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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: April, 2021
Apr 30, 2021

Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes.

The messages that the PO passes to the team are critical. Even when the PO is being a “messenger” there are different types of messages that they pass to the team. We talk about two contrasting ways to be that “messenger”, one that works, and one that doesn’t

The Great Product Owner: Explaining the “why” of the User Stories

When we describe a great Product Owner, we focus on how they help the team learn about the customer, and “why” they are asked to deliver certain functionality. We also discuss how great PO’s make themselves available to the team when necessary

The Bad Product Owner: The “messenger” Product Owner

This particular PO was acting like a “messenger”. The PO would show up to the meetings and say “we need to deliver this because this executive said so”. There was a lack of Vision or “why” that functionality was being asked for, and that lead to the team feeling disengaged. In this segment, we talk about what a Scrum Master can do in such a situation. 

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 Kamal Hans

Kamal Hans believes people are capable of incredible things if they have the support they need. He is at his best when he gets to connect people with each other and their vision, create a structure of support, build a system to achieve their goals to accomplish bigger things than themselves. As an Agile Coach and disciplined facilitator, he has worked with global organizations like Ericsson, and Bose to name a few. 

You can link with Kamal Hans on LinkedIn and connect with Kamal Hans on Twitter

Apr 29, 2021

Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes.

Scrum Masters are there to help the team learn. Therefore, when we think about success for Scrum Masters, we need to look at what we have helped the team learn with our presence. But this brings a challenge, as Scrum Masters, we must help the team make time for learning. The team’s goal is not only to “code”, it’s to learn and improve over time, both on the “coding” but also other aspects (like being more customer-centric). 

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: The 4 L’s, I Long for, I Learned, I Liked, I Lacked

The 4 L’s format, which was mentioned in a previous episode, is all about learning. With the “Like” question, we help create empathy, with “lacked/longed for” we explore what the team was missing, and with the “learned” question we help transform mistakes into hopeful lessons for 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 experience: 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 Kamal Hans

Kamal Hans believes people are capable of incredible things if they have the support they need. He is at his best when he gets to connect people with each other and their vision, create a structure of support, build a system to achieve their goals to accomplish bigger things than themselves. As an Agile Coach and disciplined facilitator, he has worked with global organizations like Ericsson, and Bose to name a few. 

You can link with Kamal Hans on LinkedIn and connect with Kamal Hans on Twitter

Apr 28, 2021

Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes.

This episode starts with a question: which of the following is the hardest to change? Your boss, your spouse, or yourself? The key message is that, in order to be able to help others through a change process, we need to be able to change ourselves. We discuss what are some of the steps we need to go through when changing ourselves, and only then others.

In this episode we refer to work by Audree Sahota.

About Kamal Hans

Kamal Hans believes people are capable of incredible things if they have the support they need. He is at his best when he gets to connect people with each other and their vision, create a structure of support, build a system to achieve their goals to accomplish bigger things than themselves. As an Agile Coach and disciplined facilitator, he has worked with global organizations like Ericsson, and Bose to name a few. 

You can link with Kamal Hans on LinkedIn and connect with Kamal Hans on Twitter

Apr 27, 2021

Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes.

In this episode, we talk about a team that everyone felt was “high performing”. However, when Kamal joined he started to notice that something was off. The team members themselves had started to feel the “burden” of being seen as high performing. At the same time, Kamal was working with another team that was not considered to be high performing, and the contrast became evident: the “high performing” team had started to fear taking risks. This is when the job of the Scrum Master is so important: how to help teams work through their fear of taking risks!

Featured Book of the Week: Permission To Screw Up, by Kristen Hadeed

In Permission To Screw Up, by Kristen Hadeed we learn how to embrace failure as part of our journey, and turn those moments into learning points that help us get better at our work. The book also talks about the “people first” perspective and how to be OK with vulnerability and asking for help. 

How can Angela (the Agile Coach) quickly build healthy relationships with the teams she’s supposed to help? What were the steps she followed to help the Breeze App team fight off the competition? Find out how Angela helped Naomi and the team go from “behind” to being ahead of Intuition Bank, by focusing on the people! Download the first 4 chapters of the BOOK for FREE while it is in Beta!

