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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: March, 2017
Mar 31, 2017

Scrum Masters with a long experience will rapidly detect the anti-patterns in the teams or organisations that they join. However, there’s another reality going on. The reality of the people that live there, in that organization and have not known a different way to be. If we try to change things too quickly, we risk losing the respect and trust of the people we work with. Don shares with us what is an alternative approach when we “already know what to do”.

In this episode we refer to the book The Speed of Trust by Stephen M. R. Covey.

 

About Don McGreal

Don McGreal is VP of Learning Solutions at Improving Enterprises.

He specializes in agile training and coaching at the enterprise and team levels within larger organizations. Don is a Scrum.org Professional Scrum Trainer who has authored and taught classes for thousands of software professionals around the globe.

He is also co-founder of TastyCupcakes.org, a comprehensive collection of games and exercises for accelerating the adoption of agile principles.

You can link with Don McGreal on LinkedIn and connect with Don McGreal on Twitter.

Mar 30, 2017

Don reminds us that we must support the team’s success. That’s our main role as Scrum Masters. If we expect a lot of taps on the back and praise, then Scrum Master is not really the job for us. Instead, we should know that the team recognises our contribution, but they are the ones that need to succeed.

 

About Don McGreal

Don McGreal is VP of Learning Solutions at Improving Enterprises.

He specializes in agile training and coaching at the enterprise and team levels within larger organizations. Don is a Scrum.org Professional Scrum Trainer who has authored and taught classes for thousands of software professionals around the globe.

He is also co-founder of TastyCupcakes.org, a comprehensive collection of games and exercises for accelerating the adoption of agile principles.

You can link with Don McGreal on LinkedIn and connect with Don McGreal on Twitter.

Mar 29, 2017

What is a good approach to change. There’s probably as many good approaches as there are change projects. Change is unique and contextual. Don shares one story about the mindset of change and what he learned then that he still applies today.

In this episode we refer to the book Lean Change Management by Jason Little.

 

About Don McGreal

Don McGreal is VP of Learning Solutions at Improving Enterprises.

He specializes in agile training and coaching at the enterprise and team levels within larger organizations. Don is a Scrum.org Professional Scrum Trainer who has authored and taught classes for thousands of software professionals around the globe.

He is also co-founder of TastyCupcakes.org, a comprehensive collection of games and exercises for accelerating the adoption of agile principles.

You can link with Don McGreal on LinkedIn and connect with Don McGreal on Twitter.

Mar 28, 2017

Teams have a natural evolution, and we can’t jump steps in their development. We can, however, help them through those stages. Especially the storming phase in the team development is critical in our work. Don shares some of the ideas and tools he uses to help teams through the storming phase of their careers.

 

About Don McGreal

Don McGreal is VP of Learning Solutions at Improving Enterprises.

He specializes in agile training and coaching at the enterprise and team levels within larger organizations. Don is a Scrum.org Professional Scrum Trainer who has authored and taught classes for thousands of software professionals around the globe.

He is also co-founder of TastyCupcakes.org, a comprehensive collection of games and exercises for accelerating the adoption of agile principles.

You can link with Don McGreal on LinkedIn and connect with Don McGreal on Twitter.

Mar 27, 2017

When retrospectives don’t work we, sometimes, get discouraged. This also happened to Don. A very experienced Scrum Master that started just like us: from the beginning. Retrospectives, a very important part of the Scrum process, are sometimes abandoned because they are difficult to conduct and get value from. So Don changed his approach to retrospectives. Listen in as Don explains what he learned and why actions are so important for successful retrospectives.

 

About Don McGreal

Don McGreal is VP of Learning Solutions at Improving Enterprises.

He specializes in agile training and coaching at the enterprise and team levels within larger organizations. Don is a Scrum.org Professional Scrum Trainer who has authored and taught classes for thousands of software professionals around the globe.

He is also co-founder of TastyCupcakes.org, a comprehensive collection of games and exercises for accelerating the adoption of agile principles.

You can link with Don McGreal on LinkedIn and connect with Don McGreal on Twitter.

