In our journey to impactful work, and our success as Scrum Masters, one of the key tools we have to learn how to use is silence. And it just so happens that our ability and need to be silent (or not) can be used as a personal metric for our own success. In this episode we talk about the role of silence in our work as Scrum Masters as well 2 other metrics you can take in and use to measure your progress.
In this episode we mention The 5 Dysfunctions of a team by Lencioni and The Ladder of Inference, a tool we should be aware of to help in our conversations.
About Philiy Lander
Philiy has been working as a scrum master for about 3 years and is currently studying her masters in business and personal coaching. She has been part of Adventures with Agile for about year and loves contributing and being involved with the community.
You can link with Philiy Lander on LinkedIn and connect with Philiy Lander on Twitter.
Nobody resists change, they resist being changed by others! Simple, yet powerful insight! How to take it into practice in our own change work? Philiy shares with us a story of how the visualization of work with team boards spread virally in an organization by letting the people own the change. Listen in to learn how Philiy pulled that one off!
About Philiy Lander
Philiy has been working as a scrum master for about 3 years and is currently studying her masters in business and personal coaching. She has been part of Adventures with Agile for about year and loves contributing and being involved with the community.
You can link with Philiy Lander on LinkedIn and connect with Philiy Lander on Twitter.
Sometimes it feels like we are running as fast as we can just to stay in the same place. The feeling of overwhelm that many teams face comes from simply having too much work in progress. In this episode Philiy tells us a story of such a team. At the start of the Sprint all of the stories would immediately be in progress. Why did that happen? Was it lack of communication or collaboration? No. Was it that the team was in a hurry to finish something? Maybe. But most importantly we discuss some of the common anti-patterns that lead to having way too much work in progress.
In this episode we talk about a workshop that Philiy facilitated with the team: The Team Genesis Workshop. We also mention Conway’s Law, with a particular impact in this story. And we talk about the 7 wastes in software development work.
About Philiy Lander
Philiy has been working as a scrum master for about 3 years and is currently studying her masters in business and personal coaching. She has been part of Adventures with Agile for about year and loves contributing and being involved with the community.
You can link with Philiy Lander on LinkedIn and connect with Philiy Lander on Twitter.
“I hate Scrum!” they will say to our face. How do we respond to that. How do we tackle the skeptic team members. In this episode, Philiy tells us just that story, when a team member was actively against Scrum. She shares with us, her own mistakes and what she learned back then that helps her deal with skeptic team members.
About Philiy Lander
Philiy has been working as a scrum master for about 3 years and is currently studying her masters in business and personal coaching. She has been part of Adventures with Agile for about year and loves contributing and being involved with the community.
You can link with Philiy Lander on LinkedIn and connect with Philiy Lander on Twitter.
One key aspect of working with systems is the ability to measure the system as a whole. In this episode Mattia shares an example of how he looked at the overall performance of an end-to-end system, and how that helped him identify impediments that needed to be addressed. Interestingly he also shows how adding more developers to a team does not make the team go faster. Listen in to find out why.
In this episode we refer to The Mythical Man Month by Fred Brooks.
About Mattia Battiston
Mattia is a software developer and team leader with a great passion for learning and continuous improvement. He has been interested in everything to do with Agile and helping teams improve since the beginning of his career 10 years ago. Mattia uses Kanban, Lean and Agile to help teams strive to get better.
You can link with Mattia Battiston on LinkedIn and connect with Mattia Battiston on Twitter.
Metrics to measure the system-wide performance @BattistonMattia
Mattia states that his success as a Scrum Master or team lead is related to the ability of the team to be successful. But he then goes further and relates his current job to the success of the team. As a team lead, Mattia looks at other aspects, like team culture and collaboration. This is an important perspective for us Scrum Masters. So how do you measure the change in culture? How do you assess if the team is improving their approach to collaboration? Listen in to find out.
In this episode we refer to the idea of using Kudo cards. Find out more about Kudo cards and Management 3.0 to learn how to effectively use Kudo cards in culture change.