About Kamal Hans

Kamal Hans believes people are capable of incredible things if they have the support they need. He is at his best when he gets to connect people with each other and their vision, create a structure of support, build a system to achieve their goals to accomplish bigger things than themselves. As an Agile Coach and disciplined facilitator, he has worked with global organizations like Ericsson, and Bose to name a few. 

You can link with Kamal Hans on LinkedIn and connect with Kamal Hans on Twitter

Apr 26, 2021

Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes.

When Scrum Masters want to help their teams, they put a lot of focus on working with the teams, but sometimes that may be the wrong thing to do. How do we know that? In this episode, we talk about when the Scrum Master does “too much” and creates a dependency from the team towards the Scrum Master, as well as what can happen when teams are no longer able to take ownership of their ways of working. 

About Kamal Hans

Kamal Hans believes people are capable of incredible things if they have the support they need. He is at his best when he gets to connect people with each other and their vision, create a structure of support, build a system to achieve their goals to accomplish bigger things than themselves. As an Agile Coach and disciplined facilitator, he has worked with global organizations like Ericsson, and Bose to name a few. 

You can link with Kamal Hans on LinkedIn and connect with Kamal Hans on Twitter

Apr 23, 2021

Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes.

Communication with the team about the product is one of the key skills for a Product Owner, in this episode we talk about two different types of PO and how their communication affects the teams they work with.

The Great Product Owner: The Product CEO

This particular Product Owner took on the role of the CEO of the product. The PO was able to stand up to ideas coming from higher-ups in the organization because the Vision was clear and articulated. In this segment, we refer to the Create a Compelling Product Vision e-course by the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

The Bad Product Owner: The “broken telephone” PO

Sometimes, the PO’s become mere “broken” telephones between other parts of the organization and the team. When that happens, the team misses the direction and Vision for the product, and the messages get mixed up and misscommunicated. In this segment, we refer to the Elevator Pitch template that helps PO’s create a crisp definition of the Vision for the product. 

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 Nagesh Sharma

Nagesh is a Professional Scrum Trainer by Scrum.org, He is Co-Founder & CEO of Flowsphere India. His mission drives him in increasing the joy and accomplishment people feel with agile ways of working. Nagesh is a Management 3.0 & collaboration Superpowers Facilitator. Trained more than 3000 people across the globe and an active speaker at various international conferences.

You can link with Nagesh Sharma on LinkedIn and connect with Nagesh Sharma on Twitter

Apr 22, 2021

Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes.

What are some questions we can ask ourselves to assess the success of our work as Scrum Master? Nagesh shares his top questions, and how he uses those to improve on his own work.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Wicked Questions format from Liberating Structures

The “Wicked Questions” format from Liberating Structures helps the team come up with creative solutions to the wicked problems they have to face. Nagesh shares some examples of what those questions could sound like, and how to introduce the format to 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 experience: 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 Nagesh Sharma

Nagesh is a Professional Scrum Trainer by Scrum.org, He is Co-Founder & CEO of Flowsphere India. His mission drives him in increasing the joy and accomplishment people feel with agile ways of working. Nagesh is a Management 3.0 & collaboration Superpowers Facilitator. Trained more than 3000 people across the globe and an active speaker at various international conferences.

You can link with Nagesh Sharma on LinkedIn and connect with Nagesh Sharma on Twitter

Apr 21, 2021

Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes.

In this organization, the skills were not well divided between the teams. As this story starts, we hear of a team member that was helping 5 or 6 other teams because they were the one that had the necessary skills. How do we address this “unevenness” in skills between the teams? In this episode we discuss what we can do, as Scrum Masters, to better prepare our teams to be self-sufficient, and it all starts with looking at the skills in each team. 

 

About Nagesh Sharma

Nagesh is a Professional Scrum Trainer by Scrum.org, He is Co-Founder & CEO of Flowsphere India. His mission drives him in increasing the joy and accomplishment people feel with agile ways of working. Nagesh is a Management 3.0 & collaboration Superpowers Facilitator. Trained more than 3000 people across the globe and an active speaker at various international conferences.

You can link with Nagesh Sharma on LinkedIn and connect with Nagesh Sharma on Twitter

Apr 20, 2021

Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes.

This story starts with a team that wasn’t making their customer happy. As Nagesh and his colleagues looked at the situation, they found out that the team members did not feel accountable for the success of the whole team. The team members thought they were only responsible for delivering on the tasks they were assigned. In this episode, we explore how to address this “it’s not my job” syndrome that affects so many teams.

