When we let the team grow their own silos, then we end up with teams that have many single points of failure. Is that really what is best for the team or the business? The famous bus-factor metric tells us how many people would have to be run over by a bus for us to hit a major problem.
Are you helping your team reflect on their bus-factor areas? Listen in to learn about the practices you can use to identify and resolve those bus-factor problems.
A question that many managers ask themselves: who’s the best person to hire for my team? In The Ideal Team Player, Patrick Lencioni explores the characteristics and how to develop the idea team player for the team.
About Jeff Maleski
Jeff is passionate about working with and building up both individuals and teams using ideas from Jurgen Appelo's Management 3.0 and Dan Pink's Drive. When leading project teams, Jeff strives for empirical based planning and forecasting, continuous learning, and delivering high quality software products that exceed expectations. Jeff believes in leading by actions and focusing on building relationships with others.
You can link with Jeff Maleski on LinkedIn.
What can 5 monkeys tell us about agile/digital transformation? That’s what Jeff was asking when he found himself in the middle of an agile transformation in an organization where some people had been working for decades.
That led to an important insight. If you don’t care, it’s impossible to change. Listen in to learn how Jeff reached that insight and what were the lessons he carried into his work as a Scrum Master.
About Jeff Maleski
Jeff is passionate about working with and building up both individuals and teams using ideas from Jurgen Appelo's Management 3.0 and Dan Pink's Drive. When leading project teams, Jeff strives for empirical based planning and forecasting, continuous learning, and delivering high quality software products that exceed expectations. Jeff believes in leading by actions and focusing on building relationships with others.
You can link with Jeff Maleski on LinkedIn.
Psychological safety has been claimed to impact greatly the productivity and well being of teams. Building trust is how we reach psychological safety, but trust is a touchy topic for teams. Scrum Masters try to build trust between team members, with stakeholders, with other teams, with the Product Owner. Trust maybe one of the critical ingredients that allows collaboration to emerge. But how do we build trust? How do we learn what works, and what doesn’t when building trust?
Tim Ottinger shares his learning in this BONUS episode on trust, with a very practical approach, just like we like it here on the podcast.
Before we can start to work on building trust, we need to distinguish between what Lencioni calls “Vulnerability Based Trust”, explained in The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team, and what Tim is referring to. Tim wants us to focus on trust as it happens in practice, every day, not only in moments of deep connection (which is needed for vulnerability based trust to emerge). Tim talks about Autonomy, the team’s autonomy, as being the trust barometer. He explains how we can measure the trust level in a very practical way by looking at the signs, and hints around the level of autonomy that the team is given.
Vulnerability based trust requires we already trust the people around us to some extent. As Tim says: “it’s about exposing your jugular to your teammates. That’s not where we start. When we start working with a team, we don’t yet know what is the “safe” level of trust. So Tim suggests a different approach to building trust. Start by discussing what is the acceptable “discretionary space” (time on your own, or time the team can decide what to do without reporting and getting feedback) at this point?
Be deliberate about establishing the expectations with stakeholders, start with a smaller discretionary space and grow/increase as you go. You build trust slowly. The stakeholders give the team (or the team gives a team member) some “discretionary space”, and then get to see what is delivered, and give feedback. This is the core of the trust transaction that Tim describes in much more applicable detail in this episode.
As Scrum Masters, our goal is to help teams succeed, and our businesses survive. For that we need to learn to bring trust into the system in a practical way. At the end of this episode we discuss how we - Scrum Masters - can bring trust to the teams and organizations we work with.
About Tim Ottinger
Tim has over 37 years in the software business where he has been an employee, a manager, a consultant, and a mentor to many people in several dozen large and small organizations. Through Industrial Logic, he continues this work promoting Modern Agile's guiding principles. Tim is known for his technical consulting and agile thought leadership from 'way back, but lately also for his work in leading knowledge workers, establishing psychological safety, and for his journey away from recreational anger.
You can link with Tim Ottinger on LinkedIn and connect with Tim Ottinger on Twitter.
