Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.
Teams benefit from team members with a lot of experience. However, when those team members become the “only voice” in the team, that may lead to serious problems. In this episode, we explore the Senior Team Member anti-pattern, whereby one team member “overpowers” everyone else in the team, and the other team members are hesitant to share their perspectives. What should a Scrum Master do in this situation? Listen in to learn more, and get Valeria’s tips.
In Coaching agile teams by Lyssa Adkins, Valeria found an inspiring book that helped her in her journey as a Scrum Master. In the book she finds a valuable reminder of the things she still has to practice and learn to be better at.
About Valeria Greco
Valeria has worked as a Scrum Master for 4 years. She has experience with both Software development and non-software development Agile teams. When asked what she does for a living, Valeria replies: "I build teams!" And she does it by focusing on building relationships first. As Valeria says: “all my teams will tell you that I like talking about the feelings :-)"
You can link with Valeria Greco on LinkedIn and connect with Valeria Greco on Twitter.
Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.
As Scrum Masters, we may be tempted to go straight to problem solving when we join a team. As “quick” as that may sound, what Valeria learned in this story was that it makes our Scrum Master work harder, not easier. There’s a critical step we must go through before the team is ready, and willing to work with us. Listen to learn what that step is.
About Valeria Greco
Valeria has worked as a Scrum Master for 4 years. She has experience with both Software development and non-software development Agile teams. When asked what she does for a living, Valeria replies: "I build teams!" And she does it by focusing on building relationships first. As Valeria says: “all my teams will tell you that I like talking about the feelings :-)"
You can link with Valeria Greco on LinkedIn and connect with Valeria Greco on Twitter.
Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.
About Leena SN
Leena is the Co-founder/CTO @ Good Karma, Bangalore, India. She is a strong believer of lean principles for delivering software and an evangelist and practitioner of Continuous delivery. CD is there to ensure that the software can be reliably released at any time helping the business to get faster feedback from the market.
You can link with Leena SN on LinkedIn and connect with Leena SN on Twitter.
Read more about Continuous Delivery from Leena SN at Medium.
Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.
About Wouter Lagerweij
Wouter Lagerweij is an Agile Coach who likes to cover the whole spectrum: from the technical practices of Dev and Ops to business and product. He works with organizations to help them do continuous delivery, and provides training and workshops on agile development practices, and dealing with legacy systems.
You can link with Wouter Lagerweij on LinkedIn and connect with Wouter Lagerweij on Twitter.
Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.
About Chris O’Dell
Chris works at Monzo helping to build the future of banking. She has spent nearly fourteen years as a backend engineer, primarily with Microsoft technologies, but recently with Go on Monzo’s large microservices platform. She has led teams delivering highly available Web APIs, distributed systems and cloud based services. She has also led teams developing internal build and deployment tooling with the goal of improving the developer’s experience. Chris promotes practices such as Continuous Delivery, including TDD, version control, and Continuous Integration.
You can link with Chris O’Dell on LinkedIn and connect with Chris O’Dell on Twitter.
Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.
About Manuel Pais
Manuel is the co-author of Team Topologies book, and also Co-founder DevOps Lisbon meetup. He works as an independent consultant on organisational design, DevOps, Continuous Delivery.
You can link with Manuel Pais on LinkedIn and connect with Manuel Pais on Twitter.
Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.
About Morten Herman
Morten is a software professional that have been working with Software Product- and Software As A Service development for the last 15 years.
He started his career as a developer with a SCRUM master role and later became a software architect. In 2011 he changed to the team lead role and people manager at eBay in Denmark for four and a half years. In 2012, he heard about Continuous Delivery and DevOps for the first time. And since 2015 he started as an independent consultant, working with clients in relation to implementing various aspects of continuous delivery, devops and microservices in their organisations.
You can link with Morten Herman on LinkedIn.
Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.
About Thierry de Pauw
Thierry is a CI/CD advocate, lean software engineer and occasional speaker.
Currently, he is Engineering Lead at the fintech startup PaxFamilia.
Thierry also founded ThinkingLabs, a consultancy around Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery. In 2019 Thierry organised the CITCON - Continuous Integration and Testing unconference in Ghent, Belgium.
Visit Thierry’s website at Thinking Labs.
You can link with Thierry de Pauw on LinkedIn and connect with Thierry de Pauw on Twitter.