Featured Book of the Week: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, by Patrick Lencioni

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, by Patrick Lencioni, helped Nagesh understand what are the things that need to be in place for a team to achieve high performance. Patrick Lencioni’s easy-to-read style is a great introduction to the model he builds in the story that helps us pay attention to the different interactions in the team, and be ready to analyze those in a way that helps the team succeed.

How can Angela (the Agile Coach) quickly build healthy relationships with the teams she’s supposed to help? What were the steps she followed to help the Breeze App team fight off the competition? Find out how Angela helped Naomi and the team go from “behind” to being ahead of Intuition Bank, by focusing on the people! Download the first 4 chapters of the BOOK for FREE while it is in Beta!

 

About Nagesh Sharma

Nagesh is a Professional Scrum Trainer by Scrum.org, He is Co-Founder & CEO of Flowsphere India. His mission drives him in increasing the joy and accomplishment people feel with agile ways of working. Nagesh is a Management 3.0 & collaboration Superpowers Facilitator. Trained more than 3000 people across the globe and an active speaker at various international conferences.

You can link with Nagesh Sharma on LinkedIn and connect with Nagesh Sharma on Twitter

Apr 19, 2021

Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes.

This was a dedicated team that wanted to succeed. However, the conditions were not in place for them to succeed. These conditions we talk about in the episode, are a great checklist for Scrum Masters who want to assess the conditions for success in their team. Through the story that Nagesh shares, we explore what we - Scrum Masters - can pay attention to, so that we help our teams put the right things in place to be able to deliver successfully. 

 

About Nagesh Sharma

Nagesh is a Professional Scrum Trainer by Scrum.org, He is Co-Founder & CEO of Flowsphere India. His mission drives him in increasing the joy and accomplishment people feel with agile ways of working. Nagesh is a Management 3.0 & collaboration Superpowers Facilitator. Trained more than 3000 people across the globe and an active speaker at various international conferences.

You can link with Nagesh Sharma on LinkedIn and connect with Nagesh Sharma on Twitter

Apr 17, 2021

The Nexus Framework has been a topic on the podcast before. In this episode, we explore critical lessons for Scrum Masters that need to work with multiple teams and large organizations with the help of the Nexus Framework. 

To know more about Nexus and how it can help your organization, visit Simon’s Nexus course

About Simon Flossmann

Simon helps teams effectively use Scrum and an agile mindset to deliver products and services that matter! As a Scrum Master and Professional Scrum Trainer, licensed by Scrum.org, he supports teams and organizations of varying sizes in a wide range of business domains, like automotive, home appliance, energy sector, federal government agency, and insurance.

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

You can follow Simon Flossmann’s writings on this home page.

Apr 16, 2021

Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes.

The relationship between the Product Owner and the team is a critical aspect of the team’s performance. In this episode, we talk about two contrasting perspectives on building that relationship between PO and team.

The Great Product Owner: Deliberately building a relationship with the team

Great PO’s deliberately build a relationship with the team, but always have a clear idea of what the customer needs. Putting those two together, the PO is able to very clear about what they need to do to help the team deliver on the product vision. We also discuss how the PO is very much a leadership role. 

In this segment, we refer to the concept of Lateral Leadership

The Bad Product Owner: The PO that was “far” from the Scrum team

This story starts with a team that had 2 Product Owners. And even if both PO’s were passionate and wanted to do a good job, Rob noticed that the Business PO was very far from the team. In this segment, we discuss how the Product Owner is an “outreach” role, which tries to bring the team and the customer closer together. 

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 Rob Cooper

Rob is a Lead Agile Coach at Sainsbury’s, focusing on how the whole business uses Agility. Rob is an experienced Agile Coach at Enterprise, leadership, and team levels. In this career, he worked with change in organizations using a range of frameworks, including Scrum, Kanban, SAFe & LeSS approaches. He’s experienced in program & Project Management and has helped multiple teams transition from waterfall to Agile. 

You can link with Rob Cooper on LinkedIn.

Apr 15, 2021

Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes.

The Scrum Master role is not always easy to define, and in this episode, we discuss how that makes it hard to define success. Despite that, Rob shares his definition of success, and how he adapts his success definition to accommodate the situation of the team he works with. 