About Mattia Battiston
Mattia is a software developer and team leader with a great passion for learning and continuous improvement. He has been interested in everything to do with Agile and helping teams improve since the beginning of his career 10 years ago. Mattia uses Kanban, Lean and Agile to help teams strive to get better.
You can link with Mattia Battiston on LinkedIn and connect with Mattia Battiston on Twitter.
Metrics to measure the system-wide performance @BattistonMattia
Mattia joined a team that was estimating their work. Invariably the estimates were off. Way off. So Mattia, being a self-proclaimed data geek, started looking at the data. The next project came, and the team estimated the project, while Mattia looked at the data they already had. Guess what was the result? In this episode we talk about the NoEstimates book and also how using data (not estimates) will help your team be more predictable. Luckily Mattia is also writing a book about this, The Team Guide to Metrics for Business Decisions, and here is one of Mattia’s presentation on the topic of Kanban metrics.
About Mattia Battiston
Mattia is a software developer and team leader with a great passion for learning and continuous improvement. He has been interested in everything to do with Agile and helping teams improve since the beginning of his career 10 years ago. Mattia uses Kanban, Lean and Agile to help teams strive to get better.
You can link with Mattia Battiston on LinkedIn and connect with Mattia Battiston on Twitter.
Metrics to measure the system-wide performance @BattistonMattia
“As long as the hole in the boat is on their side, we’re fine” - or so goes the cartoon. But that’s a short-sightedness that can have serious consequences to the team. Mattia shares a similar story that so clearly illustrates the importance of having a collaboration culture in our teams. Most importantly, Mattia shares his approach to creating a collaborative way of working in a team that was struggling to collaborate.
In this episode we refer to the “slack time” policy that can help team focus on collaboration. You can find an example of a team using “slack time” here, and Mattia’s own explicit policy for how to handle slack time.
About Mattia Battiston
Mattia is a software developer and team leader with a great passion for learning and continuous improvement. He has been interested in everything to do with Agile and helping teams improve since the beginning of his career 10 years ago. Mattia uses Kanban, Lean and Agile to help teams strive to get better.
You can link with Mattia Battiston on LinkedIn and connect with Mattia Battiston on Twitter.
Metrics to measure the system-wide performance @BattistonMattia
Hiring great people is not an easy job. Mattia shares the story of how hiring the very capable, but not good team-player team members can threaten the very existence of the team. Mattia also shares what he learned about the hiring process, and how that can help you hire the right people for your team!
In this episode we refer to the research by Dr. Anita Woolley about the collective intelligence of teams (also available in a video summary), and what factors affect teams performance. We also refer to Google’s project Aristotle, a project that studied the performance of teams (and another article) and what affects them.
About Mattia Battiston
Mattia is a software developer and team leader with a great passion for learning and continuous improvement. He has been interested in everything to do with Agile and helping teams improve since the beginning of his career 10 years ago. Mattia uses Kanban, Lean and Agile to help teams strive to get better.
You can link with Mattia Battiston on LinkedIn and connect with Mattia Battiston on Twitter.
There are many things that affect the performance of the team. Deming famously stated that 95% of the performance of a team is due to systemic conditions, while only 5% are due to individual performance. In this episode we review some of the anti-patterns that Saad Ali faced in his career, and how looking at the system conditions helps us as Scrum Masters to understand the dynamics affecting our teams, and decide how to act.
About Saad Ali Jan
Coming from diverse background. Saad Ali's career consists of several different domains. From Electronics Engineering, starting as a Project co-ordinator, lately completed his MBA and worked as Quality Assurance Engineer and process optimization. Started his career as a full time Scrum master some 2 years ago. Being a "people person" helped him in his role. Professional cricket player and played with several cricket team back in Pakistan and still playing in Germany in Bundesliga. Dealing with players and helping them to become high performing teams also helped his professional career.
You can link with Saad Ali Jan on LinkedIn and connect with Saad Ali Jan on Twitter.
There are many areas of interest, and many aspects of success for us to consider. Saad Ali reviews the metrics he mostly looks at to assess his progress and also the progress of the teams that he works with.