We talk about testing strategy; business benefits of Continuous Delivery; main challenges when adopting Continuous Delivery and resources to help you and your team get started.
Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.
About Dave Farley
Dave Farley is an independent software developer and consultant, and founder and director of Continuous Delivery Ltd.
Dave Farley is a thought-leader in the field of Continuous Delivery, DevOps and Software Development in general. He is co-author of the Jolt-award winning book 'Continuous Delivery' a regular conference speaker and blogger and one of the authors of the Reactive Manifesto.
Dave has been having fun with computers for over 30 years. He started working in large scale distributed systems more than 25 years ago, doing research into the development of loose-coupled, message-based systems - a forerunner of MicroService architectures.
You can link with Dave Farley on LinkedIn, or visit Dave Farley’s website.
Many User Stories end up being written from the “solution” perspective. Reinald found that Product Owners that are willing to define stories from the perspective of the problem to solve are better able to communicate their ideas to the team. But there are other benefits from taking this approach. Listen in to learn about the other benefits of having your Product Owner firmly anchored in the Problem domain as opposed to the solution domain.
When Product Owners have a background in development it is natural that they may concentrate on the details, but the problems really start when the PO starts telling programmers how to write code, and steering development decisions. Listen in to learn how to deal with such Product Owners.
Are you having trouble helping the team working well with their Product Owner? We’ve put together a course to help you work on the collaboration team-product owner. You can find it at: bit.ly/coachyourpo. 18 modules, 8+ hours of modules with tools and techniques that you can use to help teams and PO’s collaborate.
About Reinald Kirchener
Reinald is active in the IT industry for more than 20 years. With agile methods and systemic project management he found his role as coach to inspire individuals and teams to learn, have fun and get better at what they want to do.
You can link with Reinald Kirchener on XING and connect with Reinald Kirchener on Twitter.
Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.
The focus, Reinald suggests, should be on creating outcomes/impact, not output/more stuff. He looks into the role of the work with management for the ultimate success of the Scrum Master work. But that’s not where it stops. We talk about inspiration, reviewing our relationships at work, and practical tips on how to keep notes on our work as Scrum Masters.
An often overlooked aspect of the retrospectives is the atmosphere, and physical space has a direct impact on how team members feel when reflecting on their work. In this episode, Reinald talks about the “walking in pairs” retrospective. A format that requires the whole team to get up and walk outside. Given that walking will activate your body, and your brain, you may actually get more insights from a walking, than a sitting retrospective. Listen in, and give it a try.
About Reinald Kirchener
Reinald is active in the IT industry for more than 20 years. With agile methods and systemic project management he found his role as coach to inspire individuals and teams to learn, have fun and get better at what they want to do.
You can link with Reinald Kirchener on XING and connect with Reinald Kirchener on Twitter.
Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.
This story starts with an organization of about 300 software developers that wanted to “get agile”. The organization started by hiring Scrum Masters to help the teams, and the transition. So far, so good. So Reinald invited all the Scrum Masters in the organization to a kick-off for the Agile transition. What happened next was a surprise, and changed Reinald’s view of change management forever. Listen in to learn what was that surprise, and how you can avoid that problem in your own work.
About Reinald Kirchener
Reinald is active in the IT industry for more than 20 years. With agile methods and systemic project management he found his role as coach to inspire individuals and teams to learn, have fun and get better at what they want to do.
You can link with Reinald Kirchener on XING and connect with Reinald Kirchener on Twitter.
Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.
In this episode, we explore the anti-pattern of the “team of specialists”. This team was formed by many freelancers and sub-contractors that were hired to do a specialist job and were not about to give that up. Listen in to learn what that caused and how Reinald handled the problem.
In The Responsibility Process by Chris Avery, Reinald found a good reason to change his personal attitude towards the things he didn’t like to do.
Reinald also mentions the Rene Brown’s talk about Vulnerability, a talk that helped him change his attitude as a freelance software developer, and stopping to try to be a superhero, a problem that many freelancers face in their desire to help their clients.
About Reinald Kirchener
Reinald is active in the IT industry for more than 20 years. With agile methods and systemic project management he found his role as coach to inspire individuals and teams to learn, have fun and get better at what they want to do.
You can link with Reinald Kirchener on XING and connect with Reinald Kirchener on Twitter.
Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.
After discovering Extreme Programming, Reinald decided that Agile was the way to go and started looking for education and a job as a Scrum Master. He started working as a group lead with a team that “wanted to go in the Scrum direction” instead though, and the surprises just kept coming. There was a hard conflict to solve in that team. Listen in to learn what Reinald learned about conflict management and resolution in software development teams.
About Reinald Kirchener
Reinald is active in the IT industry for more than 20 years. With agile methods and systemic project management he found his role as coach to inspire individuals and teams to learn, have fun and get better at what they want to do.
You can link with Reinald Kirchener on XING and connect with Reinald Kirchener on Twitter.
Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.
From tools to the habits that Product Owners need to drop, in this episode, we explore practices and an anti-pattern that can derail the relationship between PO and team.
When Product Owners are able to convey a message clearly, it is natural that the work with the team improves. However, there are certain tools that help that message stick and be followed by the team. In this segment, we explore 3 tools and 1 practice that can greatly help Product Owners convey their expected results, and be sure that the team understands what that means in practice.
In this segment we refer to User Story Mapping, User Story slicing, Personas and Acceptance Test Driven Development.
When a former team member, a developer, takes on the role of Product Owner, there are many possible anti-patterns to look out for. In this episode, we explore the case of the PO who knew too much, and decided to tell the team not only what to do, but also how to do it. Inevitably, problems followed. Listen in to learn how Dmytro helped that Product Owner.
Are you having trouble helping the team working well with their Product Owner? We’ve put together a course to help you work on the collaboration team-product owner. You can find it at: bit.ly/coachyourpo. 18 modules, 8+ hours of modules with tools and techniques that you can use to help teams and PO’s collaborate.
About Dmytro Balaba
Dmytro calls himself one of the most dedicated Scrum Masters/Agile Coach in the world :) On his right-hand he has a tatoo with golden ratio, Fibonacci sequence. After almost 15 years of work in IT management Dmytro found himself balanced and happy. He’s been a full-time Scrum Master for more than 3 years.
You can link with Dmytro Balaba on LinkedIn and connect with Dmytro Balaba on Twitter.
Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.
When considering success for our work as Scrum Masters, Dmytro suggests we should take 3 different perspectives into account. These perspectives help us get feedback, and also consider the stakeholders we need to work with. Listen in to learn about the 3 key perspectives that Dmytro uses in his own success self-assessment.
In this segment dedicated to Agile Retrospectives we explore why Scrum Masters may want to have multiple formats they are ready to execute on depending on the goals for the retrospective. We also talk about lowering the barrier for retrospective execution with formats that are easy to setup and run.
About Dmytro Balaba
Dmytro calls himself one of the most dedicated Scrum Masters/Agile Coach in the world :) On his right-hand he has a tatoo with golden ratio, Fibonacci sequence. After almost 15 years of work in IT management Dmytro found himself balanced and happy. He’s been a full-time Scrum Master for more than 3 years.
You can link with Dmytro Balaba on LinkedIn and connect with Dmytro Balaba on Twitter.
Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.
This story starts when Dmytro faces the requirement to adopt SAFe. How to help teams learn about SAFe (is training sufficient?) and start working differently. The organizational legacy and inertia become obstacles, but the team of Scrum Masters at this organization was able to help the teams learn how to adopt SAFe. Listen in to learn how.
In this episode, we also refer to Lean Change Management by Jason Little, and 7 Rules for Positive, Productive Change: Micro Shifts, Macro Results by Esther Derby.
About Dmytro Balaba
Dmytro calls himself one of the most dedicated Scrum Masters/Agile Coach in the world :) On his right-hand he has a tatoo with golden ratio, Fibonacci sequence. After almost 15 years of work in IT management Dmytro found himself balanced and happy. He’s been a full-time Scrum Master for more than 3 years.
You can link with Dmytro Balaba on LinkedIn and connect with Dmytro Balaba on Twitter.
Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.
What happens when a team member who joined as a “gift” from management fails to keep the standard expects from each of the team members? If you add to this, the fact that some team members become vocal about the problem, but others don’t even want to touch the subject, you have all the ingredients you need for massive conflict. What can a Scrum Master do? Listen in to learn how Dmytro, the Scrum Master helped the team get out of this negative spiral.
