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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: July, 2020
Jul 31, 2020

Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.

 

Feeling ownership of the product, and performing like an owner is one that really differentiates great PO’s from the rest. We also discuss what happens when the PO takes their role as a part-time job

The Great Product Owner: The impact of feeling the ownership of the Product

Although the clue is in the name, the fact is that many Product Owners miss the impact of that ownership perspective on the role. In this segment, we discuss what Ownership means for the PO role and the impact that it can have in the team when the PO expresses that feeling of ownership.

The Bad Product Owner: The part-time Product Owner

The PO role is not a part-time role. However, some people tend to think that it is possible to perform that role successfully while also being a leader of a department or organization. In this segment, we discuss the anti-patterns that emerge when the PO role is taken as a part-time job. We also discuss some of the ways in which the Scrum Master can help the PO realize the impact they have on the team when they are not available full-time.

 

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 Anubhuti Agarwal

Anu is a software tester turned Scrum master. She worked as Software QA in India for 6 years and then moved to Berlin to complete her Masters in Business Administration. She has been working as a Scrum Master for 3 years in an agency and has learned, first hand, the challenges of working with Agile in an agency.

You can link with Anubhuti Agarwal on LinkedIn.

Jul 30, 2020

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 distinguishes a successful Scrum Master from a not so successful one? In this segment, we explore the questions that Anu asks as well as the behaviors she evaluates to assess her progress in the Scrum Master role.

Featured Retrospective of the Week: Facilitating product conversations

In this segment, Anu shares her tips on how to select the right format for the retrospective based on what has happened to the team during the Sprint. We talk about why certain formats work better and discuss the core role of the Scrum Master when it comes to facilitating a retrospective: facilitate productive conversations.

 

Do you wish you had decades of experience? Learn from the Best Scrum Masters In The World, Today! The Tips from the Trenches - Scrum Master edition audiobook includes hours of audio interviews with SM’s that have decades of experiences: from Mike Cohn to Linda Rising, Christopher Avery, and many more. Super-experienced Scrum Masters share their hard-earned lessons with you. Learn those today, make your teams awesome! 

 

About Anubhuti Agarwal

Anu is a software tester turned Scrum master. She worked as Software QA in India for 6 years and then moved to Berlin to complete her Masters in Business Administration. She has been working as a Scrum Master for 3 years in an agency and has learned, first hand, the challenges of working with Agile in an agency.

You can link with Anubhuti Agarwal on LinkedIn.

Jul 29, 2020

Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.

 

Remote teams often deal with timezone problems. In this episode, we explore the story of a distributed team that needed to change their way of working to accommodate the different timezones. We discuss some of the techniques you can use to help your distributed team make decisions and adapt their way of working to the reality of distributed work, and wildly different timezones.

 

About Anubhuti Agarwal

Anu is a software tester turned Scrum master. She worked as Software QA in India for 6 years and then moved to Berlin to complete her Masters in Business Administration. She has been working as a Scrum Master for 3 years in an agency and has learned, first hand, the challenges of working with Agile in an agency.

You can link with Anubhuti Agarwal on LinkedIn.

Jul 28, 2020

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, when team members leave the team, the ones that stay behind have a lot to deal with. The uncertainty caused by team members that leave can lead to negative anti-patterns. In this episode, we discuss some of the actions Scrum Masters can take to take care of the team, even when some of the team members are leaving.

Featured Book of the Week: Crucial Conversations by Patterson et al.

In Crucial Conversations Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High by Patterson et al., Anu found a book about a critical skill set for Scrum Masters. Anu also shares a concrete example of how she applied the learnings from that book in a tough situation.

 

About Anubhuti Agarwal

Anu is a software tester turned Scrum master. She worked as Software QA in India for 6 years and then moved to Berlin to complete her Masters in Business Administration. She has been working as a Scrum Master for 3 years in an agency and has learned, first hand, the challenges of working with Agile in an agency.

You can link with Anubhuti Agarwal on LinkedIn.

Jul 27, 2020

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 we enter a new organization as consultants or employees, how do we get a new team started? In this episode, we explore the difficult task of the Scrum Master as a team builder and catalyst. 