In this episode we talk about Scrum Mastery: From Good To Great Servant-Leadership by Geoff Watts and The NoEstimates Book by Vasco Duarte.
About Saad Ali Jan
Coming from diverse background. Saad Ali's career consists of several different domains. From Electronics Engineering, starting as a Project co-ordinator, lately completed his MBA and worked as Quality Assurance Engineer and process optimization. Started his career as a full time Scrum master some 2 years ago. Being a "people person" helped him in his role. Professional cricket player and played with several cricket team back in Pakistan and still playing in Germany in Bundesliga. Dealing with players and helping them to become high performing teams also helped his professional career.
You can link with Saad Ali Jan on LinkedIn and connect with Saad Ali Jan on Twitter.
At some point in our careers we will probably face a situation when Scrum and Agile are being introduced to an organization that worked only with other approaches before. This kind of green-field adoption processes have specific challenges that we must be aware of. In this episode, Saad Ali tells us the story of an organization that started from scratch; what problems he faced; what anti-patterns he detected; and also how the organization adapted to the new ways of working. Teams, stakeholder, and of course, also the Scrum Masters.
About Saad Ali Jan
Coming from diverse background. Saad Ali's career consists of several different domains. From Electronics Engineering, starting as a Project co-ordinator, lately completed his MBA and worked as Quality Assurance Engineer and process optimization. Started his career as a full time Scrum master some 2 years ago. Being a "people person" helped him in his role. Professional cricket player and played with several cricket team back in Pakistan and still playing in Germany in Bundesliga. Dealing with players and helping them to become high performing teams also helped his professional career.
You can link with Saad Ali Jan on LinkedIn and connect with Saad Ali Jan on Twitter.
Often we deal with managers, product owners, stakeholders that want to control the teams we work with. This anti-pattern is so common that sometimes the teams assume that is what they are dealing with even when the stakeholders don’t want to exercise control over the team. How to tackle that mistrust? In this episode Saad Ali tells us the story of a team that had to develop that trust with the Product Owner, and explains how the Product Owner and himself changed their behavior to allow the team to take ownership and responsibility over the development process, and finally to actively contribute to the product they were developing.
In this episode we refer to The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team by Lencioni, and Roman Pichler’s Product Vision Board as tools that can help the team work better with stakeholders and the product owner.
About Saad Ali Jan
Coming from diverse background. Saad Ali's career consists of several different domains. From Electronics Engineering, starting as a Project co-ordinator, lately completed his MBA and worked as Quality Assurance Engineer and process optimization. Started his career as a full time Scrum master some 2 years ago. Being a "people person" helped him in his role. Professional cricket player and played with several cricket team back in Pakistan and still playing in Germany in Bundesliga. Dealing with players and helping them to become high performing teams also helped his professional career.
You can link with Saad Ali Jan on LinkedIn and connect with Saad Ali Jan on Twitter.
We can read all the books, watch all the presentations, even listen to all the podcasts about Agile, but applying Agile is a very different business than learning about it. Saad Ali tells the story one of his first jobs as Scrum Master and how he faced the fact that the problems we face as Scrum Masters are quite different from what we study in school. No matter how much we study.
About Saad Ali Jan
Coming from diverse background. Saad Ali's career consists of several different domains. From Electronics Engineering, starting as a Project co-ordinator, lately completed his MBA and worked as Quality Assurance Engineer and process optimization. Started his career as a full time Scrum master some 2 years ago. Being a "people person" helped him in his role. Professional cricket player and played with several cricket team back in Pakistan and still playing in Germany in Bundesliga. Dealing with players and helping them to become high performing teams also helped his professional career.
You can link with Saad Ali Jan on LinkedIn and connect with Saad Ali Jan on Twitter.
When we work with teams, it is not only the teams we work with. We work with their line managers, their stakeholders, their departments, their companies (if they are externals), and we also must take into account their family or personal situation. That’s a pretty large set of systems we must consider when working with teams. Listen in to learn how Blerina looks at creating her own overview of the systems in play at any time in the team’s journey.
