Jacy is a big anime fan! And she has found a strong connection between sports anime and her work as a scrum master. As she puts it: "nothing feels more rewarding than to watch your teams grow and achieve goals they never thought they could possibly achieve. :)"
You can link with Jacy Ong on LinkedIn.
Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.
“As a team you level up together”, and “the work of a Scrum Master is never finished”, are some of the critical realizations that Jacy shares with us on this episode. We discuss the signs that the team is “leveling up”, and explore how we might know that the teams start to be self-suficient.
The Sailboat Retrospective is a popular format for the guests of the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast. However, Jacy’s take on that format is different from previous guests. She talks about the role of that retrospective format in helping teams define working norms, and in surfacing “lurking feelings” within the team. Finally, she talks about how the Sailboat format can help in dealing with teams that are new.
Use the Sailboat retrospective to boost the production of new improvement ideas by using the “rocks” that the sailboat has to navigate around.
Do you wish you had decades of experience? Learn from the Best Scrum Masters In The World, Today! The Tips from the Trenches - Scrum Master edition audiobook includes hours of audio interviews with SM’s that have decades of experiences: from Mike Cohn to Linda Rising, Christopher Avery, and many more. Super-experienced Scrum Masters share their hard-earned lessons with you. Learn those today, make your teams awesome!
About Jacy Ong
Jacy is a big anime fan! And she has found a strong connection between sports anime and her work as a scrum master. As she puts it: "nothing feels more rewarding than to watch your teams grow and achieve goals they never thought they could possibly achieve. :)"
You can link with Jacy Ong on LinkedIn.
Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.
In this episode, we talk about a legal team that was adopting Scrum. Adopting Scrum in non-software teams can be a challenge, and we talk about the challenges that Jacy faced when working this team. We share some of the most important lessons about understanding the different situation those teams are in, and learning to adapt to their needs, instead of pushing the software perspective on them.
About Jacy Ong
Jacy is a big anime fan! And she has found a strong connection between sports anime and her work as a scrum master. As she puts it: "nothing feels more rewarding than to watch your teams grow and achieve goals they never thought they could possibly achieve. :)"
You can link with Jacy Ong on LinkedIn.
Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.
A team member told Jacy: “we pushed to production without testing”. That was only one of the anti-patterns that developed in the team because of deadline pressure, but there are more! In this episode, we explore the deadline-pressure anti-patterns, and we share some tips on how to help teams that are under the schedule “gun”.
Jacy heard about Coaching Agile teams by Lyssa Adkins from a colleague, and while reading it, she learned a lot of important lessons about coaching, and being a coach. And from those lessons, one of the most important for Scrum Masters: believe in the team you are working with.
About Jacy Ong
Jacy is a big anime fan! And she has found a strong connection between sports anime and her work as a scrum master. As she puts it: "nothing feels more rewarding than to watch your teams grow and achieve goals they never thought they could possibly achieve. :)"
You can link with Jacy Ong on LinkedIn.
Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.
When we get started in our Scrum Master journey it is easy to try and comply with other people’s expectations, and end up betraying the original ideas for the Scrum Master role. In this story, Jacy describes one such moment. We walk through the problems that come from trying to please, instead of trying to help, and share some tips for Scrum Masters facing pressure to comply and ignore some of the basic Scrum rules.
About Jacy Ong
Jacy is a big anime fan! And she has found a strong connection between sports anime and her work as a scrum master. As she puts it: "nothing feels more rewarding than to watch your teams grow and achieve goals they never thought they could possibly achieve. :)"
You can link with Jacy Ong on LinkedIn.
Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.
The personality traits that help PO’s succeed and the need for context in the PO role are the topics of this episode.
Chris shares the story of a Product Owner that was a native storyteller. He contrasts that with the anti-pattern he calls “JIRA ticket machine”. This Product Owner was able to bring Vision and humor to the interactions with the team. But most importantly was able to easily and clearly convey the “why” for the work the team was doing.