 

About Anubhuti Agarwal

Anu is a software tester turned Scrum master. She worked as Software QA in India for 6 years and then moved to Berlin to complete her Masters in Business Administration. She has been working as a Scrum Master for 3 years in an agency and has learned, first hand, the challenges of working with Agile in an agency.

You can link with Anubhuti Agarwal on LinkedIn.

Jul 24, 2020

Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.

Great Product Owners can tell stories, and motivate the team. They focus on the Vision and the “why” questions. In contrast, the anti-pattern we discuss in this episode is that of the command and control PO, who wants to know who’s working on what, and how they are doing it.

The Great Product Owner: The Great Storyteller

Thomas shares with us what a great storyteller Product Owner looks like. We discuss the impact of storytelling, and the need for the PO to be constantly learning so they can bring the right information and answer the team’s questions.

The Bad Product Owner: Coaching the PO together with the Scrum team

What should a PO focus on? In this segment, we discuss how the command-and-control PO’s focus on the wrong topics, and miss the most important aspects of their work. We also discuss how to encourage the team members to help coach the PO towards the most effective behaviors and actions.

 

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 Thomas Kofoed

Passionate Agile Coach / Scrum Master. Thomas focuses on engaging people while helping organizations and teams evolve their products guided by the feedback from their customers/users. 

Thomas switches between Facilitation Coaching and Teaching (sometimes Mentoring). He's open about his purpose and that he strives to get his teams to where they don't need him but might miss him :-) 

You can link with Thomas Kofoed on LinkedIn.

Jul 23, 2020

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 Scrum Masters reach a successful state with the team, they will feel confident to skip a few events with the team. That’s a good way to help the team take more ownership of the events, and eventually take over. 

Thomas shares is recipe to “step back” from the work with the team, and let them take over.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Structuring an adaptable retrospective

Thomas asks us to consider the retrospective as an adaptable practice which is flexible to the needs of the team at a certain time. He’s asking us to have a structured approach (a “box”) to which we bring many different exercises and activities to help the team reach their breakthroughs. 

In this segment, we refer to the Toyota Kata format.

 

About Thomas Kofoed

Passionate Agile Coach / Scrum Master. Thomas focuses on engaging people while helping organizations and teams evolve their products guided by the feedback from their customers/users. 

Thomas switches between Facilitation Coaching and Teaching (sometimes Mentoring). He's open about his purpose and that he strives to get his teams to where they don't need him but might miss him :-) 

You can link with Thomas Kofoed on LinkedIn.

Jul 22, 2020

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 a Scrum Master gets hired or called into a team there might be mixed expectations between managers, team, and yourself, the Scrum Master. How can we prepare for that possible problem? 

In this episode, we discuss the setting of expectations and the early agreements we need to establish when starting to work with a new team.

 

About Thomas Kofoed

Passionate Agile Coach / Scrum Master. Thomas focuses on engaging people while helping organizations and teams evolve their products guided by the feedback from their customers/users. 

Thomas switches between Facilitation Coaching and Teaching (sometimes Mentoring). He's open about his purpose and that he strives to get his teams to where they don't need him but might miss him :-) 

You can link with Thomas Kofoed on LinkedIn.

Jul 21, 2020

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 we start out as a Scrum Master we might not yet be able to detect the anti-patterns that may develop in teams. That lack of experience can turn against us. One anti-pattern that emerges over and over again is that of the “hero”. In this episode, we explore what leads people to assume the “hero” role and how that negatively affects the team. 

In this episode, we refer to the graphic novel series Asterix and Obelix

Featured Book of the Week: Scrum Mastery by Geoff Watts

In Scrum Mastery: From Good To Great Servant-Leadership by Geoff Watts, found many good stories and examples that make a difference between “good enough”, and “really great” Scrum Masters. The book does this via many short stories that illustrate the differences. 

In this segment, we also refer to The Scrum Guide as well as Gunther’s Scrum - A Pocket Guide. 

Both Geoff Watts and Gunther Verheyen have been previous guests on the podcast. 

 

About Thomas Kofoed

Passionate Agile Coach / Scrum Master. Thomas focuses on engaging people while helping organizations and teams evolve their products guided by the feedback from their customers/users. 

Thomas switches between Facilitation Coaching and Teaching (sometimes Mentoring). He's open about his purpose and that he strives to get his teams to where they don't need him but might miss him :-) 

You can link with Thomas Kofoed on LinkedIn

Jul 20, 2020

Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.

