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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: October, 2020
Oct 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.

The personality traits that help PO’s succeed and the need for context in the PO role are the topics of this episode.

The Great Product Owner: Humor and Vision drive motivation in the Scrum team

Chris shares the story of a Product Owner that was a native storyteller. He contrasts that with the anti-pattern he calls “JIRA ticket machine”. This Product Owner was able to bring Vision and humor to the interactions with the team. But most importantly was able to easily and clearly convey the “why” for the work the team was doing.

The Bad Product Owner: Helping PO’s even when the context is difficult

When the Product Owner is absent, we face many problems as a Scrum team. Questions that aren’t answered, details that are missed, but most importantly, we lose the quick feedback cycle that the Product Owner role is supposed to provide. In this segment, we talk about the reasons why some PO’s are absent, and how we - as Scrum Masters - can help the PO’s by understanding their context, and their needs.

 

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 Chris Stone

Chris is The Virtual Agile coach, a #PeopleFirst champion, and an Agile Evangelist / Agile Transformation Lead / Scrum Master possessing over 8 years of experience within the IT industry.

You can link with Chris Stone on LinkedIn.

Oct 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.

When the Scrum Master gets help, the team benefits. Chris shares his story, and how getting a coach for himself helped him improve as a Scrum Master and improve his work with the teams he was serving.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: The Hero’s Journey Retrospective

This retrospective format needs you to start preparing the scene before the retrospective starts. Chris explains how this format can help you get ready (collect data), and the team motivated at the same time. After all, retrospectives can be fun too!

 

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 Chris Stone

Chris is The Virtual Agile coach, a #PeopleFirst champion, and an Agile Evangelist / Agile Transformation Lead / Scrum Master possessing over 8 years of experience within the IT industry.

You can link with Chris Stone on LinkedIn.

Oct 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.

This is the story of a merger between an older, bigger company and a startup. The scene was set for conflict, as these companies had very different cultures and different structures, and that was just the start of the troubles that Chris and the team had to face. The older, more established company, naturally wanted the startup to start following their process, but how they went about it, made things even worse. In this episode, we talk about how we can introduce a process to a new team (or teams) in a way that gains commitment, and engagement. 

 

About Chris Stone

Chris is The Virtual Agile coach, a #PeopleFirst champion, and an Agile Evangelist / Agile Transformation Lead / Scrum Master possessing over 8 years of experience within the IT industry.

You can link with Chris Stone on LinkedIn.

Oct 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.

This team was asked to work in an Agile way. So far, so good. However, they then were given “waterfall deadlines” (listen in to learn what those are). The team started to drift. Stopped doing retrospectives, looked at the stand-up as a status reporting meeting, and just plowed through to try and meet those deadlines. What happened next wasn’t pretty. Listen to the story of this team, and learn what Chris would have done differently, had he needed to face that team again.

Featured Book of the Week: Turn the Ship Around by David Marquet

In Turn the Ship around by David Marquet, Chris read about a different leadership model, the “leader-leader” model that David Marquet illustrates with a real-life story of how he turned the Santa Fe submarine, from the last in the ranks of the US Navy to number #1 in 12 months. You can listen to David Marquet describe the book in this episode.

In this segment, we also refer to Drive, by Dan Pink

 

About Chris Stone

Chris is The Virtual Agile coach, a #PeopleFirst champion, and an Agile Evangelist / Agile Transformation Lead / Scrum Master possessing over 8 years of experience within the IT industry.

You can link with Chris Stone on LinkedIn.

Oct 26, 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 mistakes happen, the natural tendency in many organizations is to find the ones “to blame”. However, that’s not how you create a high-performing culture. Understanding this, helps us work as Scrum Masters to direct people’s energy and attention to the next step: “how do we make sure similar problems don’t happen, what change do we need?” In this episode, Chris shares one story where an organization was able to go beyond the blame game and create a culture of achievement that helped everyone feel supported and accountable. Listen in to learn what tools helped create that culture.

 

About Chris Stone

Chris is The Virtual Agile coach, a #PeopleFirst champion, and an Agile Evangelist / Agile Transformation Lead / Scrum Master possessing over 8 years of experience within the IT industry.

You can link with Chris Stone on LinkedIn.

Oct 24, 2020

This is part 3 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: http://bit.ly/retromasterclass

 

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: http://bit.ly/retromasterclass

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

Oct 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.

Learning to be a Product Owner is not easy. In this episode, we talk about two types of learning stances by newly minted Product Owners.