In this segment, we also refer to the idea/concept of Kaizen: Continuous Improvement.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: The Soup Technique

In this segment, we talk about several possible retrospective formats. We start by discussing Themed Retrospectives and how they can be effective for teams, and we end up tackling one of the biggest obstacles to getting value out of Agile Retrospectives: focusing on things outside the control of the team. We discuss “The Circles and Soup” technique by Diana Larsen, which helps teams focus on the obstacles they have control over, and reach out for help on the items they don’t have control over.

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 experience: 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 Rob Cooper

Rob is a Lead Agile Coach at Sainsbury’s, focusing on how the whole business uses Agility. Rob is an experienced Agile Coach at Enterprise, leadership, and team levels. In this career, he worked with change in organizations using a range of frameworks, including Scrum, Kanban, SAFe & LeSS approaches. He’s experienced in program & Project Management and has helped multiple teams transition from waterfall to Agile. 

You can link with Rob Cooper on LinkedIn.

Apr 14, 2021

Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes.

This particular organization wanted to move to Agile. As Rob worked with the teams in the organization, he started to realize that the people aspect of the change process was crucial. In this episode, we discuss a 3-step process for change that takes that into account and helps you start to plan your actions as a Scrum Master in a change process. We also talk about the importance of narrative/storytelling when making the case for change. 

About Rob Cooper

Rob is a Lead Agile Coach at Sainsbury’s, focusing on how the whole business uses Agility. Rob is an experienced Agile Coach at Enterprise, leadership, and team levels. In this career, he worked with change in organizations using a range of frameworks, including Scrum, Kanban, SAFe & LeSS approaches. He’s experienced in program & Project Management and has helped multiple teams transition from waterfall to Agile. 

You can link with Rob Cooper on LinkedIn.

Apr 13, 2021

Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes.

Rob joined this company at the tail end of this team’s story. As Rob entered the organization, he understood that the organization was still stuck in the “old world”. The company had fired many of the people who had developed the legacy app that the team was trying hard to maintain. On top of that, there were many things going wrong at this organization. What could Rob do to help this team? Listen in, to learn about what we, as Scrum Masters, can do in very difficult situations, when everything seems to be going wrong for the team. 

In this segment, we refer to Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness by Laloux, and Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink.

Featured Book of the Week: Two surprising recommendations

Rob leaves us with two surprising recommendations that are worth an listen, to understand why he recommends these books. The first book, a book about the full complexity of human behavior and change aversion is The Bible. As Rob puts it: “it’s about human behavior”. The second recommendation, no less surprising is The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a book that helped Rob understand storytelling and how a story can crystalize the direction for a team.

How can Angela (the Agile Coach) quickly build healthy relationships with the teams she’s supposed to help? What were the steps she followed to help the Breeze App team fight off the competition? Find out how Angela helped Naomi and the team go from “behind” to being ahead of Intuition Bank, by focusing on the people! Download the first 4 chapters of the BOOK for FREE while it is in Beta!

About Rob Cooper

Rob is a Lead Agile Coach at Sainsbury’s, focusing on how the whole business uses Agility. Rob is an experienced Agile Coach at Enterprise, leadership, and team levels. In this career, he worked with change in organizations using a range of frameworks, including Scrum, Kanban, SAFe & LeSS approaches. He’s experienced in program & Project Management and has helped multiple teams transition from waterfall to Agile. 

You can link with Rob Cooper on LinkedIn.

Apr 12, 2021

Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes.

This team was stuck halfway between Waterfall and Scrum. The team was working in Sprints, but they had a 13-week development cycle, followed by a 13-week testing cycle. The separation of testing from development caused several issues, and the company tried to remedy that by asking developers to test in an attempt to speed up the testing cycle. However, things didn’t go according to plan. Listen in, to learn about what happens when organizations separate testing from development, and what we - Scrum Masters - can do to help teams that are in that position. 

About Rob Cooper

Rob is a Lead Agile Coach at Sainsbury’s, focusing on how the whole business uses Agility. Rob is an experienced Agile Coach at Enterprise, leadership, and team levels. In this career, he worked with change in organizations using a range of frameworks, including Scrum, Kanban, SAFe & LeSS approaches. He’s experienced in program & Project Management and has helped multiple teams transition from waterfall to Agile. 

You can link with Rob Cooper on LinkedIn

Apr 9, 2021

Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes.

