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.
Kirill talks about how important it is for Scrum Masters to build a close understanding and trusting relationship with the product owner (PO), and how that relationship is critical for the success of the team. He emphasizes that if there is no chemistry between the Scrum Master and PO, it's better not to join that team. When there is good chemistry, the team will benefit much more from both Scrum Master’s and PO’s presence.
Kirill also stresses that the PO needs to have guts and be clear about prioritizing the backlog. He warns against the anti-pattern of conflict between the Scrum Master and PO.
In this segment, Kirill shares why he thinks that the PO role is a cornerstone role in Scrum and without a PO, a Scrum team cannot even get started properly. We explore how POs that come from the project management field, often have a project management mindset, which hinders their ability to grasp the PO role.
Kirill shares an example of 3 POs for one team who were new to the role and to Agile. The POs did not trust the team to self-manage, and wanted to control everything by telling the team what they had to work on, and when. We discuss how we can help the PO understand that it helps the team to trust and help them self-manage. We also refer to the concepts of Theory X and Theory Y and how, knowing about that can help the PO's understand their role as a leader.
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 Kirill Golubev
Kirill considers himself an Agile and common-sense apologist. He wants to see simple processes in place, when people self-organize and manage themselves without constant push from management.
You can link with Kirill Golubev 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, Kirill discusses the difficulty of measuring the value of a Scrum Master and how success is ultimately tied to the success of the team. He emphasizes the importance of paying attention to retrospective preparation and capturing concerns expressed by the team. Kirill measures his own success and that of the team by the value delivered to a satisfied customer.
In this segment, Kirill discusses the importance of using different retrospective formats depending on what the team wants to achieve and the inputs involved. He mentions examples such as the hot air balloon and sailboat retrospectives, which can visually illustrate the key principles of Agile and help the team reflect on how they implement those. Kirill emphasizes the importance of avoiding the use of hard vocabulary in retrospectives, and making sure that everyone, including those unfamiliar with Agile, can actively participate and benefit from the session.
Retrospectives, planning sessions, vision workshops, we are continuously helping teams learn about how to collaborate in practice! In this Actionable Agile Tools book, Jeff Campbell shares some of the tools he’s learned over a decade of coaching Agile Teams. The pragmatic coaching book you need, right now! Buy Actionable Agile Tools on Amazon, or directly from the author, and supercharge your facilitation toolbox!
About Kirill Golubev
Kirill considers himself an Agile and common-sense apologist. He wants to see simple processes in place, when people self-organize and manage themselves without constant push from management.
You can link with Kirill Golubev 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, Kirill shares the story of when he was a Scrum Master in the pharmaceutical industry, and learned some important lessons about being a change agent in an organization. He highlights the importance of having the team's support and readiness when implementing any change. Kirill also emphasizes the value of training management to showcase the benefits of Agile to them.
Kirill believes that Scrum Masters have a revolutionary role in bringing change to the workplace and that it's essential to define a Scrum Master vision and have a mentor to understand critical things that are necessary for success in the role.
As Scrum Master we work with change continuously! Do you have your own change framework that provides the guidance, and queues you need when working with change? The Lean Change Management framework is a fully defined, lean-startup inspired change framework that can be used as the backbone of any change process! You can buy Lean Change Management the book at Amazon. Also available in French, Spanish, German and Portuguese.
About Kirill Golubev
Kirill considers himself an Agile and common-sense apologist. He wants to see simple processes in place, when people self-organize and manage themselves without constant push from management.
You can link with Kirill Golubev 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, Kirill Golubev shares the story of a team that entered an unresolvable conflict. It all started small, with discussions on what framework and technology to use for the front-end. One person suggested that the decision was not optimal, but this person was not the lead developer. The team had other developers who had been together for a while and felt very united, and they started to push back against this developer's comments and disagreement.
Unfortunately, the situation escalated, and it led to nearly-physical confrontation. Kirill was not prepared to see the conflict grow that big, although there were other conflicts in the team that were positive and constructive. Even when he tried to address the topic in the team retrospectives, there were no specific action steps to address the conflict issue. Overall, Kirill's story highlights the importance of addressing conflicts proactively, especially when there are disagreements among team members. It's essential to have clear action steps to resolve conflicts and prevent them from escalating.
Kirill Golubev mentioned "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck" by Mark Manson as the book that most influenced him. He highlighted the Pareto rule, which states that 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes, and in that context, he stressed the importance of being selective in daily work and identifying which actions bring the most value, which is similar to prioritizing the backlog for Product Owners.
