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 Shaun started to work with this team, he observed that a particular, frequent pattern was disturbing the team’s ability to deliver their work: a VP would “swoop in” and distract the team, by directing them to an “urgent” request. As he investigated further, he learned that the anti-pattern had been there for a while. So the question was: what can be done differently to help the team move on from that anti-pattern?
Listen in to learn how to tackle this specific interruption anti-pattern that affects many teams!
About Shaun Bradshaw
Shaun is a founder and principal of Zenergy Technologies, a modern software delivery solutions firm that specializes in Agile, DevOps, Quality, and Automation. Shaun’s background in QA, testing, and metrics has played an important role in his work as an Agile consultant since he joined the community in 2008.
You can link with Shaun Bradshaw on LinkedIn and connect with Shaun Bradshaw on Twitter. You can also follow Shaun Bradshaw’s blog at the Zenergy Technologies site.
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.
Shaun was working with a team that was consistently failing to meet their Sprint commitments. At first glance, the team was doing everything right, the Product Owner was present and supportive. After a few failed attempts, Shaun decided to “visualize” how the team worked, by asking them to plan out a Sprint on the board. Through this technique, Shaun finally realized that the team was working as if they used Waterfall, even if they were just planning the Sprint. That insight changed the team, and changed Shaun’s approach to coaching that team! Listen in to learn how!
In Predictably irrational by Dan Ariely, Shaun found an explanation for some of the confusing observations he had made as a Scrum Master. It helped him understand that, even if some behaviors appear irrational, they can be predictable once we have the right models in mind.
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 Shaun Bradshaw
Shaun is a founder and principal of Zenergy Technologies, a modern software delivery solutions firm that specializes in Agile, DevOps, Quality, and Automation. Shaun’s background in QA, testing, and metrics has played an important role in his work as an Agile consultant since he joined the community in 2008.
You can link with Shaun Bradshaw on LinkedIn and connect with Shaun Bradshaw on Twitter. You can also follow Shaun Bradshaw’s blog at the Zenergy Technologies site.
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.
Many have, at some point, thought that the framework they used was “the Agile”. Particularly, with Scrum, many still use Scrum as a synonym to Agile. However, when we start to deepen our knowledge we learn that there are different ways to put in practice the Agile Values and Agile Principles. In this story, we explore the story where shaun finally realized that Scrum and Agile are different in critical aspects, and how that changed his stance as a Scrum Master.
About Shaun Bradshaw
Shaun is a founder and principal of Zenergy Technologies, a modern software delivery solutions firm that specializes in Agile, DevOps, Quality, and Automation. Shaun’s background in QA, testing, and metrics has played an important role in his work as an Agile consultant since he joined the community in 2008.
You can link with Shaun Bradshaw on LinkedIn and connect with Shaun Bradshaw on Twitter. You can also follow Shaun Bradshaw’s blog at the Zenergy Technologies site.
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 play a pivotal role in the success of Scrum teams, they define the Vision, and work to anticipate end user needs. But to achieve that, they - as Robbie puts it - “do all kinds of small things along the way”. In this episode, we discuss how this PO was able to put into practice some specific techniques that helped them define what needed to be done, while keeping a great relationship with the stakeholders, and keeping the trust by the team.
The Product Owner is a very demanding role, Robbie describes how this aspect is often misunderstood by people in the role. The demands of the PO role go far beyond the context of the product itself, and include many demands on the human relations and collaboration skills for the 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 Robbie Ross
Robbie is an Agile Practice Manager at Jumar Technology with a passion for working with and empowering teams to foster an Agile environment at scale. He’s also a Certified Scrum Master, Kanban practitioner and Agile community member helping teams release their genuine potential to deliver value. Quite a career shift since completing a Sports Science degree at University.
You can link with Robbie Ross on LinkedIn and connect with Robbie Ross 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.
Robbie invites us to consider the Scrum Master engagement as a game of chess. The Scrum Guide provides the rules, but the way you play the game is different every time. You learn from the past, but constantly adapt to what is there at the moment. He suggests we consider “relentless improvement” as the core focus of our reflection practice.