The way the PO involves the team in their work and decisions can make or break the collaboration between team and PO. In this episode, we talk about two contrasting approaches, and why the effective involvement of the team in the work of the PO is so important.

The Great Product Owner: User Experience focused PO

This particular Product Owner was very much focused on user experience, and that helped the team also focus on that aspect of their work. During meetings with the team, the PO constantly brought up the value they were trying to “drive” for the customer. 

In this segment, we refer to an approach Susannah calls “Metrics and Chill”. Listen in to learn what that is about.

The Bad Product Owner: The PO that would have conversations without the team

Product Owners can help, or hinder the teams’ work. In this segment, we talk about a PO that would turn all blame on the team, and would have conversations with stakeholders without the team knowing about it, or being informed. This inevitably led to bad surprises that the team wasn’t ready for, and then was blamed for. Listen to these anti-patterns to learn to detect them before it is too late!

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 Susannah Chambers

Susannah seeks joy and empowers teams to articulate how they add value. She is a Certified ScrumMaster and Agile Team Coach for 3 software development teams for a major retailer. Susannah is also a Personal Agility Recognized Ambassador for the Personal Agility Institute and she helps people identify what really matters.

You can link with Susannah Chambers on LinkedIn and connect with Susannah Chambers on Twitter.

Apr 8, 2021

Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes.

Can the team sustain the good practices they have in place? This is one of the questions that Susannah asks herself when assessing the impact of her work as a Scrum Master. She shares some tips that Scrum Masters can use to help the teams show if they are evolving in their Scrum and Agile journey. 

In this episode, we refer to the Personal Agility Movement

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: The Spinal Tap themed retrospective

One underrepresented retrospective format is that of a film-themed retro. Susannah, a musician herself, shares how she uses scenes from the Spinal Tap movie to help spark reflection and conversation in Agile Retrospectives. Susannah reminds us that the laughing that comes from watching some of the scenes in that movie, relaxes people and helps with the sharing of experiences.

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 experience: 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 Susannah Chambers

Susannah seeks joy and empowers teams to articulate how they add value. She is a Certified ScrumMaster and Agile Team Coach for 3 software development teams for a major retailer. Susannah is also a Personal Agility Recognized Ambassador for the Personal Agility Institute and she helps people identify what really matters.

You can link with Susannah Chambers on LinkedIn and connect with Susannah Chambers on Twitter.

Apr 7, 2021

Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes.

As many teams have experienced during 2020/2021, Susannah was in the middle of a change from a co-located team, into a distributed/remote setting. This presented specific challenges to her as a Scrum Master. How to make the remote sessions as effective as the co-located ones? How to help the team feel connected, even when remote? In this episode, we learn about how easy it is to lose alignment when remote and what to do about it. 

In this episode, we refer to the concept of Psychological Safety, which has been a focus of several previous episodes here on the podcast

About Susannah Chambers

Susannah seeks joy and empowers teams to articulate how they add value. She is a Certified ScrumMaster and Agile Team Coach for 3 software development teams for a major retailer. Susannah is also a Personal Agility Recognized Ambassador for the Personal Agility Institute and she helps people identify what really matters.

You can link with Susannah Chambers on LinkedIn and connect with Susannah Chambers on Twitter.

Apr 6, 2021

Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes.

In this project, the team was “forced” to report their work in a waterfall model: milestones, up-front plans, etc. This brought a series of problems that Susannah describes as “the joyless team”. This highlighted for her the important role Scrum Masters play in helping the team translate the information they have into a language that fits the needs of the stakeholders, but without going all the way back to waterfall plans and reports. 

Featured Book of the Week: Chief Joy Officer: How Great Leaders Elevate Human Energy and Eliminate Fear, by Sheridan et al. 

In Chief Joy Officer, Susannah found ideas and tools to help teams (and herself) find joy in the workplace. The book resonated with her, and offered ideas that fit the role of the Scrum Master very well. In the book, she also learned about using Joy as the metric that helps teams perform.

How can Angela (the Agile Coach) quickly build healthy relationships with the teams she’s supposed to help? What were the steps she followed to help the Breeze App team fight off the competition?

Find out how Angela helped Naomi and the team go from “behind” to being ahead of Intuition Bank, by focusing on the people!

Download the first 4 chapters of the BOOK for FREE while it is in Beta!