Nobody gets credit for solving problems that never happened is a paper that explores why the tools that are the reason for success in some companies are ineffective in other companies. And when that happens, people in those organizations have the tendency to work even harder. But is that enough?
In this episode we explore the idea that working harder may be an anti-pattern, and we explore the impact of a simple question: “why?” Go deeper, ask why.
About Lucas Smith
Lucas has been a developer, manager, and agile coach and trainer with Boeing. Currently works a Professional Scrum Trainer with Scrum.org and is the owner of LitheWorks. Lucas enjoys helping people and organizations improve the way they work to be more creative, effective, and efficient.
You can find Lucas Smith’s company at litheworks.com.
You can link with Lucas Smith on LinkedIn.
The questions we ask from ourselves, and the team asks from themselves are critical to influence our behaviour and decisions. In this episode we explore 5 different aspects for a successful Scrum Master, and what Lucas has learned about them.
The Starfish format is popular, and we have discussed it here on the podcast. But Lucas brings an interesting twist: add a personal question to the retrospective to create a safer environment. Listen in to learn how Lucas applies that idea.
About Lucas Smith
Lucas has been a developer, manager, and agile coach and trainer with Boeing. Currently works a Professional Scrum Trainer with Scrum.org and is the owner of LitheWorks. Lucas enjoys helping people and organizations improve the way they work to be more creative, effective, and efficient.
You can find Lucas Smith’s company at litheworks.com.
You can link with Lucas Smith on LinkedIn.
In this episode we discuss a step-by-step approach that Lucas took to help him navigate change in an organisation where he worked. We discuss each step, why it is important, and how it helped Lucas in his quest to help the organisation change.
In this episode we refer to the book Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows.
About Lucas Smith
Lucas has been a developer, manager, and agile coach and trainer with Boeing. Currently works a Professional Scrum Trainer with Scrum.org and is the owner of LitheWorks. Lucas enjoys helping people and organizations improve the way they work to be more creative, effective, and efficient.
You can find Lucas Smith’s company at litheworks.com.
You can link with Lucas Smith on LinkedIn.
Getting a team to learn and practice Scrum is not enough. There’s a critical aspect to a team’s own success and further development: feeling ownership over the product they are developing.
In this episode we discuss how the lack of ownership in the team led to bigger and bigger problems.
We also discuss how to work with manager, who sometimes are the biggest blocker for the team to evolve.
Every Good Endeavor is about the theology of work. Timothy Keller explores the importance of vacation in work, and asks: why do we do the work we do. An important reflection for Scrum Masters, who are there to serve.
In this episode we also mention Extreme Programming explained by Kent Beck and Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows
About Lucas Smith
Lucas has been a developer, manager, and agile coach and trainer with Boeing. Currently works a Professional Scrum Trainer with Scrum.org and is the owner of LitheWorks. Lucas enjoys helping people and organizations improve the way they work to be more creative, effective, and efficient.
You can find Lucas Smith’s company at litheworks.com.
You can link with Lucas Smith on LinkedIn.
It is common to claim that we must user-centric, or listen more to users, or even involve users more in the product development. But Lucas has an extreme case of that message for us. Listen in to learn how being yelled at by users can totally change your perspective on what is value, and make you want to change the product development process.
About Lucas Smith
Lucas has been a developer, manager, and agile coach and trainer with Boeing. Currently works a Professional Scrum Trainer with Scrum.org and is the owner of LitheWorks. Lucas enjoys helping people and organizations improve the way they work to be more creative, effective, and efficient.
You can find Lucas Smith’s company at litheworks.com.
You can link with Lucas Smith on LinkedIn.
Some of the anti-patterns that cause problems in our organisations are: thinking only about efficiency, separating skills and having only specialists, and trying to maximise utilisation of people’s time.
In this episode we discuss how those anti-patterns become system conditions and what we can do as Scrum Masters to overcome them. Listen in to learn about Michael's simple solution to get a team to quickly overcome these critical anti-patterns.
About Michael Küsters
Michael helps companies and people become more agile by providing coaching, training and consulting in agile frameworks, principles and mindset.