About Blerina Ilia
Blerina has played many roles in her career, from Business Analyst to Team Lead, Test Manager and now a Scrum Master.
You can link with Blerina Ilia on LinkedIn.
In this episode we explore the different aspects of success for Scrum Masters according to Blerin Ilia. We discuss the importance, and impact of self-improvement for Scrum Masters as well as what to do when the team no longer needs you daily. What next for Scrum Masters?
In this episode we refer to the book by Anthony Robbins: Awaken the Giant Within.
About Blerina Ilia
Blerina has played many roles in her career, from Business Analyst to Team Lead, Test Manager and now a Scrum Master.
You can link with Blerina Ilia on LinkedIn.
When an organization starts the adoption process of Scrum, it will probably have teams working with Scrum, and other teams working with other processes. How do we introduce a new tool - that is supposed to help the Scrum teams - to the organization? In this episode Blerina shares her experience with introducing a tool to an organization that had both Agile and non-Agile teams.
About Blerina Ilia
Blerina has played many roles in her career, from Business Analyst to Team Lead, Test Manager and now a Scrum Master.
You can link with Blerina Ilia on LinkedIn.
All Scrum Masters work, at some point, with team members that are against, or skeptic regarding Scrum. How do we tackle that resistance? How do we leverage the other team member’s acceptance of Scrum in the process? In this episode we discuss the story of a skeptic team member and how to help them “come in” to the team and accept Scrum.
About Blerina Ilia
Blerina has played many roles in her career, from Business Analyst to Team Lead, Test Manager and now a Scrum Master.
You can link with Blerina Ilia on LinkedIn.
When we get started with Scrum we very often are in a situation where the whole organization is new to Scrum. In this episode we talk about introducing Scrum to organisations and what we should consider when doing that part of our work.
About Blerina Ilia
Blerina has played many roles in her career, from Business Analyst to Team Lead, Test Manager and now a Scrum Master.
You can link with Blerina Ilia on LinkedIn.
In this Bonus episode of the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast, we explore the idea of what Agile needs to be to continuously adapt to what we have learned about what works and what does not work in Agile.
Agile is soon 20 years old, the Agile manifesto was published in 2001, and as it says right there in the first phrase: it was about discovering (the active word) new and better ways of developing software.
Nearly twenty years on, Joshua Kerievsky has started writing about what he has learned and started a movement with his article Modern Agile.
The Modern Agile community
At ModernAgile.org, the Modern Agile community is active in discussing their lessons learned as well as what new ideas come from applying the principles. All the material on the site is open source and available for you to use.
Listen in to learn about Modern Agile and see how you can apply the ideas that you resonate with. Agile is adapting to the new reality, and so should you.
About Joshua Kerievsky
Joshua is the founder and CEO of Industrial Logic, a pioneering Extreme Programming/Lean consultancy that radically improves the software development capabilities of organizations around the globe.
In the mid-1990s, Joshua was among a small community of “lightweight methods” practitioners experimenting with better ways of developing software. Since then, he’s helped thousands of people across hundreds of organizations learn better ways of making software. Today, he leads an effort to modernize Agile by removing outdated practices and leveraging the best of what the software community and other industries have learned about achieving awesome results.
Joshua is an international speaker and author of the best-selling, Jolt Cola-award-winning book, Refactoring to Patterns, numerous Agile eLearning courses, and popular articles like Anzeneering, Sufficient Design and Stop Using Story Points.
Raz la casquette de Jira? Les outils de management de tableaux virtuels sont pratiques, mais dans un certain sens, ils troublent la communication d’une équipe. Lorsque l’équipe possède une certaine maturité cela ne pose plus de problème, mais avant… Bastien est convaincu qu’un tableau physique est un véritable avantage pour augmenter la communication, l’agilité et le fun au sein d’une équipe.
About Bastien Naudé and Tim Bourguignon
Bastien is a software developer and scrum master for a french company based in Paris. Since he joined the company after his studies, his team introduced scrum, then scrumban and is now experimenting with kanban.
