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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: August, 2021
Aug 31, 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 working with a team, Mark noticed that the team was composed mostly of people that preferred to work in silence. They were introverts. However, their desire for privacy started to affect the team’s performance. Mark started to think about how to create more engagement and communication in the team, and designed a working agreements session to help the team understand how their distance was starting to affect their performance.

Featured Book of the Week: The 8 Stances of a Scrum Master by Barry Overeem

In the 8 Stances of a Scrum Master whitepaper, Mark found a model to help him reflect on his career, and understand that even as a manager, Mark was performing some of the Scrum Master duties. The whitepaper, authored by Barry Overeem (a previous guest on the podcast), helped Mark understand the Scrum Master role in-depth.

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 Mark Metze

Following the pattern of all good Computer Science majors, Mark began his career as a programmer and devoted the first 2 decades of his career to the craft of writing code. His next decade was spent in a managerial role for a software team. And then recently he pivoted once again to the role of Scrum Master. Mark has a heart for leading through service and has enthusiastically embraced the role of Scrum Master.

You can link with Mark Metze on LinkedIn.

Aug 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.

Mark reached his Scrum Master role by preparing his path from line manager to Scrum Master. He knew that Scrum Master was the position for him, and in that position he tried to help teams get value out of their retrospectives, however… When preparing the retrospective, Mark ended up finding a format that he loved, but the team didn’t! Listen in to learn about why sometimes the easiest, most boring format is the best format for an Agile Retrospective.

About Mark Metze

Following the pattern of all good Computer Science majors, Mark began his career as a programmer and devoted the first 2 decades of his career to the craft of writing code. His next decade was spent in a managerial role for a software team. And then recently he pivoted once again to the role of Scrum Master. Mark has a heart for leading through service and has enthusiastically embraced the role of Scrum Master.

You can link with Mark Metze on LinkedIn.

Aug 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.

About Clare Sudbery

Clare is a Lead Engineer @MadeTech, a self-described math geek, an XP enthusiast, and also a podcaster. She hosts the Making Tech Better podcast, where she interviews people about how to improve their software delivery.

Aug 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.

The attitude that the PO exhibits will fundamentally affect their effectiveness in the role, and in this episode, we explore 2 contrasting attitudes in the PO role.

The Great Product Owner: The great Collaborator

A great Product Owner is able to collaborate with the teams and the stakeholders, through their listening skills and ability to communicate ideas and why they matter for the product and the customer. Another great asset for a Product Owner is to be able to understand and evaluate technical debt together with the team. Finally, we talk about how great teams have the PO inside, and as a key part of the team.

The Bad Product Owner: The bossy PO

In this segment, we talk about how PO’s sometimes take a “bossy” perspective and are not able to understand their role. They might think they are “the boss”, and can just give orders to the team. In this segment, we also discuss the concept of the “product team”, as opposed to having the product focus only in the PO role.

We refer to the book User Story Mapping by Jeff Patton.

Are you having trouble helping the team work 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 Med Marouane Ajraoui

Med Marouane Ajraoui enjoys practising AIKIDO while helping individuals, teams, and organisations embrace the agile mindset. He is from Morocco but has lived in several countries, and he enjoys being a "citizen of the world”. He is the founder of Agile Africa, an NGO for disseminating Agile culture in Africa. He is also the CEO and founder of JediSquad, an international firm that supports developing Eco Agile businesses and meaningful digital products.

You can link with Med Marouane Ajraoui on LinkedIn.

Aug 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.

Med Marouane’s view is that Agile is “human centric”, and that it is there to help humans to be better at their work, and towards each other. When describing what success looks like for a Scrum Master, we discuss how the team’s human behavior is a great indicator that the Scrum Master has done a great job. Listen in to learn about what practices show that the team has adopted a humane approach.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: The Star Wars Retrospective

In this format, Med Marouane focuses on the team work, and team setup to be able to help the team understand the enablers, and obstacles to great team work. This is also a format that helps focus on the values of 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 Med Marouane Ajraoui

Med Marouane Ajraoui enjoys practising AIKIDO while helping individuals, teams, and organisations embrace the agile mindset. He is from Morocco but has lived in several countries, and he enjoys being a "citizen of the world”. He is the founder of Agile Africa, an NGO for disseminating Agile culture in Africa. He is also the CEO and founder of JediSquad, an international firm that supports developing Eco Agile businesses and meaningful digital products.