Michael has consulted for a wide range of companies from small start-up to international corporation, transforming teams, divisions and entire organizations. He is a seasoned veteran with Scrum, Kanban, XP, LeSS and SAFe, Lean and Six Sigma and harnesses this vast experience for his clients' success.
Michael is a Thought Provoker helping organizations become more agile.
You can link with Michael Küsters on LinkedIn and connect with Michael Küsters on Twitter.
Conversation can open up the biggest issues that the team has in mind. And sometimes a good, open conversation is the best way to get the team to open up. In this episode Michael shares his approach to organising and facilitating a retrospective around the concept of having an “open conversation”.
About Michael Küsters
Michael helps companies and people become more agile by providing coaching, training and consulting in agile frameworks, principles and mindset.
Michael has consulted for a wide range of companies from small start-up to international corporation, transforming teams, divisions and entire organizations. He is a seasoned veteran with Scrum, Kanban, XP, LeSS and SAFe, Lean and Six Sigma and harnesses this vast experience for his clients' success.
Michael is a Thought Provoker helping organizations become more agile.
You can link with Michael Küsters on LinkedIn and connect with Michael Küsters on Twitter.
A software company wins a bid to build a software product. They realise that the time and money they have to deliver that project is way shorter than what they have done in the past. What do you do?
Many companies start their Agile journey in a similar situation. They have chewed too much and it is time to get creative. A few google queries later, and Agile is the next big thing. But now we have two problems: an impossible project and a change process! Listen in to learn how Michael turned the situation around for that client with the help of the team, of course.
About Michael Küsters
Michael helps companies and people become more agile by providing coaching, training and consulting in agile frameworks, principles and mindset.
Michael has consulted for a wide range of companies from small start-up to international corporation, transforming teams, divisions and entire organizations. He is a seasoned veteran with Scrum, Kanban, XP, LeSS and SAFe, Lean and Six Sigma and harnesses this vast experience for his clients' success.
Michael is a Thought Provoker helping organizations become more agile.
You can link with Michael Küsters on LinkedIn and connect with Michael Küsters on Twitter.
Autonomy is one of the key aspects in Daniel Pink’s motivation triggers: Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose. However, there is such a thing as too much autonomy. In this episode we explore the story of a team that was too autonomous. Listen in to learn what problems that led to, and how you can help your team avoid those problems.
Humble Inquiry by Edgar Schein is a book about the gentle art of asking and not telling. One of the core skills for a Scrum Master: asking the right questions.
About Michael Küsters
Michael helps companies and people become more agile by providing coaching, training and consulting in agile frameworks, principles and mindset.
Michael has consulted for a wide range of companies from small start-up to international corporation, transforming teams, divisions and entire organizations. He is a seasoned veteran with Scrum, Kanban, XP, LeSS and SAFe, Lean and Six Sigma and harnesses this vast experience for his clients' success.
Michael is a Thought Provoker helping organizations become more agile.
You can link with Michael Küsters on LinkedIn and connect with Michael Küsters on Twitter.
In this episode we explore a possible anti-pattern: the IT - Business conflict. It may start softly with some minor disagreements over priority, but if unchecked it can grow much bigger. In this episode we discover Michael’s own story of trying to bridge the gap between IT and Business, and also what he learned does not work. From Michael’s story we can learn how to tackle that possible conflict.
About Michael Küsters
Michael helps companies and people become more agile by providing coaching, training and consulting in agile frameworks, principles and mindset.
Michael has consulted for a wide range of companies from small start-up to international corporation, transforming teams, divisions and entire organizations. He is a seasoned veteran with Scrum, Kanban, XP, LeSS and SAFe, Lean and Six Sigma and harnesses this vast experience for his clients' success.
Michael is a Thought Provoker helping organizations become more agile.
You can link with Michael Küsters on LinkedIn and connect with Michael Küsters on Twitter.
In this episode we explore The Core Protocols, a set of ideas developed by Jim and Michele McCarthy as they investigated the causes of performance improvement in teams.
During that research Jim and Michele discovered that high-performance teams did a lot of things in a similar way, and we explore some of those patterns that successful teams take on.
The Core Protocols not only describe the patterns of successful teams, but also act as a “map” of the things we need to consider when helping our teams.