Mar 24, 2017

The teams we work with exist within systems, and are a system on their own. How do we help teams develop their purpose? After all, purpose is what guides the development of any system. Antti shares his views on the importance of defining purpose and vision, and explains his approach.

In this episode we refer to the book Liftoff by Diana Larsen and Ainsley Nies.

 

About Antti Kirjavainen

Antti is an experienced coach and an entrepreneur. He defines himself as a knowledge work management thinker, product development coach, a licensed Management 3.0 facilitator. He wants to help teams and organisations maximise their collaboration, success and fun in knowledge work. Antti's background is in games and software development.

Antti works at Flowa, an Agile consultancy in Finland.

You can link with Antti Kirjavainen on LinkedIn and connect with Antti Kirjavainen on Twitter.

Mar 23, 2017

If we define success as an end point we might be in serious trouble. As Antti puts it, there’s no end to the improvement cycle. What does that mean for us as Scrum Masters? Listen in to learn about Antti’s experience.

 

About Antti Kirjavainen

Antti is an experienced coach and an entrepreneur. He defines himself as a knowledge work management thinker, product development coach, a licensed Management 3.0 facilitator. He wants to help teams and organisations maximise their collaboration, success and fun in knowledge work. Antti's background is in games and software development.

Antti works at Flowa, an Agile consultancy in Finland.

You can link with Antti Kirjavainen on LinkedIn and connect with Antti Kirjavainen on Twitter.

Mar 22, 2017

Changes can’t always be done from start to finish. Sometimes we need to start small. With an experiment, and build on that over time. Antti shares his story of an experiment that enabled an organization to change their way of working, and how that happened in detail.

 

About Antti Kirjavainen

Antti is an experienced coach and an entrepreneur. He defines himself as a knowledge work management thinker, product development coach, a licensed Management 3.0 facilitator. He wants to help teams and organisations maximise their collaboration, success and fun in knowledge work. Antti's background is in games and software development.

Antti works at Flowa, an Agile consultancy in Finland.

You can link with Antti Kirjavainen on LinkedIn and connect with Antti Kirjavainen on Twitter.

Mar 21, 2017

False pride happens when we are proud of something that does not really help us achieve our goals. Antti shares a story of a team that was proud of their “prototype”, and how that led to problems, when the “prototype” no longer survived the pressure of constant changes.

 

About Antti Kirjavainen

Antti is an experienced coach and an entrepreneur. He defines himself as a knowledge work management thinker, product development coach, a licensed Management 3.0 facilitator. He wants to help teams and organisations maximise their collaboration, success and fun in knowledge work. Antti's background is in games and software development.

Antti works at Flowa, an Agile consultancy in Finland.

You can link with Antti Kirjavainen on LinkedIn and connect with Antti Kirjavainen on Twitter.

Mar 20, 2017

There are many things we take for granted, our beliefs, that prevent us from improving or seeing how things could be done differently. Teams are not immune to that phenomenon, Teams also have their own belief systems. Antti explains how they can affect teams and how to help them get out of their belief “box”.

 

About Antti Kirjavainen

Antti is an experienced coach and an entrepreneur. He defines himself as a knowledge work management thinker, product development coach, a licensed Management 3.0 facilitator. He wants to help teams and organisations maximise their collaboration, success and fun in knowledge work. Antti's background is in games and software development.

Antti works at Flowa, an Agile consultancy in Finland.

You can link with Antti Kirjavainen on LinkedIn and connect with Antti Kirjavainen on Twitter.

Mar 17, 2017

Where do we start understanding what is going on? When we move from one team to another, we need a process of adjustment and learning. We are, after all, outsiders for the first few weeks. Mark explains his approach to getting started with new teams, and what he looks for when identifying the critical system conditions for the team.

 

About Mark Thuun

Mark started as a software developer when he learned some basic PASCAL from his dad taught. He was then 7-8 years old. Mark has been working as a Scrum Master since january 2015. For 2 years he worked with teams in the biggest telco in Denmark, and currently works for the danish national lottery.

You can link with Mark Thuun on LinkedIn.

Mar 16, 2017

The 2 dimensions of success for Mark are team (including PO and stakeholders) happiness and delivering running/working software. But how do we measure those? Do you have a system in place that helps you assess your success in those two dimensions? Listen to Mark explain how he measures his own success around these 2 dimensions of success for Scrum Masters.