You can link with Med Marouane Ajraoui on LinkedIn.

Aug 25, 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 company was large, and had started an Agile transformation across the globe. However, Med Marouane quickly found out that part of the management was against the change. This situation forced Med Marouane to start investigating the reasons why, and helped him put together a set of practices for evaluating the conditions for success of an Agile adoption process. Listen in to learn about the practices Med Marouane applied, and how you can apply them in your company’s Agile transformation.

About Med Marouane Ajraoui

Med Marouane Ajraoui enjoys practising AIKIDO while helping individuals, teams, and organisations embrace the agile mindset. He is from Morocco but has lived in several countries, and he enjoys being a "citizen of the world”. He is the founder of Agile Africa, an NGO for disseminating Agile culture in Africa. He is also the CEO and founder of JediSquad, an international firm that supports developing Eco Agile businesses and meaningful digital products.

You can link with Med Marouane Ajraoui on LinkedIn.

Aug 24, 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.

Med Marouanne joined a large organization to work on a big Agile transformation. We was working with more than 10 teams in a difficult environment. The teams had started doing their cross-team collaboration using the Scrum of Scrums pattern, but when Med Marouane attended the Scrum of Scrums, he noticed the teams were merely reporting to each other. And, most importantly, they were sharing excuses for what was not delivered, instead of working together to overcome the challenges they faced. 

Featured Book of the Week: Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins

In Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins, Med Marouanne found practices that helped him as a Scrum Master. The book also helped him reflect on how to shape his personal and work life so that it would be meaningful.

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 Med Marouane Ajraoui

Med Marouane Ajraoui enjoys practising AIKIDO while helping individuals, teams, and organisations embrace the agile mindset. He is from Morocco but has lived in several countries, and he enjoys being a "citizen of the world”. He is the founder of Agile Africa, an NGO for disseminating Agile culture in Africa. He is also the CEO and founder of JediSquad, an international firm that supports developing Eco Agile businesses and meaningful digital products.

You can link with Med Marouane Ajraoui on LinkedIn.

Aug 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.

When Med Marouane joined this team, he observed that the team was missing daily collaboration, and that the culture was to blame others when problems happened. While working with this new team, he recognized that Agile is a different philosophy for software development, and that the quality of the work is directly affected by the mood, and motivation of the people working.

In this episode, we refer to Extreme Programming, an Agile approach that had a bias towards great technical practices.

About Med Marouane Ajraoui

Med Marouane Ajraoui enjoys practising AIKIDO while helping individuals, teams, and organisations embrace the agile mindset. He is from Morocco but has lived in several countries, and he enjoys being a "citizen of the world”. He is the founder of Agile Africa, an NGO for disseminating Agile culture in Africa. He is also the CEO and founder of JediSquad, an international firm that supports developing Eco Agile businesses and meaningful digital products.

You can link with Med Marouane Ajraoui on LinkedIn.

Aug 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.

The Great Product Owner: The PO that facilitate conversations and short feedback loops

This PO had a positive attitude, knew the product very well and was able to create communication opportunities between the team and the stakeholders. The PO was able to create, within the team, the idea that the team was working for the stakeholders, not the PO. Finally, this PO was able to create the opportunity for very short feedback loops. 

The Bad Product Owner: The very busy, multi-hat PO problem

When PO’s wear many hats, that creates time and focus conflicts for the PO. It’s hard for such a PO to separate their day-to-day responsibilities from the answers that the team needs, and prioritization becomes a problem. Inevitably, the PO with many hats is very busy, and ends up pushing the team by telling them exactly “how” they should do their work. It’s up to us, Scrum Masters to help the organization solve this problem, and in some cases the organization might not even recognize this as a problem! 

Here on the podcast, we’ve created a guide to help Scrum Masters work with very busy Product Owners with our PO Sprint Checklist how-to guide.

