Blaming is a very common pattern in teams. Either from the outside (stakholders) or from the inside (towards other teams and stakeholders). Blaming can take many forms and can also become a team anti-pattern, one that removes responsibility and ultimately destroys the teams’ ability to improve.
In this episode we mention a tool that can be used to analyze and remove blame from the team’s behavior: 5 Whys.
About Anna Zalucka
Ana has a solid technical background since she started her IT career as a C++ developer. She chose the architect and project manager path at first, but quickly noticed that classic management is not very effective as she encountered the same issues over and over again. In 2012 she experienced a paradigm shift: Agile software development. Ana has been developing Scrum Master skills ever since. Working as dedicated Scrum Master in two teams in a Latvian company named Eptron.
You can link with Anna Zalucka on LinkedIn. You can also find her on the Facebook Scrum Master Community.
There are many anti-patterns of behavior in teams, but perhaps one of the most disturbing is bullying. Bullying does not only happen in schools, it is alive and affecting many people at work as well. We, as Scrum Masters need to know how to face this kind of behavior, as it is also our responsibility to help create a safe environment for our teams. Listen to Anna describe the situation, what she learned from it, and how she handles bullying now, with more experience.
About Anna Zalucka
Ana has a solid technical background since she started her IT career as a C++ developer. She chose the architect and project manager path at first, but quickly noticed that classic management is not very effective as she encountered the same issues over and over again. In 2012 she experienced a paradigm shift: Agile software development. Ana has been developing Scrum Master skills ever since. Working as dedicated Scrum Master in two teams in a Latvian company named Eptron.
You can link with Anna Zalucka on LinkedIn. You can also find her on the Facebook Scrum Master Community.
Tools that help us understand the whole system are key for us to be able to understand the system and take action to change the system conditions that limit our and the teams’ performance. Jari describes one tool: the conversation.
About Jari Laakso
Jari has a wide range of interests, which helps him to find discussion topics with people. Jari says he is abnormally talkative to be Finnish, which is partially why he has not lived there since 2007. Jari started with all-things-related-with-testing and has moved to a dedicated ScrumMaster role. He did that because he feels it matches better his personality and professional focus.
You can link up with Jari Laakso on LinkedIn and connect with Jari Laakso on twitter.
Success is something we strive to achieve as Scrum Masters. In this podcast series we’ve looked at many different kinds of definition of success. In this episode we look at one more. Jari explains how we can look for signs of success in other people’s behavior.
About Jari Laakso
Jari has a wide range of interests, which helps him to find discussion topics with people. Jari says he is abnormally talkative to be Finnish, which is partially why he has not lived there since 2007. Jari started with all-things-related-with-testing and has moved to a dedicated ScrumMaster role. He did that because he feels it matches better his personality and professional focus.
You can link up with Jari Laakso on LinkedIn and connect with Jari Laakso on twitter.
Every team, every person will at some point fail to achieve their goal or do the right thing. We can choose to look at those events as failures or as learning opportunities. That small change of attitude can shift our attitudes towards failure.
About Jari Laakso
Jari has a wide range of interests, which helps him to find discussion topics with people. Jari says he is abnormally talkative to be Finnish, which is partially why he has not lived there since 2007. Jari started with all-things-related-with-testing and has moved to a dedicated ScrumMaster role. He did that because he feels it matches better his personality and professional focus.
You can link up with Jari Laakso on LinkedIn and connect with Jari Laakso on twitter.
Naming anti-patterns helps us create a language that we can later use to recognize recurring problems in team behavior. Jari shares with us 3 anti-patterns he witnessed in his career and what can be tried to overcome each of those.
About Jari Laakso
Jari has a wide range of interests, which helps him to find discussion topics with people. Jari says he is abnormally talkative to be Finnish, which is partially why he has not lived there since 2007. Jari started with all-things-related-with-testing and has moved to a dedicated ScrumMaster role. He did that because he feels it matches better his personality and professional focus.
You can link up with Jari Laakso on LinkedIn and connect with Jari Laakso on twitter.
There are challenges in every personal transformation. Perhaps the hardest transformation is one that requires us to change our paradigm for action. This is what Jari went through when moving from a traditional command and control management position to the Scrum Master role. A journey we can all learn from.
About Jari Laakso
Jari has a wide range of interests, which helps him to find discussion topics with people. Jari says he is abnormally talkative to be Finnish, which is partially why he has not lived there since 2007. Jari started with all-things-related-with-testing and has moved to a dedicated ScrumMaster role. He did that because he feels it matches better his personality and professional focus.
You can link up with Jari Laakso on LinkedIn and connect with Jari Laakso on twitter.
In this very special episode we have Bob Marshall as guest. We cover many topics, from his past work (The Marshall Model, Anti-matter principle) to the work by Marshall Rosenberg and Carl Rogers.
We also discuss what I think is a key skill for Scrum Masters, and how to learn more and develop that skill.
Read the full show notes on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast blog.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 :)
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 :)
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 :)