Jim and Michele were studying teams way back in the 1990’s. They started to study teams to see if they could duplicate the success of a team that had worked on Visual C++ at Microsoft. The question was: what do teams need to reach that level of performance. We discuss the initial story and finding that led Jim and Michele to further study what was to be become The Core Protocols, and the impact that the initial research had on the modern Core Protocols.
When Richard started applying The Core Protocols he started to see large impact on the teams he was helping. In one case, while working with a client, Richard observed a doubling in productivity for one team. In the episode Richard describes the overall process he implemented to help that team as well as The Core Protocols that he took on as part of developing the work with the team.
Just like any other tool, model or technique, The Core Protocols have their challenges. We discuss the main challenge that Richard has faced: the techie that thinks emotions have no place at work.
The “emotions are out” mindset is pervasive, especially in engineering cultures, but is that really how teams work? We explore why that perspective endangers the team’s well being and productivity, and discuss alternative ways to handle the emotions we all have in our places of work. A book we refer to is: Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg.
The Core Protocols are especially useful for us as Scrum Masters. We can use those in many specific aspects of our work. Whether you are thinking about how to improve the flow of the daily meeting, or the safety for the team in the planning meeting, Richard describes specific aspects of our work that benefit from The Core Protocols, and which protocols to apply.
We refer to The Core Protocols: A Guide to Greatness by Richard Kasperowski and Software for Your Head: Core Protocols for Creating and Maintaining Shared Vision by Jim and Michele McCarthy.
About Richard Kasperowski
Richard is a speaker, trainer, coach, and author focused on high-performance teams. Richard is the author of The Core Protocols: A Guide to Greatness. He leads clients in building great teams that get great results using the Core Protocols, Agile, and Open Space Technology. Richard created and teaches the class Agile Software Development at Harvard University. Learn more and subscribe to Richard’s newsletter at www.kasperowski.com.
You can link with Richard Kasperowski on LinkedIn and connect with Richard Kasperowski on Twitter.
One of the least spoken about system conditions is the deep belief that “more is better”. Many organisations make decisions and organize their work based on that model: more features = more success for the product. But is it really like that?
Looking at the system conditions also means understanding what are the deeply held beliefs that the organisation acts on, and shape its ways working.
About Jeff Bubolz
Jeff is a speaker, trainer, and agile coach. He has been a Product Owner, Scrum Master and Development Team member. Jeff has worked with enterprise companies to small start-ups. His goal is to end human suffering in organizations, by nudging people to be the change they want to see in the world.
You can link with Jeff Bubolz on LinkedIn and connect with Jeff Bubolz on Twitter.
Success is when a team has reached a point where they improve regularly, and perhaps don’t even need a Scrum Master present at every meeting, or facilitating every session with the team. When that happens it is time to move on to other topics. Is the team learning how to measure themselves and the flow of work? In this episode we talk about team self-measurement and how the team can learn from starting and maintaining their own dashboard.
In this episode we refer to the book Scrum Mastery by Geoff Watts.
In this episode we refer to the team dashboard created by Troy Magennis of Focused Objective.
Learning happens at the team level. The retrospectives are the key ceremony where that aspect of our work is most visible. In this episode we talk about the different phases of the retrospective and how get teams to own the retrospective.
We refer to the book Agile Retrospectives by Esther Derby and Diana Larsen.
About Jeff Bubolz
Jeff is a speaker, trainer, and agile coach. He has been a Product Owner, Scrum Master and Development Team member. Jeff has worked with enterprise companies to small start-ups. His goal is to end human suffering in organizations, by nudging people to be the change they want to see in the world.
You can link with Jeff Bubolz on LinkedIn and connect with Jeff Bubolz on Twitter.
When we visualise the work, how it flows in the organization we discover the real bottlenecks that prevent us from delivering. In this episode we study the case of an organisation that was divided into component teams instead of feature teams. That was discovered thanks to visualisation. But the hard work was about to start. How do we help an organisation transform from component teams to feature teams?
Listen in to hear Jeff’s journey through the change process, and what approaches he successfully used.
