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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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Now displaying: October, 2016
Oct 31, 2016

A team is more than the sum of its individuals. Looking at a team that way allows us to understand that the interaction between the team members is really the key to help teams achieve their potential.

 

About Brandon Adams

Brandon is an advocate for Lean-Agile methods and is passionate about helping others learn more about he underlying concepts and how to implement them.  He enjoys environments in which he can teach, coach, and train individuals and teams to improve both personally and professionally.

You can link with Brandon Adams on LinkedIn and connect with Brandon Adams on Twitter.

Oct 28, 2016

When analyzing and understanding the systems we work with we have many possible tools to help us find what is affecting the system and therefore the team. Adolfo lists 3 tools he uses and how he uses them to find out what are the system conditions in play.

 

About Adolfo Foronda

Adolfo Foronda has been a front end developer, content management, and ux specialist since the early 90's. He’s worked with a number of silicon valley startups, financial institutions, and is the founder of Nerd Stalker Media and the Nerd Stalker podcast. Adolfo is a rabid advocate and constructive critic of Agile.

You can link with Adolfo Foronda on LinkedIn and connect with Adolfo Foronda on Twitter. Adolfo’s work can be followed on Nerd Stalker media.  

Oct 27, 2016

A key condition for our success as Scrum Masters is that all stakeholders are engaged and collaborating to help the team deliver. Adolfo explains how he involves the right stakeholders using a very familiar tool: The Retrospective.

In this episode we refer to the book Agile Retrospectives by Diana Larsen and Esther Derby.

 

About Adolfo Foronda

Adolfo Foronda has been a front end developer, content management, and ux specialist since the early 90's. He’s worked with a number of silicon valley startups, financial institutions, and is the founder of Nerd Stalker Media and the Nerd Stalker podcast. Adolfo is a rabid advocate and constructive critic of Agile.

You can link with Adolfo Foronda on LinkedIn and connect with Adolfo Foronda on Twitter. Adolfo’s work can be followed on Nerd Stalker media.  

Oct 26, 2016

Change is a tumultuous sea sometimes. And understanding that can bring enormous benefits as we learn to navigate that change process. Understanding the politics behind any change process is a key process for us as Scrum Masters. Knowing who to involve, how to involve them and who plays what role is critical. In this episode we talk about the dos and don’ts of change in any organization.

In this episode we refer to the book Lean Change Management by Jason Little and The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Green.

 

About Adolfo Foronda

Adolfo Foronda has been a front end developer, content management, and ux specialist since the early 90's. He’s worked with a number of silicon valley startups, financial institutions, and is the founder of Nerd Stalker Media and the Nerd Stalker podcast. Adolfo is a rabid advocate and constructive critic of Agile.

You can link with Adolfo Foronda on LinkedIn and connect with Adolfo Foronda on Twitter. Adolfo’s work can be followed on Nerd Stalker media.  

Oct 25, 2016

It happens. Some of our best people are also quite strong minded and want to do things their way, because hey, it worked in the past! This is a problem for the team to develop in a cohesive and collaborative mode of work. However this does not be an impossible problems for us Scrum Masters. Adolfo walks us through how he solved such a situation.

In this episode we refer to the book Crucial Conversations by Patterson et al., a guide to handling difficult, but necessary conversations in our teams.

 

About Adolfo Foronda

Adolfo Foronda has been a front end developer, content management, and ux specialist since the early 90's. He’s worked with a number of silicon valley startups, financial institutions, and is the founder of Nerd Stalker Media and the Nerd Stalker podcast. Adolfo is a rabid advocate and constructive critic of Agile.

You can link with Adolfo Foronda on LinkedIn and connect with Adolfo Foronda on Twitter. Adolfo’s work can be followed on Nerd Stalker media.  

Oct 24, 2016

It is tempting, and sometimes even possible to change many things starting from a small group. But if you are working in a large multi-national organization don’t forget the old adage: “the tail can’t wag the dog”. Small wins are necessary, but not sufficient to help change take hold in larger organization.

In this episode we refer to the book Start with Why by Simon Sinek

 

About Adolfo Foronda

Adolfo Foronda has been a front end developer, content management, and ux specialist since the early 90's. He’s worked with a number of silicon valley startups, financial institutions, and is the founder of Nerd Stalker Media and the Nerd Stalker podcast. Adolfo is a rabid advocate and constructive critic of Agile.

You can link with Adolfo Foronda on LinkedIn and connect with Adolfo Foronda on Twitter. Adolfo’s work can be followed on Nerd Stalker media.

Oct 21, 2016

In order for us to understand that organization we work with, we must start with a model. There are many models out there. One of my favourites is Management 3.0 by Jurgen Appelo of Happy Melly. However there are many more models and they all have different and interesting perspectives. Rajaraman recommends we learn to use the Integral Theory model by Ken Wilber. A model that helps classify organizations and understand their behaviors.

