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Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches

Every week day, Certified Scrum Master, Agile Coach and Business Consultant Vasco Duarte interviews Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches from all over the world to get you actionable advice, new tips and tricks, improve your craft as a Scrum Master with daily doses of inspiring conversations with Scrum Masters from the all over the world. Stay tuned for BONUS episodes when we interview Agile gurus and other thought leaders in the business space to bring you the Agile Business perspective you need to succeed as a Scrum Master. Some of the topics we discuss include: Agile Business, Agile Strategy, Retrospectives, Team motivation, Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Review, Backlog Refinement, Scaling Scrum, Lean Startup, Test Driven Development (TDD), Behavior Driven Development (BDD), Paper Prototyping, QA in Scrum, the role of agile managers, servant leadership, agile coaching, and more!
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Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches
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Now displaying: June, 2016
Jun 30, 2016

There are many learnings we collect along our journey as Scrum Masters. However, transformative lessons are not that common, except for Jeff in this particular job. Listen how he learned 2 lessons that totally changed how he looks at his job as a Scrum Master.

About Jeff Campbell

Jeff is an Agile Coach who considers the discovery of Agile and Lean to be one of the most defining moments of his life, and considers helping others to improve their working life not to simply be a job, but a social responsibility. As an Agile Coach, he has worked with driving Agile transformations in organisations both small and large. He is one of the founding members of www.scrumbeers.com and an organiser of www.brewingagile.org in his spare time. He is also the author of an open source book called Actionable Agile Tools, where he explains how he uses 15 of the tools he uses in his daily work as a scrum master and agile coach.

You can link with Jeff Campbell on LinkedIn, and connect with Jeff Campbell on Twitter.

Jun 29, 2016

How many and what kind of bad apples can you have in a team? Dominic describes his experience with team members that can quickly undo any Scrum Master’s work. We also talk about why some team setups just don’t work and what Scrum Masters should do about it.

About Dominic Krimmer

Dominic has worked as a Software Developer since 2001, being a Scrum Master since 2009. He has collected many cool experiences in agile methods in different companies like CHIP, Sixt, mydriver.com and HolidayCheck. And has a small Kanban implementation at a manufacturing site in Latin America is also under his belt! :)

You can connect with Dominic Krimmer on twitter and visit Dominic Krimmer’s blog.

Jun 28, 2016

The success of a scrum master is measured in business impact, and you should create your own definition of what that impact should be. Dominic explains his ideas of how to create your own definition of success and why, as a scrum master, you should focus on the business, not just the team.

About Dominic Krimmer

Dominic has worked as a Software Developer since 2001, being a Scrum Master since 2009. He has collected many cool experiences in agile methods in different companies like CHIP, Sixt, mydriver.com and HolidayCheck. And has a small Kanban implementation at a manufacturing site in Latin America is also under his belt! :)

You can connect with Dominic Krimmer on twitter and visit Dominic Krimmer’s blog.

 

Jun 27, 2016

We review the most interesting shows of 2015 based on listener interest. 

Purpose is one of the key motivators according to the classic “Drive” by Dan Pink. Luis shares with us how he works with teams to help them find their purpose and improve their performance as a team. Luis explains the main steps of a workshop that he uses to help teams get started, or re-started on the path to high-performance.

About Luis Gonçalves

Luis Gonçalves is a Co-Founder of Oikosofy, the Co-Author of the book “Getting Value out Agile Retrospectives”, a book which I use regularly to get inspired to organize innovative retrospectives. Luis is also an International Speaker and prolific Blogger. I don’t know where he gets the time to do all of this :)

Luis’ passion lies on the Management side of software development where he tries to apply what he has learned from the Management 3.0 books.

He is also a co-founder of a MeetUp group in Munich, Germany called High Performing Teams. A meetup he created to "Define the future of Management and Leadership".

You can link up with Luis Gonçalves on LinkedIn, and connect with Luis Gonçalves on Twitter.

Jun 24, 2016

When we try to identify the system conditions we need to look at the trends, the changes over time in the organizations and teams we work with. For that the Scrum Checklist by Michael James can be a helpful tool, but Allison shares some more techniques to help us identify trends.

 

About Allison Pollard

Allison Pollard is an Agile Coach with Improving in Dallas who helps people discover and develop their agile instincts. Allison is also a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach, an organizer of the Dallas-Fort Worth Scrum user group, a foodie, and a trebuchet builder.

You can connect with Allison Pollard on Twitter, and link with Allison Pollard on LinkedIn.