Are you having trouble helping the team work 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 Artur Margonari

Artur is a Brazilian living in Belgium since 2014. When not playing music, practicing martial arts, or traveling, he supports organizations in their agile and continuous improvement journey. He also just adopted a cat and a dog :)

You can link with Artur Margonari on LinkedIn and connect with Artur Margonari on Twitter.

Aug 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.

Are you sure your team is not doing only “checkbox” Scrum? Artur shares his tips to assess the answer to this question in any Scrum team. 

In this episode, we talk about the Agile Coach / Scrum Master NPS tool, that helps Scrum Masters measure their impact, and the health of the team. 

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Energizing the team

There are many aspects to take into account when designing a retrospective, and the level of energy in the team is one of them. In this episode, we talk about energizing the team, and what we can add to a retrospective to ensure that the team focuses on creating a positive dynamic. 

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 Artur Margonari

Artur is a Brazilian living in Belgium since 2014. When not playing music, practicing martial arts, or traveling, he supports organizations in their agile and continuous improvement journey. He also just adopted a cat and a dog :)

You can link with Artur Margonari on LinkedIn and connect with Artur Margonari on Twitter.

Aug 18, 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 Artur started working with payroll, he did what most Agile Coaches and Scrum Masters would do. He suggested that the team stop to learn about Agile. However, this team’s work was continuous and if not completed people would not get paid their salary! This called for a different approach, and we discuss how Artur had to reinvent his role as a coach to help this non-software team.

About Artur Margonari

Artur is a Brazilian living in Belgium since 2014. When not playing music, practicing martial arts, or traveling, he supports organizations in their agile and continuous improvement journey. He also just adopted a cat and a dog :)

You can link with Artur Margonari on LinkedIn and connect with Artur Margonari on Twitter.

Aug 17, 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 team, there was a lot of finger pointing and other toxic behaviors. The team was actively hiding the problems for fear of conflict. It was Artur’s job to help them deal with the conflict openly. But the journey would not be easy. In this episode, we talk about how to help teams learn to deal with conflict. 

In this episode, we refer to Non-violent communication, which has been a topic on the podcast before.

Featured Book of the Week: Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins

Learning to be a coach, Artur learned a lot about coaching tools, behaviors and mindsets from Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins. Additionally, this book helped Artur to move from a Project Manager to a Scrum Master mindset. 

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 Artur Margonari

Artur is a Brazilian living in Belgium since 2014. When not playing music, practicing martial arts, or traveling, he supports organizations in their agile and continuous improvement journey. He also just adopted a cat and a dog :)

You can link with Artur Margonari on LinkedIn and connect with Artur Margonari on Twitter.

Aug 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.

As we start to work with a new team, the temptation is to “solve all the problems”. However, that’s not always the best for the team we are working with. In this episode, we hear the story of a Scrum Master that wanted to “push” the solutions, and what Artur learned from that story. 

About Artur Margonari

Artur is a Brazilian living in Belgium since 2014. When not playing music, practicing martial arts, or traveling, he supports organizations in their agile and continuous improvement journey. He also just adopted a cat and a dog :)

You can link with Artur Margonari on LinkedIn and connect with Artur Margonari on Twitter.

Aug 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.

Seniority is often seen as a leading indicator of competence and effectiveness. However, that’s not always the case. In this episode, we share some surprising insights about how seniority is not always a great indicator of who can play the PO role.

The Great Product Owner: The Junior PO that helped the team understand what was needed

Seniority is not always an indicator of who might be a great PO. In this segment, we talk about a junior PO that was great in the PO role. The PO was able to ask questions, wanted to understand, but not control and focused on making decisions when everyone, and everything was ready. Through this approach, the PO was able to ensure everybody understood what was being asked from the team.

The Bad Product Owner: The PO that wanted to control everything

In this segment, we describe a Product Owner that knows the whole business. This PO has been a project manager, an architect and even tries to design the product! This PO wants to control everything, every step of the process, and therefore prevents the team from succeeding on its own.

Are you having trouble helping the team work 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 Stephane Thanasack

Stephane works with Agile clients in France, where he lives. He’s also the co-founder of Nowshak, a consulting company helping organizations in their transformation journey. He’s a certified professional coach by the International Coaching Federation.

You can link with Stephane Thanasack on LinkedIn.