You can connect with Bastien Naudé on LinkedIn, or follow Bastien Naudé on Twitter.
Tim Bourguignon 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. Tim is the author of the Developer’s Journey podcast where he interviews developers from all around the world to find out what it takes to become a better developer. Tim is the occasional host of other podcasts like the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast.
You can connect with Tim Bourguignon on twitter or visit Tim Bourguignon’s website to see what he is up to.
Josh is an experienced manager of technology organization. He’s used to be in organizations that have the pressure to perform and want to adapt, grow and step up their game. But how do you do that? He shares with us the method he uses when he joins a growing company, to help them adopt Agile the right way.
About Josh Anderson
With four large-scale agile transformations under his belt, Josh Anderson has seen it all. Good agile, bad agile, and other things sometimes referred to as agile. As the VP of product development at Broadvine, Josh is responsible for the company's agile adoption and all aspects of software engineering. He gives back to the community by speaking regularly at industry conferences and co-hosting the agile-centric podcast called Meta-Cast.
Josh, together with Bob Galen host an Agile podcast, the Meta-Cast podcast. Check it out!
You can link with Josh Anderson on LinkedIn and connect with Josh Anderson on Twitter.
What is success for us as Scrum Masters? Josh’s view is that we must help our teams reach the Ri-level of performance. But what does that mean in practice? And what happens after that? Listen in to learn more about the Shu-Ha-Ri model for team coaching, an important tool to help you adapt your style to the team, the stage they are in, and help you approach the team in the right way.
In this episode we refer to the Shu-Ha-Ri model of learning a practice.
About Josh Anderson
With four large-scale agile transformations under his belt, Josh Anderson has seen it all. Good agile, bad agile, and other things sometimes referred to as agile. As the VP of product development at Broadvine, Josh is responsible for the company's agile adoption and all aspects of software engineering. He gives back to the community by speaking regularly at industry conferences and co-hosting the agile-centric podcast called Meta-Cast.
Josh, together with Bob Galen host an Agile podcast, the Meta-Cast podcast. Check it out!
You can link with Josh Anderson on LinkedIn and connect with Josh Anderson on Twitter.
When building a team you want to hire the right people. With the right experience, and willingness to apply Agile in their work. That’s a great idea in theory, but in practice every workplace is different. Every team is new. And to adapt to the new place we need to learn to work in a new way. Josh shares with us a story of a team that he hired but found out that their concept and experience of “agile” was not what was needed. Learn how Josh helped those team members “unlearn” the old habits and succeed with agile in a new organization.
About Josh Anderson
With four large-scale agile transformations under his belt, Josh Anderson has seen it all. Good agile, bad agile, and other things sometimes referred to as agile. As the VP of product development at Broadvine, Josh is responsible for the company's agile adoption and all aspects of software engineering. He gives back to the community by speaking regularly at industry conferences and co-hosting the agile-centric podcast called Meta-Cast.
Josh, together with Bob Galen host an Agile podcast, the Meta-Cast podcast. Check it out!
You can link with Josh Anderson on LinkedIn and connect with Josh Anderson on Twitter.
What is the right level for a team. Should you give the highest pressure, most critical assignments always to your best team? Listen in to learn what Josh learned about managing the right level of pressure for a team, and what you can apply in your work to ensure you help your teams be healthy.
Josh, together with Bob Galen also host an Agile podcast, the Meta-Cast podcast. Check it out!
About Josh Anderson
With four large-scale agile transformations under his belt, Josh Anderson has seen it all. Good agile, bad agile, and other things sometimes referred to as agile. As the VP of product development at Broadvine, Josh is responsible for the company's agile adoption and all aspects of software engineering. He gives back to the community by speaking regularly at industry conferences and co-hosting the agile-centric podcast called Meta-Cast.
Josh, together with Bob Galen host an Agile podcast, the Meta-Cast podcast. Check it out!
You can link with Josh Anderson on LinkedIn and connect with Josh Anderson on Twitter.