Dmytro’s recommendation is the book by Gene Kim, Jez humble and Nicole Forsgren, Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations.
In Accelerate, Dmytro found many inspirational stories and anecdotes that helps him improve the organization and the teams he works with.
Dmytro also recommends Scrum, the art of doing twice the work in half the time by Sutherland. In this book he highlights the many real-life examples.
Additionally, Dmytro refers to The DevOps Handbook by Gene Kim, a book he describes as filled with technical practices that teams can apply.
About Dmytro Balaba
Dmytro calls himself one of the most dedicated Scrum Masters/Agile Coach in the world :) On his right-hand he has a tatoo with golden ratio, Fibonacci sequence. After almost 15 years of work in IT management Dmytro found himself balanced and happy. He’s been a full-time Scrum Master for more than 3 years.
You can link with Dmytro Balaba on LinkedIn and connect with Dmytro Balaba on Twitter.
Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.
Sometimes we need to work with teams that have lost hope. The team might be cynical about future improvements and look at Agile or Scrum skeptically. This was what Dmytro had to face in his team. In this episode, we talk about how to work with a skeptical team, and get them engaged in improving their work. This is a critical lesson for all Scrum Masters, don’t miss it!
About Dmytro Balaba
Dmytro calls himself one of the most dedicated Scrum Masters/Agile Coach in the world :) On his right-hand he has a tatoo with golden ratio, Fibonacci sequence. After almost 15 years of work in IT management Dmytro found himself balanced and happy. He’s been a full-time Scrum Master for more than 3 years.
You can link with Dmytro Balaba on LinkedIn and connect with Dmytro Balaba on Twitter.
There are few anti-patterns as problematic as the PO that shames the team. Here’s what Andy has learned about that, and also an example of a PO that was able to communicate the Vision clearly and was then available for the team.
A Product Owner that is able to communicate their Vision, and is then available for the Scrum team when they have questions might be one of the best Product Owners out there. In this segment, we talk about how those simple behaviors can help a Scrum team succeed.
When it comes to anti-patterns, there are few that could have such devastating effect as this one. A Product Owner that does not communicate clearly, and then shames the team for not delivering what was not communicated. What is a Scrum Master to do in these cases? Listen in as we explore this anti-pattern with Andy.
Are you having trouble helping the team working well with their Product Owner? We’ve put together a course to help you work on the collaboration team-product owner. You can find it at: bit.ly/coachyourpo. 18 modules, 8+ hours of modules with tools and techniques that you can use to help teams and PO’s collaborate.
About Andy Grosman
Andy has spent the past decade in various industries from Fortune 500 to small and mid-sized companies including Healthcare, Finance, Training and has a background in sales/marketing. He currently leads a team of Scrum Masters in the digital space as well as coaches teams. He has spoken at regional conferences and Agile Meetups on team-building for Distributed teams, how to blend Agile and personal productivity strategies, and how to influence without Authority. He used to live by the Waterfall but got bit by the Agile bug and now is spreading the Agile Mindset wherever he goes.
You can link with Andy Grosman on LinkedIn and connect with Andy Grosman on Twitter.
Are you passionate? What is preventing you from finding that motivation and intensity in your work. This is one of the questions that Andy asks us to consider when reviewing our work, and assessing our contribute to the Scrum team.
In this segment, we also talk about the importance of learning how to get things moving, even when we lack the authority.
Sometimes, referring to a familiar experience can help teams find improvement opportunities and generate ideas they would otherwise ignore. In this Agile Retrospective format, Andy shares how a familiar story (A Christmas Carol) can help teams find improvement opportunities and generate improvement ideas
About Andy Grosman
Andy has spent the past decade in various industries from Fortune 500 to small and mid-sized companies including Healthcare, Finance, Training and has a background in sales/marketing. He currently leads a team of Scrum Masters in the digital space as well as coaches teams. He has spoken at regional conferences and Agile Meetups on team-building for Distributed teams, how to blend Agile and personal productivity strategies, and how to influence without Authority. He used to live by the Waterfall but got bit by the Agile bug and now is spreading the Agile Mindset wherever he goes.
You can link with Andy Grosman on LinkedIn and connect with Andy Grosman on Twitter.