About Susannah Chambers

Susannah seeks joy and empowers teams to articulate how they add value. She is a Certified ScrumMaster and Agile Team Coach for 3 software development teams for a major retailer. Susannah is also a Personal Agility Recognized Ambassador for the Personal Agility Institute and she helps people identify what really matters.

You can link with Susannah Chambers on LinkedIn and connect with Susannah Chambers on Twitter

Apr 5, 2021

Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes.

This story starts with Susannah working with two teams, in her role as a Scrum Master. This lead to her feeling torn between the two teams that she wanted to help. Multitasking and having to attend multiple ceremonies made her feel stressed and unsure about the best way to help the teams. How can a Scrum Master overcome the challenges of this situation and help the teams? Listen in to learn the important lessons Susannah took from this situation.

About Susannah Chambers

Susannah seeks joy and empowers teams to articulate how they add value. She is a Certified ScrumMaster and Agile Team Coach for 3 software development teams for a major retailer. Susannah is also a Personal Agility Recognized Ambassador for the Personal Agility Institute and she helps people identify what really matters.

You can link with Susannah Chambers on LinkedIn and connect with Susannah Chambers on Twitter

Apr 3, 2021

About Alioscha Chaplits, Rachel Macasek and Daniel Lenhard

Alioscha Chaplits has 20+ years of experience with a large international non-profit organization as a team and project leader, mentor, coach, change agent, etc.

Alioscha  switched to IT three and half years ago to a QA role and since then. He’s got a great question for us to discuss in this panel discussion episode. We’ll get to that in a second.

You can link with Alioscha Chaplits on LinkedIn

Daniel Lenhart never knew what his dream job would be, but now that he is a Scrum Master, he loves it. I studied Biology in university and switched fields to software development. This really showed me the importance of cross-disciplinary learning and looking into new areas of interest. 

You can link with Daniel Lenhart on LinkedIn and connect with Daniel Lenhart on Twitter.

Rachel Macasek is passionate about individual and team growth. She has fostered an environment of collaboration and continuous improvement in the manufacturing, biotech, and software industries. Currently, Rachel is focused on the power of an individual and recently acquired her Leadership and Performance Coaching certification.

You can link with Rachel Macasek on LinkedIn and connect with Rachel Macasek on Twitter.

Apr 2, 2021

Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes.

From value-centered product ownership to interruption-based product ownership, two contrasting patterns we must be aware of.

The Great Product Owner: Value-centered, and able to communicate that to the Scrum team

A great PO has the mindset that they are there to understand and serve the customer with the help of the team. The great PO knows the environment (both inside the company and the customer’s environment); knows the customer very well, and most importantly understands how to bring that information to the team. Finally, the great PO has conversations centered around the idea of “value” for the customer and the company.

The Bad Product Owner: Interrupting the team and causing them to fail

This particular PO kept bringing new things to the sprint late in the process: “This has to go in as well” was the key phrase. This PO was heavily influenced by influential salespeople in the organization. All of this led the team to never finish the work they started. 

In this segment, we refer to the episodes with John Albrecht, who’s been a guest here on the podcast.

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 Serge Huybrechts

Serge is a Scrum Master, Agile coach, and trainer with a long background in IT Service Management. He considers himself a guide for continuous improvement where Agile, Scrum, and Kanban are the vehicles. Serge loves Agile because of its focus on people and learning resonates with him. 

He also calls himself a bulimic reader and very passionate about music.

You can link with Serge Huybrechts on LinkedIn.

Apr 1, 2021

Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes.

Serge invites us to define at first what we want to see as the outcome of our work. With this “end” in mind, he suggests we are then ready to start measuring the impact of our work. As the team progresses towards that goal, we celebrate the small successes and focus on enabling the growth of the team. 

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: The OSCAR method

The OSKAR coaching model is a solution-focused coaching approach that we can use when setting up our retrospectives. It’s a method that starts by helping the team focus on the outcome, the result of their improvement ideas, and walks through what they need to put in place to reach that outcome. Starting with the outcome or end-result as the goal for 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 experience: 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 Serge Huybrechts

Serge is a Scrum Master, Agile coach, and trainer with a long background in IT Service Management. He considers himself a guide for continuous improvement where Agile, Scrum, and Kanban are the vehicles. Serge loves Agile because of its focus on people and learning resonates with him. 

He also calls himself a bulimic reader and very passionate about music.

You can link with Serge Huybrechts on LinkedIn.

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