About Jeff Bubolz
Jeff is a speaker, trainer, and agile coach. He has been a Product Owner, Scrum Master and Development Team member. Jeff has worked with enterprise companies to small start-ups. His goal is to end human suffering in organizations, by nudging people to be the change they want to see in the world.
You can link with Jeff Bubolz on LinkedIn and connect with Jeff Bubolz on Twitter.
Retrospectives can sometime be affected by an atmosphere of negativity. When the team is only complaining, but not looking forward we have a challenge. In this episode we explore such a situation. And how simple changes helped Jeff turn the atmosphere around, from complaining to figuring out what “we” can do to improve the situation.
This week we discuss a book that talks about working with our clients (Scrum Masters serve coaching/service clients), and how we are often conflicted as to the right course of action.
Great Scrum Masters are able to deal with that conflict, showing vulnerability while not being afraid of it. Listen in to learn how this book influenced Jeff’s approach to being a Scrum Master.
Getting Naked: A Business Fable About Shedding The Three Fears That Sabotage Client Loyalty.
About Jeff Bubolz
Jeff is a speaker, trainer, and agile coach. He has been a Product Owner, Scrum Master and Development Team member. Jeff has worked with enterprise companies to small start-ups. His goal is to end human suffering in organizations, by nudging people to be the change they want to see in the world.
You can link with Jeff Bubolz on LinkedIn and connect with Jeff Bubolz on Twitter.
An untold story in the Scrum Master community is that not all of us started out as Agilists. That’s my case, and also Jeff’s case. In this episode we explore the personal transformation that Jeff went through: from skeptic to advocate of Agile in his organisation.
How this happened? A high pressure project which Jeff could not solve alone. He had to “take it to the team”, let them solve it on their own. How did they do it? With an Agile approach, of course. Because that’s what you develop when the pressure is high and you want to make sure you succeed. Listen in to learn about Jeff’s journey and how that was affected by how a team reacted to pressure to deliver.
About Jeff Bubolz
Jeff is a speaker, trainer, and agile coach. He has been a Product Owner, Scrum Master and Development Team member. Jeff has worked with enterprise companies to small start-ups. His goal is to end human suffering in organizations, by nudging people to be the change they want to see in the world.
You can link with Jeff Bubolz on LinkedIn and connect with Jeff Bubolz on Twitter.
Scrum was “born” in the IT world, and it is still mostly applied in that environment. But the lessons that Scrum can teach us go over industrial borders. In this episode we learn how the ideas in Scrum can apply to an old-world industrial company. At the same time we explore what kind of systemic conditions Petr uncovered in that assignment and how he tackled them.
About Petr Holodňák
Petr has a small consulting company where he helps businesses overcome obstacles of ever-faster changing environment, growth problems, stale processes, poor performance, lacking company culture etc.
Petr helps companies be more adaptable through empowering their people.
Petr also does some pro-bono consulting. Recently for example for a Liberal/democratic school in Prague. His passion is introducing modern management (we can call that "Agile") to "old school" businesses like heavy industry, manufacturing and so on. Petr wants to help build a brighter future!
You can find Petr’s business at: www.cerebra.cz.
You can link with Petr Holodňák on LinkedIn.
Often we organize retrospectives at the end of the Sprint. But is that the best time to solve problems? It may be! But not always. So what to do when we need to act now? The Immediate Retro, of course! Petr explains his view of why the Immediate Retro is important, and how to go about it.
About Petr Holodňák
Petr has a small consulting company where he helps businesses overcome obstacles of ever-faster changing environment, growth problems, stale processes, poor performance, lacking company culture etc.
Petr helps companies be more adaptable through empowering their people.
Petr also does some pro-bono consulting. Recently for example for a Liberal/democratic school in Prague. His passion is introducing modern management (we can call that "Agile") to "old school" businesses like heavy industry, manufacturing and so on. Petr wants to help build a brighter future!
You can find Petr’s business at: www.cerebra.cz.
You can link with Petr Holodňák on LinkedIn.