The Great Product Owner: The Learning Product Owner can be a huge boost to your team!

When Product Owners take on the role, they probably have a very steep learning curve to climb. It’s not only the product they must immerse themselves in, they must also learn to work with a new team, a new set of stakeholders, and the hard job of being a Product Owner itself. In this segment, we talk labout a PO that was ready for that challenge and focused on learning while taking on the role. The Learning Product Owner can be a huge boost to your team!

The Bad Product Owner: From Scrum Team Member to Product Owner, a difficult transition

When a team member takes on the PO role, they might think they know the product well enough (and they probably do), but knowing the product is only one aspect of the Product Owner role. The big challenge is that the person taking on the role is now in a different position, and what worked before while being a team member, may no longer work! In this segment, we talk about the challenges of being a PO after being a team member. 

 

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 Adrienne Rinaldi

Adrienne Rinaldi is an Agile Transformation Coach and co-founder with PinnacleTek Consulting. She has a passion for topics such as emotional intelligence in agile leadership, cultural transformations and breaking the norms in hierarchical organizations. She has enabled value-based strategy and business agility at many levels of client organizations: teams, programs and portfolios. When not being an agilist, Adrienne’s activities a published book (about beer and yoga!), mountaineering, hiking (Colorado 14er finisher), kayaking and spending time with friends/family.

You can link with Adrienne Rinaldi on LinkedIn.

Oct 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.

The Scrum Master role is one that demands especially a lot from our emotional intelligence. In this segment, we talk about what Emotional Intelligence looks like in practice for Scrum Masters, and how to learn to improve in that aspect of being a facilitator, a coach and a Scrum Master!

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: The Google Translate Agile Retrospective

When helping a team that did not have English as the mother tongue, Adrienne was forced to innovate and come up with a method that would allow the team to express themselves naturally, while at the same time helping her, as the Scrum Master, facilitate that conversation. She came up with a unique approach: the Google Translate Agile Retrospective! Listen in to learn how Adrienne overcame the language barrier between her and the team.

 

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 Adrienne Rinaldi

Adrienne Rinaldi is an Agile Transformation Coach and co-founder with PinnacleTek Consulting. She has a passion for topics such as emotional intelligence in agile leadership, cultural transformations and breaking the norms in hierarchical organizations. She has enabled value-based strategy and business agility at many levels of client organizations: teams, programs and portfolios. When not being an agilist, Adrienne’s activities a published book (about beer and yoga!), mountaineering, hiking (Colorado 14er finisher), kayaking and spending time with friends/family.

You can link with Adrienne Rinaldi on LinkedIn.

Oct 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 help teams adopt Agile, and practice Scrum, there are some common problems we need to prepare for. In this episode, we talk about the skills and role training that is required for a team getting started, and how the first few sessions on story writing and planning are so important. Adrienne shares some of the tools and approaches that have worked for her when helping teams that are just getting started.

 

About Adrienne Rinaldi

Adrienne Rinaldi is an Agile Transformation Coach and co-founder with PinnacleTek Consulting. She has a passion for topics such as emotional intelligence in agile leadership, cultural transformations and breaking the norms in hierarchical organizations. She has enabled value-based strategy and business agility at many levels of client organizations: teams, programs and portfolios. When not being an agilist, Adrienne’s activities a published book (about beer and yoga!), mountaineering, hiking (Colorado 14er finisher), kayaking and spending time with friends/family.

You can link with Adrienne Rinaldi on LinkedIn.

Oct 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.

Adrienne was working with a small team, in a governmental organization, that had started their Agile adoption journey. A supervisor/manager was assigned to be a team member in that team. In this episode, we discuss how the relationships of power or hierarchical superiority can destroy a team, if we don’t pay special attention to the collaboration between team members.

Featured Book of the Week: Leadership is Language by L. David Marquet 

When reading Leadership is Language by L. David Marquet, Adrienne learned about some aspects of language, and the words we use that can directly affect the success of our work as Scrum Masters and leaders. We also talk about the importance of language in helping people accept they can make a change to their own lives, and at work.

In this segment, we refer to the special BONUS episode with L. David Marquet

 

About Adrienne Rinaldi

Adrienne Rinaldi is an Agile Transformation Coach and co-founder with PinnacleTek Consulting. She has a passion for topics such as emotional intelligence in agile leadership, cultural transformations and breaking the norms in hierarchical organizations. She has enabled value-based strategy and business agility at many levels of client organizations: teams, programs and portfolios. When not being an agilist, Adrienne’s activities a published book (about beer and yoga!), mountaineering, hiking (Colorado 14er finisher), kayaking and spending time with friends/family.