As we publish this episode, the heat-wave in the northern hemisphere is subsiding, and it might even be a good idea to visit the great outdoors for that important conversation with the team. Robbie describes for us an Agile Retrospective that happened outside the office, in a park near by. In this episode, we explore why that might be a good idea, and how to prepare for acing the facilitation when the office material is not readily available.
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 Robbie Ross
Robbie is an Agile Practice Manager at Jumar Technology with a passion for working with and empowering teams to foster an Agile environment at scale. He’s also a Certified Scrum Master, Kanban practitioner and Agile community member helping teams release their genuine potential to deliver value. Quite a career shift since completing a Sports Science degree at University.
You can link with Robbie Ross on LinkedIn and connect with Robbie Ross 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.
Robbie was working with a large organization, and helping a team. But he quickly noticed that there was a wider, systemic impact for the change they were asked to do. When working with the team, he suggested that they consider the stories in a “3 amigos” session before Sprint Planning. When this new practice was adopted, it was clear that a simple change like adopting the “3 amigos session” had had a large impact on the team, and the surrounding environment. Listen in, to learn how the “3 amigos” session can help your team collaborate, and define better stories. Learn more about the 3 amigos meeting from Steve Thomas and the 3 amigos session strategy by George Dinwiddie, who were some of the first to propose the practice in the agile community.
About Robbie Ross
Robbie is an Agile Practice Manager at Jumar Technology with a passion for working with and empowering teams to foster an Agile environment at scale. He’s also a Certified Scrum Master, Kanban practitioner and Agile community member helping teams release their genuine potential to deliver value. Quite a career shift since completing a Sports Science degree at University.
You can link with Robbie Ross on LinkedIn and connect with Robbie Ross 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.
Very often teams compare themselves to other teams. Even when successful, the comparison is inevitable, and sometimes even pushed/fostered by stakeholders. Robbie shares a story of a team that got stuck in the comparison of velocity with another team. And even if the team was working great, they were still trying to “achieve” the same number of story points that the other team was doing. Even when asked not to focus on the number, the team worked on getting their velocity higher, and higher, but not because they were working better, just because they were assigning more story points to the same work! In this episode, we discuss this and other anti-patterns that emerge when teams start focusing on the velocity, rather than the impact of the work they have ahead.
In Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time, by Sutherland Robbie found an inspiring book that helped him find the Scrum Master career. He describes the book as filled with solutions and valuable even for people with significant experience!
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 Robbie Ross
Robbie is an Agile Practice Manager at Jumar Technology with a passion for working with and empowering teams to foster an Agile environment at scale. He’s also a Certified Scrum Master, Kanban practitioner and Agile community member helping teams release their genuine potential to deliver value. Quite a career shift since completing a Sports Science degree at University.
You can link with Robbie Ross on LinkedIn and connect with Robbie Ross 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.
Robbie was new to the Scrum Master role at this time. As many of us do, he was focusing on the stakeholders, and what they were asking from him, and the team. When an urgent situation came up, he accepted it immediately and canceled all the Sprint ceremonies, to let the team focus on the urgent request that had come up. Quickly, the team went in their own different ways, and Robbie noticed that some team members were working on similar topics, without knowing of each other’s work. But there was more to come! Listen in, to learn what anti-patterns are likely to emerge when the team stops with the Scrum ceremonies, and focuses on their own individual work.
About Robbie Ross
Robbie is an Agile Practice Manager at Jumar Technology with a passion for working with and empowering teams to foster an Agile environment at scale. He’s also a Certified Scrum Master, Kanban practitioner and Agile community member helping teams release their genuine potential to deliver value. Quite a career shift since completing a Sports Science degree at University.
You can link with Robbie Ross on LinkedIn and connect with Robbie Ross 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.
It’s a commonly discussed topic in Agile circles. We’re frequently reminded how important it is for team performance. But how do we, as Scrum Masters, help our teams achieve that state, where they are free to express their thoughts on the challenges they face as a team without the fear of being overruled, ridiculed, or chastised for having a non-standard opinion?
In this episode, we explore Psychological Safety with Stephan Wiedner, and discuss what we can do to help create an environment where each individual can excel and help the team perform.