Jun 23, 2016

Leadership is the topic of this week and we discovered some of the key aspects of that responsibility for Scrum Masters. In this last episode on the topic we look at different Leadership models and suggest how you can develop your own model to apply it on the day-to-day work.

About Sean Dunn

Sean is an Enterprise Agile Coach with IHS Global. He has been involved with agile development for 8 years as a developer, product owner, and agile coach.  Prior to his exposure to agile development Sean spent 13 years in the Canadian Army.  In fact, Sean is known to point out that the Army is far more agile than most people think.

That background in the Canadian Army influenced his view of Leadership and the role of Leadership in creating and developing great teams.

You can connect with Sean Dunn on LinkedIn, check out Sean Dunn on the Scrum Alliance or email him at sean.dunn@ihs.com.

Check out Sean Dunn’s blog on leadership.

Jun 22, 2016

Conflict is a productive part of the evolution of a team. No conflict in a team means the team is not evolving. In this episode we talk about how to manage conflict and enable product conflict that helps teams solve problems and evolve!

About Sean Dunn

Sean is an Enterprise Agile Coach with IHS Global. He has been involved with agile development for 8 years as a developer, product owner, and agile coach.  Prior to his exposure to agile development Sean spent 13 years in the Canadian Army.  In fact, Sean is known to point out that the Army is far more agile than most people think.

That background in the Canadian Army influenced his view of Leadership and the role of Leadership in creating and developing great teams.

You can connect with Sean Dunn on LinkedIn, check out Sean Dunn on the Scrum Alliance or email him at sean.dunn@ihs.com.

Check out Sean Dunn’s blog on leadership.

Jun 21, 2016

Go around, talk to people and use the daily meeting as the sensor for possible team problems.

About Alicia McLain

Alicia coaches, trains and transforms mid-size to large companies domestically & internationally.  

Alicia has had 12 years coaching & consulting in Project/Program Management; 3 Years Software Development Management; and 10 years in the Agile community as a hands on transformation leader, trainer and coach.

You can link with Alicia McLain in LinkedIn, and connect with Alicia McLain on Twitter.

Jun 20, 2016

Dmytro explains that being part of a successful team is part of a Scrum Master success. After all, it is his job to create successful teams. Dmytro also gives us some good tips: in order for Scrum Masters to continue improving, they should develop themselves in areas where they feel they are not so strong. They could take some time to analyze their weakness and take some training to tackle those areas.

About Dmytro Orlyk

Dmytro have an overall 4 years of experience in PM. His latest project has been shown to the Google company. He is an Agile Expert with a strong knowledge of Scrum, Kanban and XP. Few of the engineers that inspire me are Martin Fowler and Chris MacConnell. He can be found in linkedin.

Jun 17, 2016

We mention Luis Goncalves book “Get Rid of Performance appraisals” to discuss how performance reviews define the de facto system in many large organisations. How it affects motivation and what teams focus on in their work. Performance reviews are a very important influence on the systems of work where we are.

 

About Paul Wynia

Paul Wynia is an Agile Coach and Consultant based in Southern California.  Working with teams and executives he incorporates Agile game play and simulations into his training and coaching in order to help them reach a deeper understanding of the Agile Mindset.

Jun 16, 2016

How can we reach a successful outcome for our work? Working on improvement without the buzzwords, fixing one problem at a time and turning up the good are some of the techniques that Paul shares with us.

 

About Paul Wynia

Paul Wynia is an Agile Coach and Consultant based in Southern California.  Working with teams and executives he incorporates Agile game play and simulations into his training and coaching in order to help them reach a deeper understanding of the Agile Mindset.

Jun 15, 2016

How to guide product development? How to support teams in finding the right features, and the right mix of new functionality vs improved quality? In this episode we talk about the Values Exercise for product design to help guide teams in product development.

About Paul Wynia

Paul Wynia is an Agile Coach and Consultant based in Southern California.  Working with teams and executives he incorporates Agile game play and simulations into his training and coaching in order to help them reach a deeper understanding of the Agile Mindset.

Jun 14, 2016

We often talk about dysfunctional teams, so that we learn from our colleagues experience. But there are patterns of high-performing teams that worth exploring. In this episode we talk high-performing teams and games/techniques to help teams reach that level of performance.

About Paul Wynia

Paul Wynia is an Agile Coach and Consultant based in Southern California.  Working with teams and executives he incorporates Agile game play and simulations into his training and coaching in order to help them reach a deeper understanding of the Agile Mindset.

Jun 13, 2016

There are many challenges in dealing with an agile transition of a co-located team. And distributed teams normally present more challenges and different problems. But how about comparing a co-located company with a globally distributed company? Agile transitions in global companies is what we discuss in this episode.