 

About Mark Thuun

Mark started as a software developer when he learned some basic PASCAL from his dad taught. He was then 7-8 years old. Mark has been working as a Scrum Master since january 2015. For 2 years he worked with teams in the biggest telco in Denmark, and currently works for the danish national lottery.

You can link with Mark Thuun on LinkedIn.

Mar 15, 2017

Teams, and Scrum Masters often want to “hide” the problems they face by fear of upsetting the stakeholders. But is that really how you foster change? In this episode we listen to a story where showing the problem to all involved helped create the necessary change.

 

About Mark Thuun

Mark started as a software developer when he learned some basic PASCAL from his dad taught. He was then 7-8 years old. Mark has been working as a Scrum Master since january 2015. For 2 years he worked with teams in the biggest telco in Denmark, and currently works for the danish national lottery.

You can link with Mark Thuun on LinkedIn.

Mar 14, 2017

Teams can adopt new ideas, and learn how to improve. Or they can get stuck in the cycle of trying and quitting, but not learning. Which is the pattern in your team? Looking for the patterns of learning in our teams - and detecting the lack of learning - is a great way to prevent teams from committing performance suicide.

 

About Mark Thuun

Mark started as a software developer when he learned some basic PASCAL from his dad taught. He was then 7-8 years old. Mark has been working as a Scrum Master since january 2015. For 2 years he worked with teams in the biggest telco in Denmark, and currently works for the danish national lottery.

You can link with Mark Thuun on LinkedIn.

Mar 13, 2017

Distributed teams are hard to work with, but if you add cultural differences to the mix things get complicated pretty quickly. In this episode we hear a story of a team that was scattered, and a Scrum Master that did not know about the nuances of the team’s national culture. Listen it to learn what happened and how to avoid it from happening to you.

 

About Mark Thuun

Mark started as a software developer when he learned some basic PASCAL from his dad taught. He was then 7-8 years old. Mark has been working as a Scrum Master since january 2015. For 2 years he worked with teams in the biggest telco in Denmark, and currently works for the danish national lottery.

Mar 11, 2017

In this Bonus episode, we have Diana Larsen, and James Shore, both authors of acclaimed books about Agile. They join us to talk about their model called Agile Fluency Model™. We talk about how the model emerged.

For complete show notes, visit http://www.scrum-master-toolbox.org.

Links:

About the authors

Diana Larsen joins us today from Portland, Oregon. Diana leads the practice area for Agile software development, team leadership, and Agile evolutions at FutureWorks Consulting. Diana is co-author of Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great; Liftoff: Start and Sustain Successful Agile Teams; Five Rules for Accelerated Learning; and co-originator of the Agile Fluency™ model.

You can link with Diana Larsen on LinkedIn and connect with Diana Larsen on Twitter.

James Shore joins us today from Portland, Oregon. James is a long-time Agile practitioner who teaches, writes, and consults on Agile development processes. He is a recipient of the Agile Alliance's Gordon Pask Award for Contributions to Agile Practice, co-author of /The Art of Agile Development/, and co-creator of the Agile Fluency Model. InfoQ has named him as one of the "most influential people in Agile." You can find his screencasts at letscodejavascript.com and essays at jamesshore.com.

You can link with James Shore on LinkedIn and connect with James Shore on Twitter.

Mar 10, 2017

What do you use to evaluate your understanding of the system where you are? Christian suggest that some questions can help us go a long way towards understanding the system where we work. In this episode we refer to the Happy Melly community, where many other people like us try to understand how to create happier systems of work!

 

About Christian Delez

Christian is passionate about team dynamics and culture design. Christian loves trying new human interactions patterns to bring happiness for each individual in a team. Christian works as an agile project leader and coach. He also volunteers in www.GreatnessGuild.org and www.tealcamp.ch.

You can link with Christian Delez on LinkedIn and connect with Christian Delez on Twitter.

Mar 9, 2017

What aspects do you consider when evaluating your success as a scrum master? In this episode we review the 3 aspects that Christian uses to evaluate the impact of his work. And for each of those 3 aspects we discuss possible metrics for us to use.