Back in 2007... (Full notes available at http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes)
About Stephan Wiedner
Stephan Wiedner is a psychological safety expert whose career has focused on developing sustainable high performance leaders, teams, and organizations. His passion for unleashing the collective potential of people has led him to cofound Noomii.com, the web’s largest network of independent life coaches, Skillsetter.com, the deliberate practice platform for interpersonal skills, and Zarango.com, the psychological safety training experts. Stephan has been a guest speaker for ACETech, MAGI, Marketing IMPACT Council, and many other audiences interested in psychology, business, and technology. His writing has been featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur, and other popular publications. Stephan is married with two children and enjoys spending quality time in the outdoors, hiking, biking, camping, and reading.
You can link with Stephan Wiedner 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.
Great Product Owners are able to focus the team on concrete goals that the team feels committed to achieve. They are available to the team when necessary, and through the use of clear goals gives the team the decision power on how to achieve the goals!
When Product Owners want to dictate how developers work, it can lead to conflict, and lack of motivation from the part of the team! But how to detect the more subtle ways in which PO’s try to dictate to developers the “how”? In this episode, we talk about several different aspects of this PO anti-pattern, and then discuss how Scrum Masters can evaluate how they can help the Product Owners.
[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 Ricardo Ribeiro
Ricardo is a Scrum Master (PSM) and certified Professional Scrum Product Owner™ (PSPO) with over 10 years of experience leading high-performing teams and delivering complex Transformational Programmes within the Banking, IT, Computer Hardware and Oil & Gas companies.
You can link with Ricardo Ribeiro 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.
Scrum Masters are asked to have team effectiveness in mind in their role, focusing on the value the team delivers to the business and the quality with which it does it. In that context, the success of the Scrum Master is directly linked to how well they work with the business to ensure that the business perspective is taken into account by the Product Owner and the team.
In this episode, we explore different retrospective formats that can help your team share their concerns, and hopes for improvement. We also dig deeper into the Sailboat Retrospective format and share 4 different perspectives that are implicit in that format.
[IMAGE HERE] 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 Ricardo Ribeiro
Ricardo is a Scrum Master (PSM) and certified Professional Scrum Product Owner™ (PSPO) with over 10 years of experience leading high-performing teams and delivering complex Transformational Programmes within the Banking, IT, Computer Hardware and Oil & Gas companies.
You can link with Ricardo Ribeiro 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.
Although it may be obvious for Scrum Masters that Scrum is a better alternative to Waterfall, the fact is that organizations take their time to accept even that seemingly obvious conclusion. In this episode, we explore Ricardo’s change adventure in a company that went from Waterfall to Scrum.
About Ricardo Ribeiro
Ricardo is a Scrum Master (PSM) and certified Professional Scrum Product Owner™ (PSPO) with over 10 years of experience leading high-performing teams and delivering complex Transformational Programmes within the Banking, IT, Computer Hardware and Oil & Gas companies.
You can link with Ricardo Ribeiro 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.
Ricardo was working with a team in transition from Waterfall to Scrum. This team tried to manage their Scrum process as if it was a Waterfall process, and added gates between Sprints as if they were phases in a Waterfall process. On top of that, the Product Owner - himself with a Waterfall background - wanted the team to have all the requirements defined first before starting to develop. Ricardo needed to find a way to help the team get out of the sequential, phase-based thinking. He needed to help the team evolve, but not become the “scrum cop”! In this episode, we explore how to support teams in transition from Waterfall to Scrum.
In Fixing Your Scrum by Ryan Ripley (Ryan Ripley has been a previous podcast guest) and Todd Miller, Ricardo found a book that helped him understand common challenges many teams go through, and how to overcome the problems that come with those challenges.
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 Ricardo Ribeiro
Ricardo is a Scrum Master (PSM) and certified Professional Scrum Product Owner™ (PSPO) with over 10 years of experience leading high-performing teams and delivering complex Transformational Programmes within the Banking, IT, Computer Hardware and Oil & Gas companies.
You can link with Ricardo Ribeiro 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.