Thomas, a game 3d artist turned Scrum Master, got started in his journey thanks to a mentor who was a Scrum Master in his team. As he started his own journey he fell into the trap of focusing only on questions, which was important, but led teams to dwell on the problem for too long. Invariably the retrospectives turned into a complain fest, and there was little time to focus on solutions. It was then that he learned about “problem-focused” cultures and what to do about it. Listen in to learn how Thomas got his teams from problem-centric to solution-centric. 

In this episode, we talk about the book Solution-Focussed Coaching: A Manager's Guide to Getting the Best from People by Grant and Greene.

 

About Thomas Kofoed

Passionate Agile Coach / Scrum Master. Thomas focuses on engaging people while helping organizations and teams evolve their products guided by the feedback from their customers/users. 

Thomas switches between Facilitation Coaching and Teaching (sometimes Mentoring). He's open about his purpose and that he strives to get his teams to where they don't need him but might miss him :-) 

Jul 18, 2020

This is part 1 of a multi-part Retrospectives Masterclass with David Horowitz, the CEO of Retrium. A new episode of the Agile Retrospectives Masterclass will be published here every month.

Learn more about Better Retrospectives with David Horowitz by accessing the FREE Retrospective’s Academy by Retrium

 

About David Horowitz

David Horowitz is the CEO of Retrium, a platform for agile retrospectives that has powered over 100,000 retrospectives from thousands of companies across the world.

Prior to co-founding Retrium, David spent a decade at The World Bank as an engineer turned Agile coach.

He has degrees in Computer Science and Economics from The University of Maryland and a Master’s Degree in Technology Management from The Wharton School of Business.

Learn more about Better Retrospectives with David Horowitz by accessing the FREE Retrospective’s Academy by Retrium

You can link with David Horowitz on LinkedIn and connect with David Horowitz on Twitter

Jul 17, 2020

Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.

Seniority is not always a good asset for a Product Owner, but attitude and mindset can be. In this episode we explore the kind of attitude and mindset that help Product Owners succeed.

The Great Product Owner: How to succeed as a Junior Product Owner

When a junior PO joined the team Denniz was working with, the expectation was that there would be certain challenges ahead. Turns out, being a junior was a great advantage for this Product Owner because of the attitude and the mindset he brought with him. Listen in to learn about some of the key attributes needed to succeed as a Product Owner when just starting to learn the role.

The Bad Product Owner: The Project “Owner” anti-pattern

When Product Owners come to the teams from a Project Manager role, they usually bring a specific mindset that has served them well in that previous role. However, those same patterns that worked well in a project management paradigm, don’t work so well when the role is the Product Owner role. In this segment, we discuss some of the anti-patterns that emerge when Project Managers join a Scrum team as a 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 Denniz Dönmez

Denniz has both huge academic and practical experience. He studied agile teams for his PhD at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich) before becoming a Scrum Master and freelance consultant in 2016. Denniz believes the key to becoming more agile is to establish what he calls “enabling structures.”

You can link with Denniz Dönmez on LinkedIn and connect with Denniz Dönmez on Twitter.

Jul 16, 2020

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 talk about the success of a Scrum Master at three different levels, the individual, the team, and the organization. We explore some of the metrics that can be used at each of those levels to assess and reflect on the success of the Scrum Master role.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Keep retrospective actions top of mind

One of the aspects that makes retrospectives fail sometimes, is that the teams don’t focus on acting on the improvement ideas they’ve already collected. In this segment, we talk about how to help teams follow-up and act on the improvement ideas that surface in the retrospectives.

 

About Denniz Dönmez

Denniz has both huge academic and practical experience. He studied agile teams for his PhD at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich) before becoming a Scrum Master and freelance consultant in 2016. Denniz believes the key to becoming more agile is to establish what he calls “enabling structures.”

You can link with Denniz Dönmez on LinkedIn and connect with Denniz Dönmez on Twitter.

Jul 15, 2020

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 company, Denniz supported a DevOps transformation. As time went by, it was clear that management had to start taking the coaching role that Denniz had taken until then. While working through this change, Denniz learned some important lessons about change, and how to be able to step back from the work, so that he could be a facilitator. 