 

About Christian Delez

Christian is passionate about team dynamics and culture design. Christian loves trying new human interactions patterns to bring happiness for each individual in a team. Christian works as an agile project leader and coach. He also volunteers in www.GreatnessGuild.org and www.tealcamp.ch.

You can link with Christian Delez on LinkedIn and connect with Christian Delez on Twitter.

Mar 8, 2017

Change resistance is a big topic in the change management community. So big in fact that many say it should be the focus of our work. But should it? How do you organize so that change becomes a normal aspect of daily work life? Christian shares the ideas they are trying out at his workplace, and how that could be useful for you in your efforts to help change take hold.

 

About Christian Delez

Christian is passionate about team dynamics and culture design. Christian loves trying new human interactions patterns to bring happiness for each individual in a team. Christian works as an agile project leader and coach. He also volunteers in www.GreatnessGuild.org and www.tealcamp.ch.

You can link with Christian Delez on LinkedIn and connect with Christian Delez on Twitter.

Mar 7, 2017

What have you done lately to help your team communicate better? Lack of communication, or even ineffective communication can cause problems. Serious problems. In this episode we talk about how communication can be improved, and what happens when it doesn’t.

In this episode we refer to the concept of Obeya, the large project room where the team can communicate and create the community aspect of a project.

 

About Christian Delez

Christian is passionate about team dynamics and culture design. Christian loves trying new human interactions patterns to bring happiness for each individual in a team. Christian works as an agile project leader and coach. He also volunteers in www.GreatnessGuild.org and www.tealcamp.ch.

You can link with Christian Delez on LinkedIn and connect with Christian Delez on Twitter.

Mar 6, 2017

The Definition of Done, or DoD, is an original part of Scrum. And it is there to help teams focus on the things that matter to deliver their work at an acceptable level of completion, aka “Done, Done”. But itself does not make miracles happen. There’s a lot of work in making a DoD stick, and Christian relates one of those stories in this episode.

 

About Christian Delez

Christian is passionate about team dynamics and culture design. Christian loves trying new human interactions patterns to bring happiness for each individual in a team. Christian works as an agile project leader and coach. He also volunteers in www.GreatnessGuild.org and www.tealcamp.ch.

You can link with Christian Delez on LinkedIn and connect with Christian Delez on Twitter.

Mar 3, 2017

Mapping is a tool we don’t talk about enough. Mapping includes visualization, affinity grouping, analysis and synthesis all in one tool. We don’t talk about enough this tool that can literally help you map your way to success. In this episode we talk about different types of mapping approaches that can (literally) help us navigate the system we work within.

 

About Carolina Gorosito

Carolina is a natural connector and team enabler, great at finding people’s strengths and helping them combine their skills to become hi performers in the organisations and obtain better results every day.

You can connect with her via her personal blog: carolinagorosito.com.

You can link with Carolina Gorosito on LinkedIn and connect with Carolina Gorosito on Twitter.

Mar 2, 2017

Successful Scrum Masters have many tools in their toolbox, Carolina shares with us 3 tips that she uses regularly in her definition and journey towards a successful outcome for her work.

 

About Carolina Gorosito

Carolina is a natural connector and team enabler, great at finding people’s strengths and helping them combine their skills to become hi performers in the organisations and obtain better results every day.

You can connect with her via her personal blog: carolinagorosito.com.

You can link with Carolina Gorosito on LinkedIn and connect with Carolina Gorosito on Twitter.

Mar 1, 2017

When we are involved in change processes, it is important to understand what tools can help us create a positive understanding between stakeholders and teams. Carolina shares how Nonviolent Communication and Clean Language can help Scrum Masters in their role as change agents.

In this episode we mention Nonviolent Communication which was the subject of a recent episode here on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast and Clean Language.

 

About Carolina Gorosito

Carolina is a natural connector and team enabler, great at finding people’s strengths and helping them combine their skills to become hi performers in the organisations and obtain better results every day.

You can connect with her via her personal blog: carolinagorosito.com.

You can link with Carolina Gorosito on LinkedIn and connect with Carolina Gorosito on Twitter.

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