Ricardo started as a traditional project manager trying to deliver projects using waterfall. With experience, he understood that the project management approach of putting the most critical decisions at the start of the project was not the right approach. However, as he started to try out Scrum with a new team, he realized that Scrum was not the solution for all the problems. He shares a very important lesson for teams in transition from waterfall to Scrum.
In this episode, we refer to the Scrum Guide, a short description of the rules of Scrum.
About Ricardo Ribeiro
Ricardo is a Scrum Master (PSM) and certified Professional Scrum Product Owner™ (PSPO) with over 10 years of experience leading high-performing teams and delivering complex Transformational Programmes within the Banking, IT, Computer Hardware and Oil & Gas companies.
You can link with Ricardo Ribeiro 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 Product Owner asked a lot of questions, because she focused on the value the organization wanted to achieve with the product or feature to be developed. Not having a technology background also helped her ask questions from the team, and getting them involved in the decision making process. In this segment, we also talk about one characteristic of the PO’s personality that is critical for the team: being focused!
This Product Owner was not able to focus, and that was visible in the backlog which was “chaotic”, without ranking or prioritization. Given that prioritization is a key aspect of the PO role, we discuss how Franny was able to help this PO figure out that prioritization needed to happen, and how she helped the PO get to a difficult, but very important prioritization of work!
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 Franziska Moenster
Franny (short for Franziska) loves seeing the power of building strong performing teams that build products in a customer centric way. She's been working as a Scrum Master/Agile Coach for over 5 years. Profiting from her hands-on experience on scaling agile across teams and her joy of trying out new things she is always inspecting and adapting on an organizational level as well! On a personal note, she has recently moved to Tenerife to follow her passion of freediving.
You can link with Franziska Moenster 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.
Franny likes to focus on what type of conversations the team members have with her during the Sprint. To evaluate her own success she asks: are the team members coming to me with uncomfortable situations and seeking my support and help? In this segment, we also talk about how we can mirror the right behaviors to the team, and that way influence their ability to share with us things that otherwise they might choose not to!
One of the common Retrospective anti-patterns is the lack of focus on defining and taking action on improvement ideas. In this segment, we talk about how to help teams focus on improvement ideas, and share one tip on how to make sure the teams engage and share their own ideas. After all, we don’t want to be the only ones talking during the 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 Franziska Moenster
Franny (short for Franziska) loves seeing the power of building strong performing teams that build products in a customer centric way. She's been working as a Scrum Master/Agile Coach for over 5 years. Profiting from her hands-on experience on scaling agile across teams and her joy of trying out new things she is always inspecting and adapting on an organizational level as well! On a personal note, she has recently moved to Tenerife to follow her passion of freediving.
You can link with Franziska Moenster 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.
Franny was working in a very traditional, and old company. She was hired to work with a small team in their Digital Transformation. If being an Agile Coach in a tech organization is hard enough, what Franny was about to face was orders of magnitude harder! However, thanks to the fact that the organization was not ready for Agile, Franny learned the importance of going through the change process with patience and persistence! Listen in to learn the process they followed in that organization, that helped them transform!
About Franziska Moenster
Franny (short for Franziska) loves seeing the power of building strong performing teams that build products in a customer centric way. She's been working as a Scrum Master/Agile Coach for over 5 years. Profiting from her hands-on experience on scaling agile across teams and her joy of trying out new things she is always inspecting and adapting on an organizational level as well! On a personal note, she has recently moved to Tenerife to follow her passion of freediving.
You can link with Franziska Moenster 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 is the story of a team that, even if they had a long history of working together, was faced with a new reality: remote work! During the pandemic years, many teams had to change from co-located work to remote work, and that change had big impacts on their work, and relationships. We discuss the lessons learned by Franny about teams that made that transition, and what is usually missing that leads to problems!
In The Five Dysfunctions Of A Team by Lencioni, Franny found a reminder that conflict is a necessary, and - if managed correctly - productive part of the team’s development. We discuss how everyone in the team has a different relationship with conflict, and why Scrum Masters should take that into account when observing, and intervening in team conflicts.
In this segment, we also talk about the book New Work needs Inner Work: Ein Handbuch für Unternehmen auf dem Weg zur Selbstorganisation, a German language book that helped Franny understand that the inner structures we have as Scrum Masters also need some work for us to be able to adapt ourselves to Agile.