In this episode, we refer to the One-team, One-goal article on Software Development Today.

 

About Denniz Dönmez

Denniz has both huge academic and practical experience. He studied agile teams for his PhD at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich) before becoming a Scrum Master and freelance consultant in 2016. Denniz believes the key to becoming more agile is to establish what he calls “enabling structures.”

You can link with Denniz Dönmez on LinkedIn and connect with Denniz Dönmez on Twitter.

Jul 14, 2020

Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.

Deadlines cause all kinds of side effects in team’s behavior. In this story, Denniz saw that the deadline pressure was increasing, and the teams were starting to show signs of stress. However, the teams were still trying to “power through” those deadlines, and they started to skip things. As it usually happens, at some point they started to skip important things. Listen in to learn how Denniz helped the team step back from that self-destructive behavior.

Featured Book of the Week: The Skilled Facilitator by Roger Schwarz

In The Skilled Facilitator by Roger Schwarz, Denniz found something that was in stark contrast with the command and control mindset. The book helped him understand his role as a facilitator, create approaches that favored collaboration and mutual learning, collaborative games, and more. All of it with backing from decades of research. As Scrum Masters, being a facilitator is perhaps the most important role we play, and this book helped Denniz learn a lot about what that role means in practice.

Denniz shares a list of the most important books for him at his site: enablingstructures.com/books

 

About Denniz Dönmez

Denniz has both huge academic and practical experience. He studied agile teams for his PhD at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich) before becoming a Scrum Master and freelance consultant in 2016. Denniz believes the key to becoming more agile is to establish what he calls “enabling structures.”

You can link with Denniz Dönmez on LinkedIn and connect with Denniz Dönmez on Twitter.

Jul 13, 2020

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 Denniz joined this team, he observed, that even if the Product Owner was close to the customer, the team had little to no contact with the users of the product. He worked on preparing a workshop that had a hidden agenda: get the developers to understand the users. However, that didn’t turn out so well, and it taught Denniz an important lesson. Listen in to learn how to not organize a workshop with users, and what Denniz learned from that failure that helped him be a better Scrum Master. 

 

About Denniz Dönmez

Denniz has both huge academic and practical experience. He studied agile teams for his PhD at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich) before becoming a Scrum Master and freelance consultant in 2016. Denniz believes the key to becoming more agile is to establish what he calls “enabling structures.”

You can link with Denniz Dönmez on LinkedIn and connect with Denniz Dönmez on Twitter.

Jul 10, 2020

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 talk 4 PO patterns, and discuss several techniques on how to recover from the anti-patterns we discuss.

The Great Product Owner: Difficult conversations as a catalyst for a better story and product understanding 

Good PO’s are there for the team, and answer their questions. However, great PO’s are able to have difficult conversations that help clarify the reasons for the Stories and motivate the team. Sometimes, those hard conversations lead to changes in the product. And that’s a good thing! For both teams, and PO!

In this segment, we talk about a tip: have the PO define “team hours”, when they sit with the team and answer their questions.

The Bad Product Owner: The large backlog as a PO anti-pattern

When the PO is not able to handle the Product Backlog anymore, the team will suffer. In this segment, we talk about a PO that had trouble keeping up with the Backlog as it was large, unwieldy, and had no structure. We discuss how the team helped the PO clear the backlog, and what tools and techniques they used to keep the backlog short and under control. 

Another anti-pattern we discuss is the PO who was too much into the details and lost the big picture. When that happens, the PO can’t help the team understand the “why”, and removes the motivation that comes from understanding the purpose of the work. We discuss how the PO can step back and help the team regain their motivation and convey a clearer picture of the reasons for the product changes.

 

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 Samantha Menzynski and Brian Ziebart

Samantha Menzynski has spent her entire career in software. Starting in support and account management, moving to customer support management, and with Penta's transformation to Scrum becoming Scrum Master for the Core product team.

You can link with Samantha Menzynski on LinkedIn

 

Brian Ziebart started his career in software as a developer but found himself wanting to move towards coaching and developing people rather than product development.  When Penta's Scrum transformation started in August 2019, he jumped at the opportunity to work more with people while still staying involved with development.

You can link with Brian Ziebart on LinkedIn

You can read more about Samantha’s and Brian’s work and the Agile transformation they were part of in this Scrum.org blog post.

