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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: September, 2021
Sep 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.

As Scrum Masters, we must define our own success. That definition will depend on what organizations we are at, and their place in the Agile adoption journey. Lena also shares how important it is for us to learn and move on from what might have been great practices in the past, but end up being inadequate in certain situations.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: The 6 faces of Jack Sparrow, a fun retrospective

The Pirates of the Caribbean retrospective is a metaphor retro that helps the team reflect on their progress through the different phases of Jack Sparrow in the movie “The Pirates of the Caribbean”. As the team discusses the 6 different emotions/faces of the main character. Those create insights about their own work, and what to improve. Find and print 6 different faces of Jack Sparrow from the movie The Pirates of the Caribean, and then ask the team to share their insights according to the emotion in the face. The 6 faces of Jack Sparrow are: 

  1. Happy 
  2. What the Fudge
  3. Thoughtful 
  4. Auch 
  5. Mad 
  6. Mexican standoff 
  7. Makes people laugh and relax 

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 Lena Löfdahl

Lena is a senior agile coach with a specialty in learning and psychological safety. Successfully coached over 200+ teams and taught courses for 8000+ hours, mostly in agile but also project management. She gets a lot of energy from building teams and colleagues, watching people grow is rewarding work. 

You can link with Lena Löfdahl on LinkedIn.

Sep 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.

This team adopted Agile quickly and started to move towards continuous delivery. However, shortly after that, they realized that the organization was not ready for it. The team would not get requirements in time for their Sprints, and the team started idling. To try and overcome this problem, Lena and her colleagues organized the first “big room planning” session in that company. And then, a big surprise happened…

About Lena Löfdahl

Lena is a senior agile coach with specialty in learning and psychological safety. Successfully coached over 200+ teams and taught courses for 8000+ hours, mostly in agile but also project management. She gets a lot of energy from building teams and colleagues, watching people grow is rewarding work. 

You can link with Lena Löfdahl on LinkedIn.

Sep 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.

The team Lena was working with had the assignment to move all customer information from multiple systems into one. The pressure was high, so the team wanted to focus on continuous progress. However, and because of that, the team had neglected the need to share knowledge among team members. This, in turn, led to having a siloed team, where they could not help each other when a task was stuck. Listen in to learn how to deal with the common “we’re too busy to share knowledge” anti-pattern.

Featured Book of the Week: Scrum and XP from the trenches, by Kniberg 

In Scrum and XP from the trenches, by Kniberg, Lena found a book that spoke to her in a language she could understand and helped her by explaining situations that she was familiar with. The book is freely available to download by signing up here.

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 Lena Löfdahl

Lena is a senior agile coach with specialty in learning and psychological safety. Successfully coached over 200+ teams and taught courses for 8000+ hours, mostly in agile but also project management. She gets a lot of energy from building teams and colleagues, watching people grow is rewarding work. 

You can link with Lena Löfdahl on LinkedIn.

Sep 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 a growing team, hiring a super qualified person is often a great achievement. A senior person can help the team grow, bring in the knowledge that would otherwise take a long time to acquire, and more! However, it does not always happen like that. In this story, we hear about a senior team member that created conflict and demoralized the team. Listen in to learn about the critical lessons Lena learned about onboarding and integrating senior team members in an existing team.

About Lena Löfdahl

Lena is a senior agile coach with specialty in learning and psychological safety. Successfully coached over 200+ teams and taught courses for 8000+ hours, mostly in agile but also project management. She gets a lot of energy from building teams and colleagues, watching people grow is rewarding work. 

You can link with Lena Löfdahl on LinkedIn.

Sep 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.

About Jurgen Appelo

Jurgen describes himself as “the creative networker”. But sometimes he’s a writer, speaker, trainer, entrepreneur, illustrator, manager, blogger, reader, dreamer, leader, freethinker, or… Dutch guy. Inc.com has called him a Top 50 Leadership Expert and a Top 100 Leadership Speaker. He’s also one of the most influential Agilists, thanks to his work on Agile Management with his book Management 3.0

Sep 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.

The Great Product Owner: How to translate “fuzzy ideas” into concrete asks for the Scrum team 

Great Product Owners ask about, and translate their ideas into business value. They ask about it from the stakeholders, and translate it for the team, so that the team may understand why their work is important. They also put significant effort in communicating (e.g. through feature kick-offs) with the team about what is expected. They act as a constant and solid bridge between the outside, and the inside of the team.

The Bad Product Owner: Recovering from conflict between team and PO

One of the characteristic PO anti-patterns is putting unreasonable expectations on the team, and using pressure as a tool to get the team to work “harder”. This kind of anti-pattern can lead to serious problems in the team and the relationship between PO and team. We discuss what a Scrum Master can do to recover from this kind of negative spiral

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 Inderdip Vraich

Inderdip is an Agile Coach and a Scrum Master based in New Zealand. She has been working in the agile space with IT teams since 2007. She believes in lifelong learning and derives deep satisfaction from working with teams & individuals and see them grow in their journey.