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 Franziska Moenster
Franny (short for Franziska) loves seeing the power of building strong performing teams that build products in a customer centric way. She's been working as a Scrum Master/Agile Coach for over 5 years. Profiting from her hands-on experience on scaling agile across teams and her joy of trying out new things she is always inspecting and adapting on an organizational level as well! On a personal note, she has recently moved to Tenerife to follow her passion of freediving.
You can link with Franziska Moenster 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 we are starting our journey as Scrum Masters, one of the ceremonies that most scares us is the retrospective. There’s so much hanging on that ceremony, from the need to get an action that leads to improvement, to having the team engaged and everybody participating. In that context, it’s natural that we try our best and prepare extensively for the Retrospective. However, there’s a point when preparation is just too much! In this episode, we talk about what is that limit, and how to look at Retrospective facilitation in a way that leaves space for the team to take ownership, and be active in the Retrospective.
About Franziska Moenster
Franny (short for Franziska) loves seeing the power of building strong performing teams that build products in a customer centric way. She's been working as a Scrum Master/Agile Coach for over 5 years. Profiting from her hands-on experience on scaling agile across teams and her joy of trying out new things she is always inspecting and adapting on an organizational level as well! On a personal note, she has recently moved to Tenerife to follow her passion of freediving.
You can link with Franziska Moenster 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 SRE (Site Reliability Engineering) with Vlad Ukis, who’s written a book about his experience at Siemens Healthnieers’ digital health platform. His book, Establishing SRE Foundations: A Step-by-Step Guide to Introducing Site Reliability Engineering in Software Delivery Organizations, walks you through the steps to go from developing a cloud based service, to operating that service 24/7 with a method (SRE) published, and promoted by Google.
We’ve also covered this method in another episode with János Csorvási and Jeff Campbell, which is a great complement to this interview with Vlad Ukis.
In this segment, we discuss the many different aspects that we must take into account when operating live cloud-based services. Vlad describes aspects like the change leadership (who to involve and how to involve them), to the technical decisions and processes (on call service, etc.)
In this respect, it is critical to develop and deploy the appropriate methodology, including the HR related aspects (e.g. on call service) that enable the use of SRE in your organisation. Implementing SRE is one example of the end-to-end processes that Scrum Masters must be familiar with, and in some cases, help deploy in their organizations.
As the team started implementing SRE, it was quickly clear that the Product Manager (Product Owner) role would have a critical impact on the success of the teams. This led Vlad to develop an approach to align the organization, from development to operations, and established SRE as an organizational initiative.
In this segment, we also discuss what happens when operations are kept apart from the product development cycle. A problem that SRE tries to eliminate. The topic of organizational alignment is also extensively discussed in the episode with János Csorvási and Jeff Campbell.
Vlad shares with us that many organizations try to adopt SRE after a major incident. At that time, everyone is in a hurry and the results will be heavily influenced by that urgency. It’s important for organizations operating live systems to be able to prepare for the transition. In the book, Vlad discusses how to prepare your organization for the adoption of SRE before any major problem happens. In this segment, we explore some of the key change leadership topics that determine the level of readiness for adopting SRE.
If you want to explore more, Vlad participated in an interview with InfoQ, and you can check out his interview here:
You can purchase the book on Amazon: Establishing SRE Foundations: A Step-by-Step Guide to Introducing Site Reliability Engineering in Software Delivery Organizations by Vlad Ukis
About Vlad Ukis
Vlad is a leader of R&D and reliability lead at Siemens Healthineers. In this capacity, he drives Continuous Delivery, SRE, and DevRel transformation, helping this large distributed development organization evolve architecture, deployment, testing, operations, and culture to implement these new processes at scale.
You can link with Vlad Ukis 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 was new to the organization, and didn’t have a lot of knowledge about the product. However, that was not an obstacle for this Product Owner. She took that as an opportunity to ask question, and learn as much as possible from the team. Because of that learning journey, she also learned to be present, and help the team answer some critical questions. Even if she did not know the answer to those questions, she was able to find out who else to involve, and helped the team at the same time as she discovered the product herself.