 

About Paul Wynia

Paul Wynia is an Agile Coach and Consultant based in Southern California.  Working with teams and executives he incorporates Agile game play and simulations into his training and coaching in order to help them reach a deeper understanding of the Agile Mindset.

Jun 10, 2016

Sometimes the teams are not problem, or the focus of our work, but the organizations are. In this episode Vasco and Tim discuss a horror story of a system that imploded. When we look back at what was going on in that system we could even predict that even, but what are the system conditions that led to that systemic implosion? That’s what they discuss in this episode.

 

About Tim Bourguignon and Vasco Duarte

Tim is a full time geek, agile developer and BS-hunter. International speaker and avid writer, he is curious- and creative-minded, eager to search, teach and talk... and has been doing this for as long as he remembers. French born European child, he lives in Germany where he works as a developer, Scrum Master and Agile coach. When he is not at a computer, you'll find him behind a camera, in his running shoes or with his wife and son... but never in that order! In his spare time, Tim has been working on a project called Developer's Journey (link: www.devjourney.info) lately, where regularly sharpens his podcasting skills talking to whoever is willing to about what it takes to become a better developer. And as you can see, he's up for (almost) every challenge, even trying to make Vasco sweat on his own podcast.


Vasco Duarte is a managing partner at Oikosofy where he wants to change the world, one company at a time. He’s also the regular host for the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast, but after Tim’s performance he is considering if someone else should be hosting the podcast :)

Jun 9, 2016

As Scrum Masters we don’t always know what we should do, what actions we should take, how to help the teams. In this episode we talk about one such story and how, by listening to the team, Vasco was able to help the team despite all the mistakes he had to go through before that success.

 

About Tim Bourguignon and Vasco Duarte

Tim is a full time geek, agile developer and BS-hunter. International speaker and avid writer, he is curious- and creative-minded, eager to search, teach and talk... and has been doing this for as long as he remembers. French born European child, he lives in Germany where he works as a developer, Scrum Master and Agile coach. When he is not at a computer, you'll find him behind a camera, in his running shoes or with his wife and son... but never in that order! In his spare time, Tim has been working on a project called Developer's Journey (link: www.devjourney.info) lately, where regularly sharpens his podcasting skills talking to whoever is willing to about what it takes to become a better developer. And as you can see, he's up for (almost) every challenge, even trying to make Vasco sweat on his own podcast.


Vasco Duarte is a managing partner at Oikosofy where he wants to change the world, one company at a time. He’s also the regular host for the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast, but after Tim’s performance he is considering if someone else should be hosting the podcast :)

Jun 8, 2016

A very common “accepted truth” in the Agile community is that teams should be long-lived and stable. In this episode we show a contrary example and talk about how re-teaming (changing team composition) can actually boost the performance of both individuals and teams.

 

About Tim Bourguignon and Vasco Duarte

Tim is a full time geek, agile developer and BS-hunter. International speaker and avid writer, he is curious- and creative-minded, eager to search, teach and talk... and has been doing this for as long as he remembers. French born European child, he lives in Germany where he works as a developer, Scrum Master and Agile coach. When he is not at a computer, you'll find him behind a camera, in his running shoes or with his wife and son... but never in that order! In his spare time, Tim has been working on a project called Developer's Journey (link: www.devjourney.info) lately, where regularly sharpens his podcasting skills talking to whoever is willing to about what it takes to become a better developer. And as you can see, he's up for (almost) every challenge, even trying to make Vasco sweat on his own podcast.


Vasco Duarte is a managing partner at Oikosofy where he wants to change the world, one company at a time. He’s also the regular host for the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast, but after Tim’s performance he is considering if someone else should be hosting the podcast :)

Jun 7, 2016

What enables or hinders performance for a team is a much debated topic. There’s a great book about individual motivation by Daniel Pink: Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. In this episode we tell a story of a team that motivated themselves (with a little help from their friends) to deliver something totally new, unexpected and valuable for the company. We discuss what might have enabled this kind of performance for that team.

 

About Tim Bourguignon and Vasco Duarte

 

Tim is a full time geek, agile developer and BS-hunter. International speaker and avid writer, he is curious- and creative-minded, eager to search, teach and talk... and has been doing this for as long as he remembers. French born European child, he lives in Germany where he works as a developer, Scrum Master and Agile coach. When he is not at a computer, you'll find him behind a camera, in his running shoes or with his wife and son... but never in that order! In his spare time, Tim has been working on a project called Developer's Journey (link: www.devjourney.info) lately, where regularly sharpens his podcasting skills talking to whoever is willing to about what it takes to become a better developer. And as you can see, he's up for (almost) every challenge, even trying to make Vasco sweat on his own podcast.