You can link with Adrienne Rinaldi on LinkedIn

Oct 19, 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.

As Scrum Masters, we will sometimes face an impossible situation. Or at least, it will seem that way. In this episode, Adrienne tells the story of a team that was set up for failure, and we explore what Scrum Masters can do in those situations. 

 

About Adrienne Rinaldi

Adrienne Rinaldi is an Agile Transformation Coach and co-founder with PinnacleTek Consulting. She has a passion for topics such as emotional intelligence in agile leadership, cultural transformations and breaking the norms in hierarchical organizations. She has enabled value-based strategy and business agility at many levels of client organizations: teams, programs and portfolios. When not being an agilist, Adrienne’s activities a published book (about beer and yoga!), mountaineering, hiking (Colorado 14er finisher), kayaking and spending time with friends/family.

You can link with Adrienne Rinaldi on LinkedIn

Oct 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.

The balance between Vision and detailed guidance can make or break a PO. We also discuss the 4 PO’s of the Apocalypse. A tale about some of the worst PO anti-patterns.

The Great Product Owner: Balancing Vision and detailed guidance.

We talk about the careful balance between Vision and details that describes a great Product Owner’s ability to keep the team focused on the Vision while helping define the necessary details that teams need guidance on. A great PO is also able to communicate the Vision in the form of a definition of success through storytelling and the use of metaphors.

In this segment, we also refer to The Leader’s Guide to Radical Management by Stephen Denning.

The Bad Product Owner: The 4 Product Owners of the Apocalypse

In this episode, Arjay walks us through what he describes as the 4 Product Owners you meet in hell. He then explains how those patterns happen in reality with the help of a real-life story of a PO he worked with. From this conversation, it becomes clear how critical it is to help Product Owners through our work as Scrum Masters.

 

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 Arjay Hinek

Arjay has been an Agilist for over a decade. In the last few years he’s focused on Agile and “product development” for non-software applications. A considers himself a teacher at heart, he uses metaphors and story-telling to help others see their challenges from a different perspective and overcome them. 

You can link with Arjay Hinek on LinkedIn and connect with Arjay Hinek on Twitter

You can follow Arjay’s blog at http://goscrumgo.com/

Oct 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.

“To be able to help others, you need to define success.” Arjay starts this episode with the reflection on how important it is to discuss and define success for ourselves. We then move on to discuss what are some of the practical approaches he takes to define and measure success in his work with the team and the Product Owners.

The Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Improving the classic Retrospective format of What went well/Tripped us up/Can be improved

Sometimes the easier formats are just what we, Scrum Masters, and the teams need. However, we need to constantly be adapting the format to the needs of the team. In this episode, Arjay shares with us how he’s improved on the standard Retrospective formats, and we talk about how to understand the team well enough so that we can adapt the retrospective format to their needs.

 

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 Arjay Hinek

Arjay has been an Agilist for over a decade. In the last few years he’s focused on Agile and “product development” for non-software applications. A considers himself a teacher at heart, he uses metaphors and story-telling to help others see their challenges from a different perspective and overcome them. 

You can link with Arjay Hinek on LinkedIn and connect with Arjay Hinek on Twitter

You can follow Arjay’s blog at http://goscrumgo.com/.

Oct 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.

In this episode, we dive deep into the role of a coach, and what are some of the aspects we must keep in mind for all of our assignments. We also discuss how to work with leadership to help the Agile transformation take shape and progress.

In this episode, we refer to the SPINE model, a simple and powerful model for understanding, mapping and working with human work systems. We also refer to The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni.

 

About Arjay Hinek

Arjay has been an Agilist for over a decade. In the last few years he’s focused on Agile and “product development” for non-software applications. A considers himself a teacher at heart, he uses metaphors and story-telling to help others see their challenges from a different perspective and overcome them. 

You can link with Arjay Hinek on LinkedIn and connect with Arjay Hinek on Twitter

You can follow Arjay’s blog at http://goscrumgo.com/.

Oct 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 this story starts, we hear about a Product Owner that had the unfortunate habit of micro-managing the team and assignments. On top of that, the PO was also a yes-man, who wanted to say “yes” to everything the stakeholders came up with. We explore how these behaviors led to the team imploding, and discuss what we can do to help teams and PO’s who start showing the same symptoms.