 

About Rajaraman Kannan

Rajaraman is a Pragmatic Enterprise Agile Coach who is passionate about serving teams and organizations with humility and gratitude in their transformation journey. He is Compassionate and Empathetic about problems faced by people and helps them to understand and deal those problems in a better way.

You can link with Rajaraman Kannan on LinkedIn and connect with Rajaraman Kannan on Twitter.

Oct 20, 2016

Being a team player is something we expect team members to be. To learn to collaborate and help each other when necessary. Rajaraman asks us to consider our work as part of the team. He asks us and explains why it is so important to be a team player even in our role as Scrum Master.

 

About Rajaraman Kannan

Rajaraman is a Pragmatic Enterprise Agile Coach who is passionate about serving teams and organizations with humility and gratitude in their transformation journey. He is Compassionate and Empathetic about problems faced by people and helps them to understand and deal those problems in a better way.

You can link with Rajaraman Kannan on LinkedIn and connect with Rajaraman Kannan on Twitter.

Oct 19, 2016

Planning is one of the difficult problems to solve. When should we plan up front? When is planning up front too much? What should we include in the planning? Everything, if not, then how much?

In this episode Rajaraman shares the journey of a team and how they went from no planning to Agile planning. A change that many teams have to go through.

 

About Rajaraman Kannan

Rajaraman is a Pragmatic Enterprise Agile Coach who is passionate about serving teams and organizations with humility and gratitude in their transformation journey. He is Compassionate and Empathetic about problems faced by people and helps them to understand and deal those problems in a better way.

You can link with Rajaraman Kannan on LinkedIn and connect with Rajaraman Kannan on Twitter.

Oct 18, 2016

Rajaraman was working on a project where one of the team members was dominating all the conversations and unable to take in other people’s views. He tells the story of how that person slowly changed his approach to help the team overall perform better. We mention the tool “design an alliance” for coaching based on Lyssa Adkins work.

 

About Rajaraman Kannan

Rajaraman is a Pragmatic Enterprise Agile Coach who is passionate about serving teams and organizations with humility and gratitude in their transformation journey. He is Compassionate and Empathetic about problems faced by people and helps them to understand and deal those problems in a better way.

You can link with Rajaraman Kannan on LinkedIn and connect with Rajaraman Kannan on Twitter.

Oct 17, 2016

Some organizations only pay lip service to Agile and Scrum. They use the language, but their intention is not to adopt Agile or Scrum, but something else. Rajaraman tells us a personal story of such an organization and what happened to him. In the end his advice is clear: don’t waste time working for an organization that does not want you.

In this episode we refer to the book Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins and Michael Spade.

 

About Rajaraman Kannan

Rajaraman is a Pragmatic Enterprise Agile Coach who is passionate about serving teams and organizations with humility and gratitude in their transformation journey. He is Compassionate and Empathetic about problems faced by people and helps them to understand and deal those problems in a better way.

You can link with Rajaraman Kannan on LinkedIn and connect with Rajaraman Kannan on Twitter.

Oct 14, 2016

When trying to understand the system we work within there are some valuable tools that we can take. In this episode we cover some of those tools. We talk about the book Visual Meetings and discuss how to make Retrospectives more fun.

 

About Manthan Gogari

Manthan describes himself as a passionate Agilist who thrives on collaboration to deliver successful IT projects that help business achieve the promised benefits.

You can link with Manthan Gogari on LinkedIn and connect with Manthan Gogari on Twitter.

Oct 13, 2016

The price of admission to the Scrum Master community is learning about servant leadership. To serve those that we are working with, to enable their success. The key question that helps us practice servant leadership is: “how does the team function when I’m not there?” But that’s just the start of the journey. Listen in to learn about the journey to success that Manthan has found for himself. In this episode we refer to the Tuckmann model of team growth and Woody Zuill’s MobProgramming idea that is taking the world by storm.

 

About Manthan Gogari

Manthan describes himself as a passionate Agilist who thrives on collaboration to deliver successful IT projects that help business achieve the promised benefits.

You can link with Manthan Gogari on LinkedIn and connect with Manthan Gogari on Twitter.

Oct 12, 2016

Reducing the delivery/release time in an organization or team is perhaps one of the first changes we will face as a Scrum Master. In fact, that’s probably the first problem we all face: from an unreliable to a reliable release cycle. How do we get there? Manthan shares his own story, of how he helped a team go from an 8 month to a 3 week delivery cycle.

 

About Manthan Gogari

Manthan describes himself as a passionate Agilist who thrives on collaboration to deliver successful IT projects that help business achieve the promised benefits.

You can link with Manthan Gogari on LinkedIn and connect with Manthan Gogari on Twitter.