Jul 9, 2020

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 relationship between the PO and the Scrum Master is one of the most important and impactful relationships to develop. In this episode, we talk about how the right approach from the PO (with the Scrum Master’s help), can help elevate the team to a new level. 

Another aspect of success for Scrum Masters is the team’s ability to handle conflict. In this episode, we talk about what is “constructive conflict”, and why that’s an important aspect of the Scrum Master’s success.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Expert tip for Remote Retrospectives

When facilitating remote retrospectives, the impact of overbearing team members is even bigger. In this episode, we talk about how to use the break-out rooms in your conference system as a way to ensure that everyone of the team has a say. 

The Meta-Retrospective is a moment when we discuss the values of the Agile manifesto and reflect on our journey as an Agile team. In this episode, we talk about the meta-retrospective, and why that might be an important tool to add to your toolbox.

 

About Samantha Menzynski and Brian Ziebart

Samantha Menzynski has spent her entire career in software. Starting in support and account management, moving to customer support management, and with Penta's transformation to Scrum becoming Scrum Master for the Core product team.

You can link with Samantha Menzynski on LinkedIn

 

Brian Ziebart started his career in software as a developer but found himself wanting to move towards coaching and developing people rather than product development.  When Penta's Scrum transformation started in August 2019, he jumped at the opportunity to work more with people while still staying involved with development.

You can link with Brian Ziebart on LinkedIn

You can read more about Samantha’s and Brian’s work and the Agile transformation they were part of in this Scrum.org blog post.

Jul 8, 2020

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 transformation, there was a moment that may have changed the course of events. In this moment, the organization allowed the teams to self-select. Samantha and Brian share that moment, what they did, and how they prepared for a high-risk, but a transformative moment: the self-selection workshop.

 

About Samantha Menzynski and Brian Ziebart

Samantha Menzynski has spent her entire career in software. Starting in support and account management, moving to customer support management, and with Penta's transformation to Scrum becoming Scrum Master for the Core product team.

You can link with Samantha Menzynski on LinkedIn

 

Brian Ziebart started his career in software as a developer but found himself wanting to move towards coaching and developing people rather than product development.  When Penta's Scrum transformation started in August 2019, he jumped at the opportunity to work more with people while still staying involved with development.

You can link with Brian Ziebart on LinkedIn

You can read more about Samantha’s and Brian’s work and the Agile transformation they were part of in this Scrum.org blog post.

Jul 7, 2020

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 a team started to have “backchannel” conversations and excluding some team members from those conversations, it was clear that something was going on that was not allowed to be discussed in the wider team. Samantha and Brian then focused on helping the team share what was going on in a safe way. Listen in to learn about what was holding the team back from discussing the important topics. 

Featured Book of the Week: Ideal Team Player by Lencioni and Difficult Conversations by Stone et al.

In Ideal Team Player by Lencioni Samantha found a great reference for a team that had to go through a recruiting process. The book helped the team reflect and choose the right candidate, by working together to define what they were looking for in a candidate beyond the technical skills. 

In this segment, we also refer to Difficult Conversations by Stone et al, a book that discusses conversation techniques to help move from emotion to productive problem solving.

 

About Samantha Menzynski and Brian Ziebart

Samantha Menzynski has spent her entire career in software. Starting in support and account management, moving to customer support management, and with Penta's transformation to Scrum becoming Scrum Master for the Core product team.

You can link with Samantha Menzynski on LinkedIn

 

Brian Ziebart started his career in software as a developer, but found himself wanting to move towards coaching and developing people rather than product development.  When Penta's Scrum transformation started in August 2019, he jumped at the opportunity to work more with people while still staying involved with development.

You can link with Brian Ziebart on LinkedIn

You can read more about Samantha’s and Brian’s work and the Agile transformation they were part of in this Scrum.org blog post.

Jul 6, 2020

Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.

 

Brian’s story is enlightening regarding the value of the Definition of Done. A team that had set the DoD bar too high, and chose to not change the DoD. That led to an anti-pattern that had to be untangled by the Scrum Master. 

Samantha shares the story of a Scrum Master that had the tendency to lead all the conversations and how she was able to recover from that pattern with a technique she calls “the pregnant pause”. 