You can link with Inderdip Vraich on LinkedIn and connect with Inderdip Vraich on Twitter.

Sep 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.

Reflecting on what success means for a Scrum Master is an important reflection activity for anyone interested in improving their impact on the team. Inderdip shares with us the questions that she has developed to keep her own success reflection going despite the hustle of every day work.

In this segment, we talk about the Scrum Culture Index, and mention a Forbes article that helps understand how to measure (“smell”) culture.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Practical Psychological Safety retrospective

As we often talk about psychological safety, it is important to learn how to introduce the concept to the team. In this segment, we explore a possible retrospective format around creating the understanding of and the actions that lead to psychological safety in 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 Inderdip Vraich

Inderdip is an Agile Coach and a Scrum Master based in New Zealand. She has been working in the agile space with IT teams since 2007. She believes in lifelong learning and derives deep satisfaction from working with teams & individuals and see them grow in their journey.

You can link with Inderdip Vraich on LinkedIn and connect with Inderdip Vraich on Twitter.

Sep 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.

In this episode, we explore Inderdip’s personal change. How she started to understand what really creates great teams. We learn how she realized what was missing in her own coaching, and actions that helped the team finally start to develop. And it all started with her own personal journey.

About Inderdip Vraich

Inderdip is an Agile Coach and a Scrum Master based in New Zealand. She has been working in the agile space with IT teams since 2007. She believes in lifelong learning and derives deep satisfaction from working with teams & individuals and see them grow in their journey.

You can link with Inderdip Vraich on LinkedIn and connect with Inderdip Vraich on Twitter.

Sep 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.

Inderdip was working with multiple Scrum teams, and there were pressure and high expectations on the team. The high stakes led to micro-management, and suddenly the team - which was composed of competent and committed people - fell into hard conflict. The team was unhappy. This story taught Inderdip an important lesson of where to start when dealing with conflict caused by external pressure. 

Featured Book of the Week: The Art Of Doing Twice The Work In Half The Time, by Sutherland

In The Art Of Doing Twice The Work In Half The Time, by Sutherland, Inderdip found insightful lessons in every chapter, and stories of success from many different industries. Those lessons helped her to focus on actions, and learn to deal with unpredictability.

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 Inderdip Vraich

Inderdip is an Agile Coach and a Scrum Master based in New Zealand. She has been working in the agile space with IT teams since 2007. She believes in lifelong learning and derives deep satisfaction from working with teams & individuals and see them grow in their journey.

You can link with Inderdip Vraich on LinkedIn and connect with Inderdip Vraich on Twitter.

Sep 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.

When we start with a new team or organization, and especially if we are experienced Scrum Masters, we often have the temptation to push changes, to help the teams move quickly to a state we can already see in our minds. But is that the best approach? Listen to this story of how “pushing” changes to a team made things worse.

About Inderdip Vraich

Inderdip is an Agile Coach and a Scrum Master based in New Zealand. She has been working in the agile space with IT teams since 2007. She believes in lifelong learning and derives deep satisfaction from working with teams & individuals and see them grow in their journey.

You can link with Inderdip Vraich on LinkedIn and connect with Inderdip Vraich on Twitter.

Sep 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.

Great Product Owners know how to involve team members in the definition and decision-making processes. However, the contrast is a PO that thinks they were given the mission to be a Project Manager. Is your PO behaving like a Project Manager? Listen in to learn about the signs that the PO might have taken the Project Management role.

The Great Product Owner:  Building collaboration by involving team members across disciplines

Great Product Owners are amazing that getting people to buy in to the Vision for the product/project. But they also know how to help the team put in practice continuous discovery, involving both engineering and the design team. As the POs starts to involve team and stakeholders, they make their job both more effective, and easier! A win-win!

The Bad Product Owner: Is your PO behaving like a Project Manager?

When Product Owners think they are Project Managers - maybe because they had that role in the past - they forget about the product vision and start focusing too much on topics that the team should focus on. They dictate dates, scope and force the teams to follow the plan without questioning it. When this happens, a lot is lost in the team. Is your Product Owner behaving like a Project Manager? 

 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 David Wallace

David Wallace is an agile coach with 25 years of experience in the IT industry. He’s a passionate Agilist and the cohost of the Heart of Agile - Boulder meetup group. He’s currently based in Denver as a Product Delivery Coach at Xero, a New Zealand based cloud accounting software company. 

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

Sep 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.