In addition, Kirill emphasized the need to take the smallest step possible to deliver the most value, which is crucial in Agile. Overall, the book helped Kirill understand the importance of prioritizing and identifying the most valuable tasks, which is essential for Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches.
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 Kirill Golubev
Kirill considers himself an Agile and common-sense apologist. He wants to see simple processes in place, when people self-organize and manage themselves without constant push from management.
You can link with Kirill Golubev 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 the podcast episode, Kirill Golubev shares a story of a team he was working with, which had grown larger. As they grew larger, they added a second and a third product manager. However, this led to constant fighting for priorities among the product managers. What was worse, the product managers were organized around components, rather than features, which caused even more conflicts, and delays in delivery for the team.
In this episode, we talk about the importance of having only one Product Owner working on the backlog. In that situation, the team adopted the Nexus framework to scale their approach to Scrum and created three different teams for the three different components. This was not optimal, but helped to avoid the biggest PO anti-patterns.
Finally, Kirill emphasizes the importance of building agreements between teams and Product Owners to ensure a successful outcome. Overall, Kirill's story highlights the challenges that can arise when a team grows too large and the importance of effective communication and collaboration between Product Owners, Scrum Master, and teams.
Recovering from failure, or difficult moments is a critical skill for Scrum Masters. Not only because of us, but also because the teams, and stakeholders we work with will also face these moments! We need inspiring stories to help them, and ourselves! The Bungsu Story, is an inspiring story by Marcus Hammarberg which shows how a Coach can help organizations recover even from the most disastrous situations! Learn how Marcus helped The Bungsu, a hospital in Indonesia, recover from near-bankruptcy, twice! Using Lean and Agile methods to rebuild an organization and a team! An inspiring story you need to know about! Buy the book on Amazon: The Bungsu Story - How Lean and Kanban Saved a Small Hospital in Indonesia. Twice. and Can Help You Reshape Work in Your Company.
About Kirill Golubev
Kirill considers himself an Agile and common-sense apologist. He wants to see simple processes in place, when people self-organize and manage themselves without constant push from management.
You can link with Kirill Golubev 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 Jim Benson
A pioneer in applying Lean and Kanban to knowledge work, Jim is the creator of Personal Kanban and co-author of Personal Kanban: Mapping Work | Navigating Life, winner of the Shingo Research and Publication Award. His other books include Why Plans Fail, Why Limit WIP, and Beyond Agile. He is the CEO of Modus Cooperandi, and co-founder of Modus Institute. For the past two decades Jim has worked at uncovering ways for individuals and groups to communicate, collaborate, and find clarity in unpredictable and amorphous environments.
You can link with Jim Benson on LinkedIn and connect with Jim Benson 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.
A great product owner, according to Alina, is someone who is knowledgeable and confident about the product they are overseeing. They build trust within the team by being respectful and involving everyone in decision-making processes. The ability to move the team forward is an important characteristic of a great PO. In order to support a PO, Alina suggests having open communication and avoiding assumptions. A great PO opens the door for discussion and finding ways to help the team succeed.
In this segment, Alina describes a conversation with a scrum team about their Product Owner. The team agreed that their product owner was very bossy, dictating decisions and pushing the team. This kind of behavior from a product owner can create conflict, as the team is not involved in decision making and the product owner is not considering the needs of the team.
The relationship between the product owner and the team, as well as the relationship between the product owner and the scrum master, is critical to the success of a project. Alina offered tips on how to address this issue, such as talking with the product owner to understand their role and finding ways to support them in finding their potential. She also recommended resources such as the Product Owner Summit and the book "Scrum Product Ownership" by Bob Galen to help better understand the leadership roles of both the product owner and 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 Alina Thapliyal
Alina is the Scrum Master for a team within the public sector. Her aspiration is to become an agile coach. She grew up in Romania and has been living in Germany for 13 years. She loves jogging, reading and actively listening to people’s life stories.
You can link with Alina Thapliyal 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.
Our personal experiences will shape the approach we take to the role of the Scrum Master. Alina recalls her childhood where she always had the urge to motivate people around her. Later in life she never lost the drive to help people find their potential. As a Scrum Master, she believes that it is important to remember that before being a leader in any capacity, one is a human being and therefore, it's essential to bring our humanity to work. She suggests starting with small acts of kindness, such as being there for your team when they need you, creating a kudos board to show appreciation, and conducting a discovery type of meeting to focus on personal and team strengths and motivation. The goal is to remind the team of their strengths and overcome the fear of problems.