Featured Book of the Week: Agile Product Management with Scrum: Creating Products that Customers Love

In Agile Product Management with Scrum by Roman Pichler, found a book that distills the concepts down to practical advice and helps the teams and the Scrum Masters focus on customer needs. He also found that the book allowed him to have great conversations with Product Owners, and coach the PO’s he worked with.

In this segment, we also refer to The Leader’s Guide to Radical Management by Stephen Denning.

 

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 Arjay Hinek

Arjay has been an Agilist for over a decade. In the last few years he’s focused on Agile and “product development” for non-software applications. A considers himself a teacher at heart, he uses metaphors and story-telling to help others see their challenges from a different perspective and overcome them. 

You can link with Arjay Hinek on LinkedIn and connect with Arjay Hinek on Twitter

You can follow Arjay’s blog at http://goscrumgo.com/.

Oct 12, 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.

From his early days as a Project Manager adopting Agile, Arjay was hooked. He saw how Agile could help him and the teams he worked with. However, when he tried to apply Agile outside the software industry, he discovered how the industry context had a direct impact on the applicability of some of the Agile ideas he had learned to love. Arjay shares what he learned about how to adapt Agile ideas to any industry.

 

About Arjay Hinek

Arjay has been an Agilist for over a decade. In the last few years he’s focused on Agile and “product development” for non-software applications. A considers himself a teacher at heart, he uses metaphors and story-telling to help others see their challenges from a different perspective and overcome them. 

You can link with Arjay Hinek on LinkedIn and connect with Arjay Hinek on Twitter

You can follow Arjay’s blog at http://goscrumgo.com/

Oct 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.



About Simon Severino

Simon Severino is the CEO of Strategy Sprints, Europe’s leading remote Growth Advisory. His global team of Certified Strategy Sprint coaches do only one thing: Double the revenue of service-based businesses in 90 days. Simon also teaches Growth Strategy in select business schools. And hosts the Strategy Show podcast.

You can link with Simon Severino on LinkedIn and connect with Simon Severino on Twitter.

You can visit Simon’s company at www.strategysprints.com

Oct 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.

From the PO that was able to inspire the team to the PO that was only a PO on weekends. Two contrasting examples of how to help the teams commit to the outcome of their work.

The Great Product Owner: The Storytelling PO that inspired the team

Great Product Owners are able to tell great stories. Stories that engage the audience, and help the team find purpose (the “why”) for the work that they have to take on. Leland shares the story of the “three bricklayers” as a metaphor for what that Product Owner was trying to create: commitment to the outcome of the work. 

The Bad Product Owner: The Overly Busy PO

This PO was so busy that their “PO work” was called by the PO themselves as “weekend work”. The stage was set for trouble. This led to the team not getting feedback from the PO. The stories were not accepted in time for the end of the sprint, it was hard to do any work on the product backlog refinement. Finally, as the situation would not get better, the company finally decided to hire someone else. 

If you are facing this situation right now, you may want to check our Sprint Checklist, a tool to help you deal with an Overly Busy PO.

 

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 Leland Newson

Leland is a SAFe Release Train Engineer and servant leader who is passionate about helping improve the work environment and helping teams uncover better ways to development software. He focuses on collaboration, shortening feedback loops, improving the flow of work through the system and increasing the team’s adaptability so they can quickly respond to changes and satisfy customers through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.

You can link with Leland Newson on LinkedIn and connect with Leland Newson on Twitter.

Oct 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.

Discussing the definition of Agility, we talk about how to help teams act in an agile way, by moving quickly and with grace. We discuss what that means in practice, and what aspects make a team successful at delivering business value, the ultimate focus for a Scrum Master and the team.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: The Learning Matrix

Leland shares the Learning Matrix, and a retrospective format based on the Toyota Kata by Mike Rother

We also discuss the use of Appreciations, an approach that can help get your retrospective started with the right focus, and energy.

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 Leland Newson

Leland is a SAFe Release Train Engineer and servant leader who is passionate about helping improve the work environment and helping teams uncover better ways to development software. He focuses on collaboration, shortening feedback loops, improving the flow of work through the system and increasing the team’s adaptability so they can quickly respond to changes and satisfy customers through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.

You can link with Leland Newson on LinkedIn and connect with Leland Newson on Twitter.

Oct 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.

While trying to help a team, Leland discovered a set of tools and ideas that helped him and the team find a new way to work that improved their performance. Focusing on improving the flow in the team, became a directed change approach that helped the team improve, and at the same time became a vehicle for introducing change in the team.