We’ve heard many times here on the podcast, that success is about making ourselves obsolete. Allowing for the team to take ownership and leadership in their work. However, that’s easier said than understood! How do we know that we’ve reached that point? We discuss the signs, and leading indicators that teams are stepping up and taking ownership of their work!

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Spicying up an old format to keep things fresh

David likes to rely on a simple, and consistent format, and slightly change it to suit the situation. David shares how simple approaches, can help us spice up a familiar format, allowing the Scrum Master to focus on the conversation with 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 David Wallace

David Wallace is an agile coach with 25 years of experience in the IT industry. He’s a passionate Agilist and the cohost of the Heart of Agile - Boulder meetup group. He’s currently based in Denver as a Product Delivery Coach at Xero, a New Zealand based cloud accounting software company. 

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

Sep 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.

David was working with a new part of the company that had just been acquired by his employer. This new unit had been using Agile for 2 years when David arrived, but all they had was a 2-day training by a local Agile Coach. As he started to dive in, David noticed that the team was unable to challenge the VP’s, they just took orders and never brought their creativity into the process. In this episode, we walk through a change process where this team went from being order takers to taking ownership for their work and the product. We discuss how a Scrum Master can help teams step up, even when senior managers are involved. Oh, and listen to the end, there’s a surprising change in this story! 

About David Wallace

David Wallace is an agile coach with 25 years of experience in the IT industry. He’s a passionate Agilist and the cohost of the Heart of Agile - Boulder meetup group. He’s currently based in Denver as a Product Delivery Coach at Xero, a New Zealand based cloud accounting software company. 

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

Sep 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.

In this team, we could see the team members cared for the product they were working on. However, they cared so much, they started to allow themselves to “dive into the code and refactor” at will. Eventually, that care for the product was translated into an anti-pattern: caring more about the code, than the people using the product. Does your team care more about the product than the users? In this episode, we share some tips on how to handle that Agile anti-pattern of caring more for the product than the users.

Featured Book of the Week: The human side of Agile by Gil Broza

In The human side of Agile by Gil Broza, David found insights on how to focus on the people in the team, and the organization that is adopting Agile. The book helped David understand that, even if it is tempting to focus on the tools and processes, the core of Agile adoption is focusing on people. 

In the same vein, the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast published a book that is exactly about how to focus on people in your Agile adoption. If you want to know more, download your free chapters to Shift from Product to People, a book by Michael Dougherty and Pete Oliver-Krueger.

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 David Wallace

David Wallace is an agile coach with 25 years of experience in the IT industry. He’s a passionate Agilist and the cohost of the Heart of Agile - Boulder meetup group. He’s currently based in Denver as a Product Delivery Coach at Xero, a New Zealand based cloud accounting software company. 

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

Sep 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.

David was working with a team that had just started their Agile journey. And while most of the team seemed enthusiastic, the tester/QA in the team was not happy about the new way of working. Listen in to learn how to prepare for team members that might not be keen on adopting an Agile way of working. 

About David Wallace

David Wallace is an agile coach with 25 years of experience in the IT industry. He’s a passionate Agilist and the cohost of the Heart of Agile - Boulder meetup group. He’s currently based in Denver as a Product Delivery Coach at Xero, a New Zealand based cloud accounting software company. 

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

Sep 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.

 

About Rahul Bhattacharya 

Rahul Bhattacharya is currently working as an Agile Coach at Delivery Hero. He is responsible for optimizing the ways of working within the organization, coaching others on best practices while simultaneously guiding teams working on different products. Rahul is passionate about constant learning through experimentation and feedback

You can link with Rahul Bhattacharya on LinkedIn and connect with Rahul Bhattacharya on Twitter

And check out Rahul Bhattacharya’s podcast, The Agile Atelier

Sep 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.

When it comes to planning, there’s plenty of opinions about how much is “just enough”. In this episode, we discuss this question from two different perspectives: the PO that wanted “just enough” planning, and the PO that wanted to over-plan everything in minute detail! 

The Great Product Owner: “Just enough” Planning, the secret super power of great PO’s

Great Product Owners realize that they are part of the team, and focus on helping the team continuously improve in respect to how they think about customers, and their role as product developers. In this segment, we also talk about how much is “just enough planning”, and the importance of feedback when helping develop the team.

The Bad Product Owner: Too much planning and its nasty consequences

In this segment, we talk about the PO that wants to plan everything, and in detail! We also discuss how to know when we are doing too much planning, or too little! Learning to hit the sweet spot in terms of planning is a critical enabler for team agility, and the Scrum Master can help the PO with that goal!

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 Richard Lizama

Before becoming a Scrum Master, Richard spent time as a college counselor, then a small business owner, then a tech support rep. Once he found Scrum and Agile, he knew it was where he needed to be.