In this segment, we refer to the book Fish! By Stephen Lundin, and how the PO exemplified the model described in the book: Play, Make the Day, Be There, Choose Your Attitude!
This was a marketing team working with a sales tool. The Product Owner decided by themselves that the team was “not going fast enough”, and started asking some team members to “work on this project during your lunch break”. When that was found out by the rest of the team, the team felt betrayed, and started to disengage from the work! Listen in to learn how Juan helped the team overcome this disengagement, and how a different attitude completely transformed the team’s attitude!
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 Juan Rodriguez
Juan started his career as a Drafter. He then transitioned to Engineering IT support, eventually landing in software development. His first introduction to agile-like practices was in 2014, which did not go that well. A few years later, Juan was introduced to Scrum, where he now enjoys being a Scrum Master.
You can link with Juan Rodriguez 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.
There’s progressive journey to independence for every Scrum team. At first they will need a lot more support, with reflection, with ownership and, in some cases, even with decision making. However, as Juan puts it, at some point they will still want our help, but will at the same time be ready to be fully independent. That is the moment of “success” for Juan. In this episode, we discuss some of the techniques we can use to encourage, and even foster that independence!
One of the steps in the Retrospective lineup is “collecting data”, the Timeline Retro is a format that helps the team be part of that process, by collecting data points throughout the whole sprint, ahead of the retrospective. This format helps the team feel involved in the process of finding and removing obstacles.
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 Juan Rodriguez
Juan started his career as a Drafter. He then transitioned to Engineering IT support, eventually landing in software development. His first introduction to agile-like practices was in 2014, which did not go that well. A few years later, Juan was introduced to Scrum, where he now enjoys being a Scrum Master.
You can link with Juan Rodriguez 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.
The company that Juan worked for had started an Agile transformation. Some time after that, Juan was asked to evaluate the transformation. As he looked into what was going on, he started to note that the teams were being asked to change, but the rest of the organization was still sticking to the old processes. That’s when Juan thought of a video he had seen: the backward bike, which helped him explain to his stakeholders what was missing! WARNING: this backward bike video is addictive, don’t watch it unless you have 10min to waste!!!!!!
About Juan Rodriguez
Juan started his career as a Drafter. He then transitioned to Engineering IT support, eventually landing in software development. His first introduction to agile-like practices was in 2014, which did not go that well. A few years later, Juan was introduced to Scrum, where he now enjoys being a Scrum Master.
You can link with Juan Rodriguez 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.
Juan was working with a marketing team. This team was divided between China and the USA, and on top of that, the team did not share a language. While the USA part of the team used English to communicate, the China based portion of the team would not feel comfortable with English in all situations, and preferred to use Chinese. This meant that the manager, who spoke Chinese, quickly became the bottleneck in communication, as she needed to translate all the conversations in the team. Juan had a problem to solve: how to help a team communicate regularly (in the daily meeting) without the manager having to be in the middle? Listen in to learn what Juan tried, and what eventually unblocked the communication between the team members!
Fish! By Stephen Lundin, is a book that uses the story of the fish market in Seattle, to show how teams can become happier and more productive. In this section, we also refer to The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey, a book that helped Juan introduce the role of the Scrum Master using a metaphor that even non-technical people can understand.
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 Juan Rodriguez
Juan started his career as a Drafter. He then transitioned to Engineering IT support, eventually landing in software development. His first introduction to agile-like practices was in 2014, which did not go that well. A few years later, Juan was introduced to Scrum, where he now enjoys being a Scrum Master.
You can link with Juan Rodriguez 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 story starts with what was supposed to be a normal, routine daily standup. However, that was not to happen. Two team members started a shouting match that left Juan confused, and surprised. Listen in to learn what happened next, and how to prepare for those, unexpected, but eventually unavoidable conflicts that Scrum Masters will face!
About Juan Rodriguez
Juan started his career as a Drafter. He then transitioned to Engineering IT support, eventually landing in software development. His first introduction to agile-like practices was in 2014, which did not go that well. A few years later, Juan was introduced to Scrum, where he now enjoys being a Scrum Master.
You can link with Juan Rodriguez on LinkedIn.