 

About Samantha Menzynski and Brian Ziebart

Samantha Menzynski has spent her entire career in software. Starting in support and account management, moving to customer support management, and with Penta's transformation to Scrum becoming Scrum Master for the Core product team.

You can link with Samantha Menzynski on LinkedIn

 

Brian Ziebart started his career in software as a developer, but found himself wanting to move towards coaching and developing people rather than product development.  When Penta's Scrum transformation started in August 2019, he jumped at the opportunity to work more with people while still staying involved with development.

You can link with Brian Ziebart on LinkedIn

You can read more about Samantha’s and Brian’s work and the Agile transformation they were part of in this Scrum.org blog post.

Jul 4, 2020

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 Digital Product School

DPS is an accelerated product development program in Munich that helps students from University and employees in partner companies experience hands-on what it is to work in a startup. In 3 months they go from idea to a product, and some ideas are brought back to the companies for further development. 

About the DPS team

Michi / Michael Stockerl is director of DPS and has worked as a software engineer with several teams in different setups. Before that, he gathered experience in smaller Startups in Munich and Germany’s biggest Q&A platform.

Steffen is a trained journalist, who slipped into product management through Content Management and e-commerce. He worked with Amazon and Haymarket media, did several hundred user interviews and tests, witnessed dozens of teams at DPS, a Digital Product School of the Technical University of Munich in Germany.

Bela is a Software Engineer at DPS. She helps teams with various software and hardware engineering tasks. She was previously also a participant at DPS.

Jul 3, 2020

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 Product Owner role is not a simple one, so it is critical we help them understand the complete spectrum of topics the PO should be aware of. Even when the PO does not take care of all of those topics, they are critical in enabling the team by thinking about process, business and collaboration.

The Great Product Owner: The full-stack Product Owner

Product Owners that are able to manage their time to be present when the team needs them are sure to have a great contribution, but PO’s really excel when they are able to collaborate well with the team, and understand that reducing WIP, running-tested-software, and good communication with stakeholders are critical aspects of their role.

The Bad Product Owner: The PO that didn’t care about the details

When a Product Owner fails to discuss the details with the team, that leads to many possible misunderstandings and a deteriorating relationship between team and PO. In this segment, we talk about how to help PO’s go through the details enough so that the team feels confident they understand the story and are able to implement their vision.



[IMAGE HERE]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 Jeffrey Koors

Jeff started his studies and career as a fine artist and has gone on to use his creative thinking and vision to help many organizations find ways to design systems, solve problems and embrace Agile. Jeff is also the co-founder and host of Coaching Agile Journeys.

You can link with Jeffrey Koors on LinkedIn and connect with Jeffrey Koors on Twitter.

Jul 2, 2020

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 question that Jeffrey asks when reflecting on this work is “how may I be able help others?” That question drives the reflection on how to achieve success as a Scrum Master as it helps Jeffrey focus on the specific needs and support each team member may need. Not all team members struggle with the same problems.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: The Sphere of Influence

Jeffrey likes to follow the 5 stage process that Diana Larsen and Esther Derby write about in the book Agile Retrospectives, however, he focuses on bringing in different exercises for each of the stages in the process. 

In this segment, we also talk about how to find the issue to work on as a team and discuss how the concept of “sphere of influence” helps teams find the right topic to address.

 

About Jeffrey Koors

Jeff started his studies and career as a fine artist and has gone on to use his creative thinking and vision to help many organizations find ways to design systems, solve problems and embrace Agile. Jeff is also the co-founder and host of Coaching Agile Journeys.

You can link with Jeffrey Koors on LinkedIn and connect with Jeffrey Koors on Twitter.

Jul 1, 2020

Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.

Even when we try to help the teams we serve, we often encounter problems that the team itself can’t solve. When that happens, what’s a Scrum Master to do? In this episode, we explore what Scrum Masters can do when the issues plaguing the team extend beyond the team’s boundaries.

 

About Jeffrey Koors

Jeff started his studies and career as a fine artist and has gone on to use his creative thinking and vision to help many organizations find ways to design systems, solve problems and embrace Agile. Jeff is also the co-founder and host of Coaching Agile Journeys.

You can link with Jeffrey Koors on LinkedIn and connect with Jeffrey Koors on Twitter.

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