You can link with Richard Lizama on LinkedIn

Sep 9, 2021

Scrum Masters do a lot of intangible things. It is not easy to assess the impact of all of those, but Richard shares some tips with us, like running surveys and asking some specific questions that help us reflect on our role.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: What went well, with a twist

Richard prefers to focus on Retrospective formats that help the team start, and continue a productive conversation. Therefore, he prefers simple formats like the traditional “what went well, not so well and what we want to change. However, Richard adds a twist at the end of this format that helps us grow great teams. Listen in to learn about Richards addition to this traditional format that helps your team grow.

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 Richard Lizama

Before becoming a Scrum Master, Richard spent time as a college counselor, then a small business owner, then a tech support rep. Once he found Scrum and Agile, he knew it was where he needed to be.

You can link with Richard Lizama on LinkedIn.

Sep 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.

In this episode, we talk about how to prepare for an Agile transformation, by preparing the Scrum Masters in the organization as they come in. The first weeks of a Scrum Master are critical for them and for the organization, so it becomes critical to learn how to onboard Scrum Masters.

About Richard Lizama

Before becoming a Scrum Master, Richard spent time as a college counselor, then a small business owner, then a tech support rep. Once he found Scrum and Agile, he knew it was where he needed to be.

You can link with Richard Lizama on LinkedIn.

Sep 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.

From the many Scrum team anti-patterns, Richard highlights the “order taker” anti-pattern. When the Scrum team accepts that the Product Owner knows everything, and gives them already pre-digested features they just need to deliver. In this episode, we discuss why some teams adopt this anti-pattern, and what we can do as Scrum Masters to help them understand what they are missing.

Featured Book of the Week: Scrum Mastery by Geoff Watts

The book Scrum Mastery by Geoff Watts, gave Richard that “aha!” moment he was looking for. In the book, Geoff Watts goes over the differences between doing a good job, and being a great Scrum Master and that helped Richard grow in the role of the Scrum Master. 

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 Richard Lizama

Before becoming a Scrum Master, Richard spent time as a college counselor, then a small business owner, then a tech support rep. Once he found Scrum and Agile, he knew it was where he needed to be.

You can link with Richard Lizama on LinkedIn.

Sep 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.

Richard’s first week on the job as a Scrum Master started with a realization that helped Richard change his stance. But not before he went through an important lesson for all newly minted Scrum Masters. Read on to learn about what you should consider in your first week, and when working with teams that have been at it for a long time!

About Richard Lizama

Before becoming a Scrum Master, Richard spent time as a college counselor, then a small business owner, then a tech support rep. Once he found Scrum and Agile, he knew it was where he needed to be.

You can link with Richard Lizama on LinkedIn

Sep 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.

Sprint Goals are a tool for the PO to communicate with the team and Stakeholders. However, not all PO’s know how to use them, or even try. When PO’s aren’t able to communicate the value to the team and stakeholders, then bad things can happen as we learn in this week’s PO anti-pattern segment.

The Great Product Owner: Using Sprint Goals as a way to collaborate and communicate with Stakeholders

Sprint goals are a tool that helps teams focus and make decisions, however, those goals don’t create themselves. A great Product Owner is able to prepare those Sprint Goals in a way that speaks to the team. In This segment, we refer to a technique by a PO that brought several possible goals to the Sprint Review, and asked the stakeholders to help them choose the right goal for the Sprint. 

In this segment, we also refer to Martin Dalmijn’s work (Martin has been a guest here on the podcast).

The Bad Product Owner: Value delivery as the focus for Product Owners 

This segment starts with a sad story, that of a PO that was fired after 9 months of work with their team. The reason: they had no way to show the value of what the team had delivered in those 9 months. A critical responsibility for a Product Owner.

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 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.

Sep 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.

Helping teams get User Stories “to Done” is Mark’s primary focus in his role as a Scrum Master. However, for that he needs to help the teams accept and adopt “empiricism” as the basis for their management of work. In this segment, we also discuss how important it is to help teams focus on “creating value”, and what that means.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: The ORID Pattern

Mark wants to help teams avoid jumping into conclusions too early, and for that he’s found the ORID pattern is a great help. The ORID pattern covers: Observe, Reflect, Inspect and Decide activities, and helps team explore data and reflect on possible options before jumping into solutions.

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 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.

Sep 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.

Sometimes, it is when the change fails that the team is ready to accept and take on that change. In this episode, we discuss the story of a team that did not want to take Sprint Goals into use. Now, many would just say “the Scrum Guide says”, however, that’s not what Mark did. He stood back, and waited. At some point something happened and the team’s perspective on that change transformed. Listen in to learn about the “waiting” method of change leadership.

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.

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