Aug 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.

In this episode, we talk about Solution Focused Coaching, an approach that Stephane started to apply with good results. We also discuss how we can assess progress in the teams we work with.

Featured Retrospective Format of the Week: The Solution Focused Retrospective

In this segment, we discuss two contrasting stances for our retrospectives. We discuss the contrasting Problem Solving and Solution Focused retrospectives. Stephane describes how to facilitate a Solution Focused retrospective. 

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 Stephane Thanasack

Stephane works with Agile clients in France, where he lives. He’s also the co-founder of Nowshak, a consulting company helping organizations in their transformation journey. He’s a certified professional coach by the International Coaching Federation.

You can link with Stephane Thanasack on LinkedIn.

Aug 11, 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 company wanted to move from “project management” to “product management”, a shift that would require some significant changes. The company had put in place some agile roles, and “magically” converted Project Managers to Product Owners. This was when Stephane arrived to help. In this episode, we explore the common mistakes companies make when adopting Agile, and discuss what we can do to ensure the transition delivers on the promises!

In this episode, we refer to the Nexus Framework, which has been a topic on two different episodes of the podcast

About Stephane Thanasack

Stephane works with Agile clients in France, where he lives. He’s also the co-founder of Nowshak, a consulting company helping organizations in their transformation journey. He’s a certified professional coach by the International Coaching Federation.

You can link with Stephane Thanasack on LinkedIn.

Aug 10, 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 worked on a product inside a big company. They delivered, and even held their retrospectives. However, they didn’t take action on the insights they collected from their retrospectives. This gave Stephane a memorable lesson: it’s not enough to “do all the ceremonies” to be Agile. And led Stephane to explore and learn how he could help teams benefit from retrospectives, to establish continuous improvement. 

Featured Book for the Week: Management 3.0 by Jurgen Appelo

Stephane found the book Management 3.0 by Jurgen Appelo “simple and brilliant”. It gave him a sense of what systems are, and Systems Thinking. As he describes it, the book was a “game changer”. 

In this segment, we also refer to the book Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins

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 Stephane Thanasack

Stephane works with Agile clients in France, where he lives. He’s also the co-founder of Nowshak, a consulting company helping organizations in their transformation journey. He’s a certified professional coach by the International Coaching Federation.

You can link with Stephane Thanasack on LinkedIn.

Aug 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.

When Stephane started his career, not all things went according to plan. In this episode, Stephane shares a story of a moment where he froze in the face of verbal aggression. However, that would be the beginning of a new journey, that of a coach that is able to handle high-pressure situations, and even situations where someone might lose their cool. An insightful story that many coaches need to be ready for. 

About Stephane Thanasack

Stephane works with Agile clients in France, where he lives. He’s also the co-founder of Nowshak, a consulting company helping organizations in their transformation journey. He’s a certified professional coach by the International Coaching Federation.

You can link with Stephane Thanasack on LinkedIn.

Aug 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.



About Charles Oppermann

Charles Oppermann is a 30-year veteran of the software industry. He prides himself on shipping high quality software that helps humanity; from the JAWS screen reader and making the internet accessible to people with disabilities while at Microsoft, and for the past decade; protecting people from online threats at Malwarebytes.

You can link with Charles Oppermann on LinkedIn and connect with Charles Oppermann on Twitter.

Aug 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.

Perhaps the most common anti-pattern in the PO role, is the “no real PO” anti-pattern. Either because of their absence, or because the organization downplays that role. In contrast, great PO’s show up everyday, and make sure they help the team, and ask for help from the team. 

The Great Product Owner: The PO that helped, and asked for help!

For Mandy, the PO that Ryan introduces, nothing was too much trouble. She was focused on helping the team succeed. When interacting with the team, she made sure the team had everything they needed to succeed. On the other hand, she was also very clear about what she wanted the team to help her achieve, and the problems they needed to help solve. In this episode, we discuss how the PO role is also a servant leader role. 

The Bad Product Owner: The “no real PO” anti-pattern

The Product Owner “accountability” is very powerful, but many organizations think they can live without. The PO role is perhaps one of the linchpin roles in Scrum, but yet ignored or downplayed by many. In this episode we discuss why that is, and some of the least productive stances that people take when playing that role. 