Petr has been working with a democratic school in Prague. At first blush it may seem hard to get a democratic school to find a common direction and productive collaboration. After all, isn’t it natural that kids want to skip class? Maybe. But there’s a lot you can do with teachers to help find a better way. In this episode we explore how mixing Management 3.0 practices, Scrum and continuous experimentation brought about a very positive change. Agile works outside IT!
About Petr Holodňák
Petr has a small consulting company where he helps businesses overcome obstacles of ever-faster changing environment, growth problems, stale processes, poor performance, lacking company culture etc.
Petr helps companies be more adaptable through empowering their people.
Petr also does some pro-bono consulting. Recently for example for a Liberal/democratic school in Prague. His passion is introducing modern management (we can call that "Agile") to "old school" businesses like heavy industry, manufacturing and so on. Petr wants to help build a brighter future!
You can find Petr’s business at: www.cerebra.cz.
You can link with Petr Holodňák on LinkedIn.
Scrum is a starting point. The goal of Scrum is to unlock the ability that the teams have to continuously improve and get better at satisfying the customer in a way that is sustainable for both the company and the business.
In this episode we review a story of a team that was not yet on the Scrum and improvement journeys. There was no trust. No clear leader. How to start a team on the improvement journey? Listen in to learn how Scrum can help you get started.
Petr shares with us several books, but starts with Re-inventing organizations by Frederic Laloux. Laloux shows that every time humanity has shifted to a new stage of consciousness in the past, it has invented a whole new way to structure and run organizations, each time bringing extraordinary breakthroughs in collaboration.
We also refer to the work by Nils Pfläging about how to Organize for Complexity, and the oft-referred The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni
About Petr Holodňák
Petr has a small consulting company where he helps businesses overcome obstacles of ever-faster changing environment, growth problems, stale processes, poor performance, lacking company culture etc.
Petr helps companies be more adaptable through empowering their people.
Petr also does some pro-bono consulting. Recently for example for a Liberal/democratic school in Prague. His passion is introducing modern management (we can call that "Agile") to "old school" businesses like heavy industry, manufacturing and so on. Petr wants to help build a brighter future!
You can find Petr’s business at: www.cerebra.cz.
You can link with Petr Holodňák on LinkedIn.
As Scrum Masters we need to pay attention to much more than the process we are supposed to help develop. It is usually said that Scrum has two outcomes: the product we want to develop, and the team that is able to develop it. But there’s a third outcome. That third outcome is the organization that is able to sustain the team that delivers the product! Listen in as Petr walks us through a story where pushing harder, and punishing people ultimately led to big problems. Learn how you can avoid those anti-patterns!
About Petr Holodňák
Petr has a small consulting company where he helps businesses overcome obstacles of ever-faster changing environment, growth problems, stale processes, poor performance, lacking company culture etc.
Petr helps companies be more adaptable through empowering their people.
Petr also does some pro-bono consulting. Recently for example for a Liberal/democratic school in Prague. His passion is introducing modern management (we can call that "Agile") to "old school" businesses like heavy industry, manufacturing and so on. Petr wants to help build a brighter future!
You can find Petr’s business at: www.cerebra.cz.
You can link with Petr Holodňák on LinkedIn.
Tom and Mary Poppendieck have authored several books over the years about what needs to change in how we develop software to be able to meet the demands of the market, competition, and the growth in complexity of technology businesses. A recurring pattern they have witnessed is that people keep trying to discover a “silver bullet”. We explore why that is a bad idea, and some of the changes in product development that makes that basically an impossible quest.
About Mary and Tom Poppendieck
Mary Poppendieck started her career as a process control programmer.
Mary considered retirement in 1998, but decided to focus instead on helping bring to the world a new paradigm. She wrote the award-winning book Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit in 2003 to explain how the lean principles from manufacturing offer a better approach to software development.
You can link with Mary Poppendieck on LinkedIn and connect with Mary Poppendieck on Twitter.
Tom Poppendieck has 25 years of experience in computing including eight years of work with object technology. Tom led the development of a world-class product data management practice for a major commercial avionics manufacturer that reduced design to production transition efforts from 6 months to 6 weeks.
You can read Mary’s essays about Software and Product development at LeanEssays.com.