Oct 11, 2016

Planning a Sprint of a series of Sprints is one of the critical activities for Scrum teams. Manthan shares with us 5 tools that he uses in planning to help teams understand the task at hand and engage with each other in a productive and collaborative way. Avoid common team collaboration anti-patterns with these 5 tools.

 

About Manthan Gogari

Manthan describes himself as a passionate Agilist who thrives on collaboration to deliver successful IT projects that help business achieve the promised benefits.

You can link with Manthan Gogari on LinkedIn and connect with Manthan Gogari on Twitter.

Oct 10, 2016

It is only when we accept our failures that we are ready to learn. And we are finally ready to learn there’s 2 things we must do. First we must reach out to people that can help. Only by reaching out we will be able to get the help we need. Second and most important, we must learn to collaborate, to listen, learn and cooperate with the people that can help us. Learning from others is a very effective way to get over our failures.

 

About Manthan Gogari

Manthan describes himself as a passionate Agilist who thrives on collaboration to deliver successful IT projects that help business achieve the promised benefits.

You can link with Manthan Gogari on LinkedIn and connect with Manthan Gogari on Twitter.

Oct 7, 2016

Chaos is scary, it is hard to deal with, but we can do it if we learn to live in and even thrive in Chaos. Anand shares with us his view of why Chaos is necessary for learning and tips on how to navigate and thrive in Chaos.

 

About Anand Murthy

Anand is an Agile Coach helping Philips to transform into SAFe, the scaled agile framework. He loves working with People who say NO to Agile transformation and believes that you can only learn when there is some level of chaos. He was also awarded the Agile coach of the year award in july 2016. Three important reasons why Anand is  an Agile Coach a) he loves Agile 2) he loves Agile and 3) he loves Agile ..

You can link with Anand Murthy on LinkedIn and connect with Anand Murthy on Twitter.

Oct 6, 2016

The work of a Scrum Master is hard, and not easy to learn quickly. To reach success we must go through our own path of failures and grow our knowledge step by step. However, there are some things we can learn from the failures of others. In this episode we learn about Anand’s journey and his 3 keys to success as a Scrum Master.

 

About Anand Murthy

Anand is an Agile Coach helping Philips to transform into SAFe, the scaled agile framework. He loves working with People who say NO to Agile transformation and believes that you can only learn when there is some level of chaos. He was also awarded the Agile coach of the year award in july 2016. Three important reasons why Anand is  an Agile Coach a) he loves Agile 2) he loves Agile and 3) he loves Agile ..

You can link with Anand Murthy on LinkedIn and connect with Anand Murthy on Twitter.

Oct 5, 2016

Strong, self-centred Egos can create many problems for organizations. In this episode Anand shares with us a story of what Egos can do to stall change and what we can do about it. He also shares his own model for bringing change to an organization.

In this episode we refer to the book Switch, by the Heath brothers. A must-read for all involved in change processes.

 

About Anand Murthy

Anand is an Agile Coach helping Philips to transform into SAFe, the scaled agile framework. He loves working with People who say NO to Agile transformation and believes that you can only learn when there is some level of chaos. He was also awarded the Agile coach of the year award in july 2016. Three important reasons why Anand is  an Agile Coach a) he loves Agile 2) he loves Agile and 3) he loves Agile ..

You can link with Anand Murthy on LinkedIn and connect with Anand Murthy on Twitter.

Oct 4, 2016

Management isn’t an easy art or profession. We all build our own framework of what is expected, and can be expected from management and managers. Anand has defined his own acronym for what management is about: MBA, or Measurement, Behavior, Actions. Listen in to find out why he chose those 3 words and what they mean in practice.

 

About Anand Murthy

Anand is an Agile Coach helping Philips to transform into SAFe, the scaled agile framework. He loves working with People who say NO to Agile transformation and believes that you can only learn when there is some level of chaos. He was also awarded the Agile coach of the year award in july 2016. Three important reasons why Anand is  an Agile Coach a) he loves Agile 2) he loves Agile and 3) he loves Agile ..

You can link with Anand Murthy on LinkedIn and connect with Anand Murthy on Twitter.

Oct 3, 2016

None of us is born a Scrum Master. We all must go through a journey to “get it” and put it in practice. Anand shares with us his journey, a failure and a story that will change your mind about Agile transformations.

 

About Anand Murthy

Anand is an Agile Coach helping Philips to transform into SAFe, the scaled agile framework. He loves working with People who say NO to Agile transformation and believes that you can only learn when there is some level of chaos. He was also awarded the Agile coach of the year award in july 2016. Three important reasons why Anand is  an Agile Coach a) he loves Agile 2) he loves Agile and 3) he loves Agile ..

You can link with Anand Murthy on LinkedIn and connect with Anand Murthy on Twitter.

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