When the Product Owner is absent, we face many problems as a Scrum team. Questions that aren’t answered, details that are missed, but most importantly, we lose the quick feedback cycle that the Product Owner role is supposed to provide. In this segment, we talk about the reasons why some PO’s are absent, and how we - as Scrum Masters - can help the PO’s by understanding their context, and their needs.
Are you having trouble helping the team working well with their Product Owner? We’ve put together a course to help you work on the collaboration team-product owner. You can find it at: bit.ly/coachyourpo. 18 modules, 8+ hours of modules with tools and techniques that you can use to help teams and PO’s collaborate.
About Chris Stone
Chris is The Virtual Agile coach, a #PeopleFirst champion, and an Agile Evangelist / Agile Transformation Lead / Scrum Master possessing over 8 years of experience within the IT industry.
You can link with Chris Stone on LinkedIn.
Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.
When the Scrum Master gets help, the team benefits. Chris shares his story, and how getting a coach for himself helped him improve as a Scrum Master and improve his work with the teams he was serving.
This retrospective format needs you to start preparing the scene before the retrospective starts. Chris explains how this format can help you get ready (collect data), and the team motivated at the same time. After all, retrospectives can be fun too!
Do you wish you had decades of experience? Learn from the Best Scrum Masters In The World, Today! The Tips from the Trenches - Scrum Master edition audiobook includes hours of audio interviews with SM’s that have decades of experiences: from Mike Cohn to Linda Rising, Christopher Avery, and many more. Super-experienced Scrum Masters share their hard-earned lessons with you. Learn those today, make your teams awesome!
About Chris Stone
Chris is The Virtual Agile coach, a #PeopleFirst champion, and an Agile Evangelist / Agile Transformation Lead / Scrum Master possessing over 8 years of experience within the IT industry.
You can link with Chris Stone on LinkedIn.
Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.
This is the story of a merger between an older, bigger company and a startup. The scene was set for conflict, as these companies had very different cultures and different structures, and that was just the start of the troubles that Chris and the team had to face. The older, more established company, naturally wanted the startup to start following their process, but how they went about it, made things even worse. In this episode, we talk about how we can introduce a process to a new team (or teams) in a way that gains commitment, and engagement.
About Chris Stone
Chris is The Virtual Agile coach, a #PeopleFirst champion, and an Agile Evangelist / Agile Transformation Lead / Scrum Master possessing over 8 years of experience within the IT industry.
You can link with Chris Stone on LinkedIn.
Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.
This team was asked to work in an Agile way. So far, so good. However, they then were given “waterfall deadlines” (listen in to learn what those are). The team started to drift. Stopped doing retrospectives, looked at the stand-up as a status reporting meeting, and just plowed through to try and meet those deadlines. What happened next wasn’t pretty. Listen to the story of this team, and learn what Chris would have done differently, had he needed to face that team again.
In Turn the Ship around by David Marquet, Chris read about a different leadership model, the “leader-leader” model that David Marquet illustrates with a real-life story of how he turned the Santa Fe submarine, from the last in the ranks of the US Navy to number #1 in 12 months. You can listen to David Marquet describe the book in this episode.
In this segment, we also refer to Drive, by Dan Pink.
About Chris Stone
Chris is The Virtual Agile coach, a #PeopleFirst champion, and an Agile Evangelist / Agile Transformation Lead / Scrum Master possessing over 8 years of experience within the IT industry.
You can link with Chris Stone on LinkedIn.
Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.
When mistakes happen, the natural tendency in many organizations is to find the ones “to blame”. However, that’s not how you create a high-performing culture. Understanding this, helps us work as Scrum Masters to direct people’s energy and attention to the next step: “how do we make sure similar problems don’t happen, what change do we need?” In this episode, Chris shares one story where an organization was able to go beyond the blame game and create a culture of achievement that helped everyone feel supported and accountable. Listen in to learn what tools helped create that culture.
About Chris Stone
Chris is The Virtual Agile coach, a #PeopleFirst champion, and an Agile Evangelist / Agile Transformation Lead / Scrum Master possessing over 8 years of experience within the IT industry.
You can link with Chris Stone on LinkedIn.