Are you having trouble helping the team work 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 Ryan Brook

Ryan is a practicing Agile Coach and Scrum Master based in the UK. He is also the co-creator of Scrum Lake, a safe community of practice focused on story telling and deep exploration with Scrum Masters from around the World. He holds both the PSM III and PSPO III and is a candidate Professional Scrum Trainer for scrum.org.

You can link with Ryan Brook on LinkedIn.

Aug 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.

Happiness and enjoyment are two of the metrics that Ryan focuses on to help his teams grow and evaluate his own success as a Scrum Master. We discuss Jason Little’s NPS for the team exercise that helps both the team and the Scrum Master evaluate their success. Ryan also suggests to look at metrics over time, and not only as a single number. 

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Using “fun” as a hook for great retrospectives

Ryan is a fan of gamification in Agile retrospectives. He suggests we use the “fun” side of the games we bring as a way to motivate team members to actively participate in the retrospective. He then explains how he focuses the retrospectives on feelings, rather than facts as a way to trigger insightful 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 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 Ryan Brook

Ryan is a practicing Agile Coach and Scrum Master based in the UK. He is also the co-creator of Scrum Lake, a safe community of practice focused on story telling and deep exploration with Scrum Masters from around the World. He holds both the PSM III and PSPO III and is a candidate Professional Scrum Trainer for scrum.org.

You can link with Ryan Brook on LinkedIn.

Aug 4, 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 organization wanted to adopt LeSS, the Large Scale Scrum Framework. However, the leadership team had first tried to “push” the change through. Unsurprisingly, that did not go as expected, so they took a different approach. They got all the teams together, explained their vision and worked with the Scrum Masters to facilitate the change they were looking for. 

Listen in to learn how Ryan and his colleagues organized the new change process. 

In this episode, we refer to Lean Change Management, and David Marquet’s work (David Marquet was a previous guest on the podcast). 

About Ryan Brook

Ryan is a practicing Agile Coach and Scrum Master based in the UK. He is also the co-creator of Scrum Lake, a safe community of practice focused on story telling and deep exploration with Scrum Masters from around the World. He holds both the PSM III and PSPO III and is a candidate Professional Scrum Trainer for scrum.org.

You can link with Ryan Brook on LinkedIn.

Aug 3, 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.

Ryan was working with a team that had responsibility over 6 different products. The team was under water and overwhelmed by all the work that was coming at them. As Ryan describes it there was a Zebra and a Hippo in the team (see Animals of Product Management), which made the team afraid of making decisions and move forward. This segment ends with a warning for Scrum Masters: “are you letting the bad behavior grow in your team?”

Featured Book for the Week: The Hitchhiker’s Guide To Coaching by Agile42 consulting

Ryan was offered The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Coaching by a mentor of his at the time. The book helped him to go beyond the facilitation skills he already had, and focus on skills like Active Listening, and understanding the implications from working in the Complex Domain. That book was a lesson on truly focusing on being empirical in his work.

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 Ryan Brook

Ryan is a practicing Agile Coach and Scrum Master based in the UK. He is also the co-creator of Scrum Lake, a safe community of practice focused on story telling and deep exploration with Scrum Masters from around the World. He holds both the PSM III and PSPO III and is a candidate Professional Scrum Trainer for scrum.org.

You can link with Ryan Brook on LinkedIn.

Aug 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.

Ryan has a background as a school teacher. And even if he did not have a long background in the IT space, he was able to transform his teaching and facilitation skills into a strength in his Scrum Master role. His failure story takes us to a high-pressure environment where Ryan came in as a “turn around” Scrum Master. We discuss what happens when we want the team to improve, despite the team’s own wishes. Ryan shares some critical tips for Scrum Masters that are brought into a team “to change them”. 

About Ryan Brook

Ryan is a practicing Agile Coach and Scrum Master based in the UK. He is also the co-creator of Scrum Lake, a safe community of practice focused on story telling and deep exploration with Scrum Masters from around the World. He holds both the PSM III and PSPO III and is a candidate Professional Scrum Trainer for scrum.org.

You can link with Ryan Brook on LinkedIn.

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