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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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?”
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.
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.
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 can’t always have the PO we want, however sometimes we get exactly what we need! In this episode, we also introduce an exercise for the team and PO to come to an agreement of how to best collaborate!
Great Product Owners can come from unexpected places. In this story, we hear about one team that thought they needed a super-experienced “heavy hitter” in their industry. Instead, they got a newbie PO that had little experience in their industry, however, that was just the right PO for that team, at that time. Listen in to learn why a newbie PO can be just the right thing for your team!
Carsten describes the “Bungie PO”, a PO that shows up briefly, but never when the team needs them. We explore some of the problems that arise from PO’s that constantly come and go, and what we can do to help the team work with the PO to establish a basis for collaboration.
In this segment, we refer to the exercise Build Your Own Scrum Master.
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 Carsten Lützen
Carsten is an Agile Coach at the LEGO Group. Before that a Scrum Master for different teams. He has a deep love of graphical facilitation and professional coaching. Besides his full-time job, he shares weekly tips on YouTube and LinkedIn on Agile, Facilitation, and Coaching.
You can link with Carsten Lützen on LinkedIn and connect with Carsten Lützen on Twitter.
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.
Beyond the necessary assessment of what happens in the team when the Scrum Master “gets hit by a bus”, there’s a few other things that Carsten looks at to assess his success as a Scrum Master. We explore the relationship between team and PO, as well as how well the team understands why what they are developing matters, and is valuable!
As Carsten puts it when we start recording: “the best Retro format is ‘a new one’”. Nevertheless, he also has a favourite format, one that makes conversations easy, and helps the team generate positive collaboration energy. His favourite format is “The Retro Wheel”, a starfish retrospective format with one addition: appreciative feedback.
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 Carsten Lützen
Carsten is an Agile Coach at the LEGO Group. Before that a Scrum Master for different teams. He has a deep love of graphical facilitation and professional coaching. Besides his full-time job, he shares weekly tips on YouTube and LinkedIn on Agile, Facilitation, and Coaching.
You can link with Carsten Lützen on LinkedIn and connect with Carsten Lützen on Twitter.
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 the story of a team that started to question the way they did estimates. The PO would use the estimations provided by the team to make a certain number of assumptions and reports that just did not correspond to reality. In the quest to solve that problem, the team started to experiment with different approaches, and naturally evolved to a #NoEstimates approach. Carsten explains the steps the team went through as well as the insights at each step. A self-organized change story on adopting #NoEstimates!
In this episode, we refer to the #NoEstimates book.
About Carsten Lützen
Carsten is an Agile Coach at the LEGO Group. Before that a Scrum Master for different teams. He has a deep love of graphical facilitation and professional coaching. Besides his full-time job, he shares weekly tips on YouTube and LinkedIn on Agile, Facilitation, and Coaching.
You can link with Carsten Lützen on LinkedIn and connect with Carsten Lützen on Twitter.
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 Carsten started as a Scrum Master, he worked with a team of brilliant developers. The team worked well, and all seemed to function. However, soon after that, Carsten started working with a second team, and the problems started. Carsten found that he had let the team to its own devices, and grew apart from the team that had been working so well. Listen in to learn what happens when Scrum Masters get too far from the teams they are supposed to help!
In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Coaching, Carsten learned some important lessons about the coaching approach and why Scrum Masters must be aware of their different stances (teaching, mentoring, coaching, and more!)
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 Carsten Lützen
Carsten is an Agile Coach at the LEGO Group. Before that a Scrum Master for different teams. He has a deep love of graphical facilitation and professional coaching. Besides his full-time job, he shares weekly tips on YouTube and LinkedIn on Agile, Facilitation, and Coaching.
You can link with Carsten Lützen on LinkedIn and connect with Carsten Lützen on Twitter.
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 this story starts, we hear about a common situation for many Scrum teams: the Sprint has just ended, and the team is “almost” ready, if they could extend the Sprint by one week they would be done. Or so they thought. In this episode, we explore the many nasty consequences that come from extending a Sprint beyond its timebox. Listen in to learn why that should never be an option for you!
About Carsten Lützen
Carsten is an Agile Coach at the LEGO Group. Before that a Scrum Master for different teams. He has a deep love of graphical facilitation and professional coaching. Besides his full-time job, he shares weekly tips on YouTube and LinkedIn on Agile, Facilitation, and Coaching.
You can link with Carsten Lützen on LinkedIn and connect with Carsten Lützen on Twitter
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 Visionary PO to the PO that was down in the weeds of an overly long backlog, we discuss two contrasting examples of a sense of clarity and focus in the PO role.
Great PO’s combine a great product Vision (and the ability to communicate it), with savvy stakeholder management and communication. Additionally, a great PO is able to work with the team to understand when it is time to “pay down” some technical debt, and makes the case towards the stakeholders.
In this segment, we refer to the Scrum Master Toolbox’s Compelling Product Vision e-course (FREE when you sign-up), and the Tetris game.
One of the main tools for PO’s is the Backlog (both Sprint and Product Backlogs). However, many PO’s aren’t able to use that tool effectively. In this segment, we talk about the PO that was not able to keep the backlog short, and explore how Scrum Masters can help PO’s manage the Backlog effectively, as if it was a garden.
[IMAGE HERE] 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 Nancy Beers
Nancy says she is here to change the world one game at a time. She plays with people to learn or unlearn things. This can either be hard skills or soft skills (aka. Human skills)
You can link with Nancy Beers on LinkedIn and connect with Nancy Beers on Twitter.
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.
While retrospectives are a critical part of the Sprint, and the team’s evolution over time, there’s a problem when “everything” gets discussed only in the retrospective. Nancy shares her perspective on the importance of team conversations during the Sprint, right when the events to be analyzed take place.
Nancy is an avid gamer, and regularly adapts and creates games to help her in her work with teams. In this segment, we talk about how we can use certain games to help teams “get out of their head”, and learn to listen to the emotions caused by certain events in the sprint.
In this segment, we refer to Rory Story Cubes, a fun tool we can use to help teams be more creative in analysing the events of the Sprint.
Do you wish you had decades of experience? Learn from the Best Scrum Masters In The World, Today! The Tips from the Trenches - Scrum Master edition audiobook includes hours of audio interviews with SM’s that have decades of 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 Nancy Beers
Nancy says she is here to change the world one game at a time. She plays with people to learn or unlearn things. This can either be hard skills or soft skills (aka. Human skills)
You can link with Nancy Beers on LinkedIn and connect with Nancy Beers on Twitter.
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.
Nancy, and her colleagues were working with a team from the customer service and account management department. As they worked more with those teams, it was clear that the “vanilla” approach would not fit those teams’ needs, so they started adapting some ideas from Scrum to that local context. In that process, they created SCROP, Scrum for Operations. Listen in to learn how you can adapt Scrum to operational teams like sales teams or customer service teams.
About Nancy Beers
Nancy says she is here to change the world one game at a time. She plays with people to learn or unlearn things. This can either be hard skills or soft skills (aka. Human skills)
You can link with Nancy Beers on LinkedIn and connect with Nancy Beers on Twitter.