Vasco Duarte is a managing partner at Oikosofy where he wants to change the world, one company at a time. He’s also the regular host for the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast, but after Tim’s performance he is considering if someone else should be hosting the podcast :)

Jun 6, 2016

This episode is an experiment. We have a guest, as usual, but the guest interviews Vasco Duarte, the regular podcast host.

In this Episode they address a very special kind of failure that set a company back several years after a long Agile adoption process. Goes to show that the Agile adoption process is never over.

 

About Tim Bourguignon and Vasco Duarte

Tim is a full time geek, agile developer and BS-hunter. International speaker and avid writer, he is curious- and creative-minded, eager to search, teach and talk... and has been doing this for as long as he remembers. French born European child, he lives in Germany where he works as a developer, Scrum Master and Agile coach. When he is not at a computer, you'll find him behind a camera, in his running shoes or with his wife and son... but never in that order! In his spare time, Tim has been working on a project called Developer's Journey (link: www.devjourney.info) lately, where regularly sharpens his podcasting skills talking to whoever is willing to about what it takes to become a better developer. And as you can see, he's up for (almost) every challenge, even trying to make Vasco sweat on his own podcast.

 

Vasco Duarte is a managing partner at Oikosofy where he wants to change the world, one company at a time. He’s also the regular host for the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast, but after Tim’s performance he is considering if someone else should be hosting the podcast :)

Jun 3, 2016

Heidi Helfand on managing relationships as a way to manage the environment

What is “the system” is a question that we debate every Friday. Heidi’s view is based on her views of systems. We talk about relationships and how we should care and help develop the relationships in the team and the organization as a way to develop “the system”.

 

About Heidi Helfand

Heidi's been in the software industry for 17 years and has a masters in teaching English. She has been a part of two successful startups. She was on the initial team that invented gotomeeting and gotowebinar at the first startup. She is currently Principal Agile Coach at AppFolio, Inc. where they create software for property management companies and law firms. She started there in 2007 hired as a Scrum Master - trained by Ken Schwaber and with Pivotal Labs for more than a year. She became a co-active coach along the way and is certified by the International Coach Federation and the Coaches Training Institute. She is currently writing and speaking about Reteaming - that is, how its valid and desirable to have changing teams as opposed to long running, unchanging teams.

You can link with Heidi Helfand on Linkedin, or connect with Heidi Helfand on Twitter.

You can also follow Heidi’s blog at: http://www.heidihelfand.com/writing/

Jun 2, 2016

Teams are growing and evolving all the time. Sticking to them too long may make them dependent on the role of the Scrum Master, so Heidi describes how she defines success around helping teams grow and become independent.

About Heidi Helfand

Heidi's been in the software industry for 17 years and has a masters in teaching English. She has been a part of two successful startups. She was on the initial team that invented gotomeeting and gotowebinar at the first startup. She is currently Principal Agile Coach at AppFolio, Inc. where they create software for property management companies and law firms. She started there in 2007 hired as a Scrum Master - trained by Ken Schwaber and with Pivotal Labs for more than a year. She became a co-active coach along the way and is certified by the International Coach Federation and the Coaches Training Institute. She is currently writing and speaking about Reteaming - that is, how its valid and desirable to have changing teams as opposed to long running, unchanging teams.

You can link with Heidi Helfand on Linkedin, or connect with Heidi Helfand on Twitter.

You can also follow Heidi’s blog at: http://www.heidihelfand.com/writing/.

Jun 1, 2016

We’ve often heard that teams should be long lived and stable. But what if the advantages or reteaming would be much larger than the disadvantages of changing team composition? In this episode we explore the topic of Reteaming and what Heidi has been developing and discovering that helps teams thrive when they change.

 

About Heidi Helfand

Heidi's been in the software industry for 17 years and has a masters in teaching English. She has been a part of two successful startups. She was on the initial team that invented gotomeeting and gotowebinar at the first startup. She is currently Principal Agile Coach at AppFolio, Inc. where they create software for property management companies and law firms. She started there in 2007 hired as a Scrum Master - trained by Ken Schwaber and with Pivotal Labs for more than a year. She became a co-active coach along the way and is certified by the International Coach Federation and the Coaches Training Institute. She is currently writing and speaking about Reteaming - that is, how its valid and desirable to have changing teams as opposed to long running, unchanging teams.

You can link with Heidi Helfand on Linkedin, or connect with Heidi Helfand on Twitter.

You can also follow Heidi’s blog at: http://www.heidihelfand.com/writing/.

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