Even when Scrum Masters need to work with teams through a change process, they can be impeded by the organizational structures. In this episode, we talk about the Scrum Master who was part of a separate department, but needed to help the team go through a difficult change. The key? 4 steps that Andy shares with us and get us started.
About Andy Grosman
Andy has spent the past decade in various industries from Fortune 500 to small and mid-sized companies including Healthcare, Finance, Training and has a background in sales/marketing. He currently leads a team of Scrum Masters in the digital space as well as coaches teams. He has spoken at regional conferences and Agile Meetups on team-building for Distributed teams, how to blend Agile and personal productivity strategies, and how to influence without Authority. He used to live by the Waterfall but got bit by the Agile bug and now is spreading the Agile Mindset wherever he goes.
You can link with Andy Grosman on LinkedIn and connect with Andy Grosman on Twitter.
When things go wrong, it is critical to help the team prepare how the discuss and recover from bad news. The worst that can happen is when teams (and Scrum Masters) just drop “the bomb” of bad news and put the responsibility on others. In this episode, we talk about how to prepare those tough conversations.
In Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck, Andy found a new perspective on self-development and team development.
In this segment, we also mention Perfect Time-Based Productivity: How to rescue your peace of mind as time demands increase by Francis Wade, a book that allowed Andy to design his own time-management system, a must-have tool for all Scrum Masters.
About Andy Grosman
Andy has spent the past decade in various industries from Fortune 500 to small and mid-sized companies including Healthcare, Finance, Training and has a background in sales/marketing. He currently leads a team of Scrum Masters in the digital space as well as coaches teams. He has spoken at regional conferences and Agile Meetups on team-building for Distributed teams, how to blend Agile and personal productivity strategies, and how to influence without Authority. He used to live by the Waterfall but got bit by the Agile bug and now is spreading the Agile Mindset wherever he goes.
You can link with Andy Grosman on LinkedIn and connect with Andy Grosman on Twitter.
Sometimes, in our role as Scrum Master we find teams that are not able to adopt Agile right away. The worst that could happen would be for us to send those teams to “Agile detention”. In this episode, we explore what Scrum Masters can do when their teams are just starting their Agile adoption journey, in organizations where Agile is not yet the standard approach to work.
About Andy Grosman
Andy has spent the past decade in various industries from Fortune 500 to small and mid-sized companies including Healthcare, Finance, Training and has a background in sales/marketing. He currently leads a team of Scrum Masters in the digital space as well as coaches teams. He has spoken at regional conferences and Agile Meetups on team-building for Distributed teams, how to blend Agile and personal productivity strategies, and how to influence without Authority. He used to live by the Waterfall but got bit by the Agile bug and now is spreading the Agile Mindset wherever he goes.
You can link with Andy Grosman on LinkedIn and connect with Andy Grosman on Twitter.
Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.
From the user-centric PO to the over-planner PO that failed to collaborate with the team, this episode covers plenty of aspects to keep an eye on when collaborating with your Product Owner.
Great Product Owners have a clear Vision for the product. But there’s a lot more to a great PO than the Vision. In this segment, we talk about the PO who was able to learn from quick releases, and validate their own assumptions about what value might mean for the end customer. Including, finding opportunities to help customers who were looking for a competitor product!
Usually, a Product Owner that has a clear set of items they want the team to work on would be on the “great product owner” category. But not in this case. Listen in to learn how a PO was good at planning but then failed at the most important thing: team collaboration.
In this segment, we talk about the User Story Mapping workshop facilitator guide by Vasco Duarte. Check it out if you want to know how to prepare, and host a great User Story mapping workshop.
Are you having trouble helping the team working well with their Product Owner? We’ve put together a course to help you work on the collaboration team-product owner. You can find it at: bit.ly/coachyourpo. 18 modules, 8+ hours of modules with tools and techniques that you can use to help teams and PO’s collaborate.
About Eddy Bruin
For many years, Eddy has been using serious games and learning metaphors to help teams and organizations move forward. He is an Agile and Test Coach with the mission to help teams deliver software people actually want to use while also enjoying their work. He helps teams to enable feedback loops continuously and likes to discuss all agile and test topics over a special beer. He loves to go to (un)conferences on serious games (for example Play14, Play4Agile), and also on Agile and Testing.
You can link with Eddy Bruin on LinkedIn and connect with Eddy Bruin on Twitter.