In this episode, we refer to: 

 

About Leland Newson

Leland is a SAFe Release Train Engineer and servant leader who is passionate about helping improve the work environment and helping teams uncover better ways to development software. He focuses on collaboration, shortening feedback loops, improving the flow of work through the system and increasing the team’s adaptability so they can quickly respond to changes and satisfy customers through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.

You can link with Leland Newson on LinkedIn and connect with Leland Newson on Twitter.

Oct 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.

In a new team, Leland noticed that the skill silo (everyone sticking only to their skill specialty) was affecting the team’s ability to deliver. The team was working as if they were doing several sequential waterfalls instead of acting like a unit. Every time one team member was absent, the team couldn’t make enough progress to deliver. 

In this episode, we talk about how to remove the skill silo, and avoid the mini-waterfalls anti-pattern.

In this episode, we also mention the Skills Matrix as a tool to visualize the skill silo. 

Featured Book of the Week: The Lean Software Agile Development Toolkit by Poppendieck

In The Lean Software Agile Development Toolkit by Poppendieck, Leland found a new perspective on what it means to improve an organization. This eye-opening book is a regular read for Leland, and reminds him of the importance of looking at the flow of work (Flow Efficiency), rather than trying to optimize activities that may ultimately be wasteful. 

 

About Leland Newson

Leland is a SAFe Release Train Engineer and servant leader who is passionate about helping improve the work environment and helping teams uncover better ways to development software. He focuses on collaboration, shortening feedback loops, improving the flow of work through the system and increasing the team’s adaptability so they can quickly respond to changes and satisfy customers through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.

You can link with Leland Newson on LinkedIn and connect with Leland Newson on Twitter.

Oct 5, 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.

This episode starts with a story of a team that was asked to “improve their velocity”. It’s a cautionary tale about what happens when Scrum is used as a method to get the teams to “go faster” without thinking about the larger consequences of Agile adoption. 

In this episode, we talk about the Rational Unified Process, a process developed in the 90’s that ultimately re-enforced the waterfall anti-patterns in organizations.

In this episode, we also refer to the work by Dan Vacanti and Troy Magennis

 

About Leland Newson

Leland is a SAFe Release Train Engineer and servant leader who is passionate about helping improve the work environment and helping teams uncover better ways to development software. He focuses on collaboration, shortening feedback loops, improving the flow of work through the system and increasing the team’s adaptability so they can quickly respond to changes and satisfy customers through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.

You can link with Leland Newson on LinkedIn and connect with Leland Newson on Twitter.

Oct 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.

From the stories PO’s tell, the team can get a much better understanding of what they are being asked to do. Great PO’s will help the team through their storytelling, and User Story writing skills. We also discuss the critical role PO’s play in the decision-making process, and how that directly affects the team’s success

The Great Product Owner: The Story Teller PO

Great Product Owners learn to tell great stories. First while talking to the team, and then on their own. In this segment, we talk about a PO that started by learning the craft of telling stories, and then translated that to the User Stories he wrote with the team. 

The Bad Product Owner: The Decision Delayer PO

In some teams, the PO is unable to make decisions. When that happens, we have the stage set for the team to struggle, and be constantly delayed by the lack of decisions. In this segment, we talk about the consequences for the team of a PO that can’t make decisions on their own, and we discuss possible steps to take with that PO and that organization.

 

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 Ronny Deicke

Ronny is a Scrum Master and Agile coach with a developer and team lead background. Currently working as a part-time Scrum Master and in the rest of the time giving (agile) workshops, supporting people as a coach and Agile Coach. Video game enthusiast and Indie developer on the side.

You can link with Ronny Deicke on LinkedIn and connect with Ronny Deicke on Twitter.

Oct 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.

When it comes to our success as Scrum Masters, Ronny focuses on the team’s journey. He asks if the team is taking brave steps to improve their work, and collaboration with stakeholders. Ronny shares some examples of what might look like in practice.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Organizing the retrospective that your Scrum team needs

Ronny shares that he uses many formats, but that he focuses on preparing a retro that the team needs at that time. In this segment, we talk about several formats, and how to prepare one based on the team’s situation in that Sprint.

 

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 Ronny Deicke

Ronny is a Scrum Master and Agile coach with a developer and team lead background. Currently working as a part-time Scrum Master and in the rest of the time giving (agile) workshops, supporting people as a coach and Agile Coach. Video game enthusiast and Indie developer on the side.

You can link with Ronny Deicke on LinkedIn and connect with Ronny Deicke on Twitter.

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