In this segment, Alina highlights the importance of alternating between different types of retrospectives to keep things fresh and engaging. At times, a prepared template can be helpful, while at other times, an open conversation with very little formality, may be the best option. Alina also suggests that sometimes, it’s better to just give the team time, as there are situations when people need time to understand a problem. When focusing on enabling an open conversation, and deciding on the topic of the retrospective, Alina suggests collecting topics during the sprint and bringing them to the retrospective. To add even more dynamism, and creativity to the retrospective, we can also rotate the facilitator role, as that bring many different perspectives to the conversation.
Retrospectives, planning sessions, vision workshops, we are continuously helping teams learn about how to collaborate in practice! In this Actionable Agile Tools book, Jeff Campbell shares some of the tools he’s learned over a decade of coaching Agile Teams. The pragmatic coaching book you need, right now! Buy Actionable Agile Tools on Amazon, or directly from the author, and supercharge your facilitation toolbox!
About Alina Thapliyal
Alina is the Scrum Master for a team within the public sector. Her aspiration is to become an agile coach. She grew up in Romania and has been living in Germany for 13 years. She loves jogging, reading and actively listening to people’s life stories.
You can link with Alina Thapliyal 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, Alina explains the idea of the "law of attraction" and how aligning yourself with what you want can bring it into your life. Alina shares her personal experience of becoming a Scrum Master and her journey to bring agility to her organization. She initially felt overwhelmed and struggled to understand and apply Agile. However, all that changed after her participation in the Agile Online Summit, she learned to ask questions and see the opportunities. Alina emphasizes the importance of finding peace and enjoying the process of change, rather than feeling overwhelmed.
In this episode, Alina refers to the book The Secret by Rhonda Byrne.
As Scrum Master we work with change continuously! Do you have your own change framework that provides the guidance, and queues you need when working with change? The Lean Change Management framework is a fully defined, lean-startup inspired change framework that can be used as the backbone of any change process! You can buy Lean Change Management the book at Amazon. Also available in French, Spanish, German and Portuguese.
About Alina Thapliyal
Alina is the Scrum Master for a team within the public sector. Her aspiration is to become an agile coach. She grew up in Romania and has been living in Germany for 13 years. She loves jogging, reading and actively listening to people’s life stories.
You can link with Alina Thapliyal 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.
Alina was a scrum master for a platform team responsible for building infrastructure. The team faced a challenge when delivering an increment of their product, which happened to be a document. The team struggled with stories that would just take too long to complete, and the associated problems that arose in the PI event and the retrospectives. Alina felt frustrated with the long stories, but eventually found a training that taught the team how to write a concept more efficiently.
By focusing on the success factors from that training, and documenting what helped them write the concept more quickly, the team was able to find a new perspective on the problem they were facing. They applied the "double loop learning" concept by focusing on why a problem exists rather than how to solve it. The team used a quadrant to gain an overview of the concept document, which helped them progress. Alina's tip is to find a way to get a different perspective on the problem you are facing, which can lead to positive outcomes.
In Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life...And Maybe the World by Amiral William McRaven, Alina found a book that reminded her that small habits, small gestures can have a very large impact on ourselves and the people we work with. The book shares 10 things you can do to change the world, or yourself, and helps the reader learn the impact of learning to face our own fears.
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 Alina Thapliyal
Alina is the Scrum Master for a team within the public sector. Her aspiration is to become an agile coach. She grew up in Romania and has been living in Germany for 13 years. She loves jogging, reading and actively listening to people’s life stories.
You can link with Alina Thapliyal 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.
Alina was excited about her first assignment as a Scrum Master and had even prepared a training to help the team, who was also new to Agile. However, when the team started having remote calls for the daily, it became a struggle. Although everyone knew WHAT to do, they didn't know HOW to do it. At first the meetings were quiet, no one knew what to say, but as the team started to learn more about the daily, they wanted to participate so much that the meetings started to be too long, even close to one hour! Alina realized that the team expected her, as the Scrum Master, to do something to facilitate the meeting, but she was hesitant to interrupt, being polite and focused on problem solving as a Scrum Master and part-time developer.
After one of those very long daily meetings, a new colleague commented on the meetings being too long. This helped Alina reflect on the situation and realize she needed to act. In the following retrospective, the team talked about making the daily shorter, and over time, the daily improved. Alina learned that as a Scrum Master, she could let the team go until they realized they needed to act. Even if it took time to get there, the daily meetings became better over time and the improvement was pushed by the team themselves.
Recovering from failure, or difficult moments is a critical skill for Scrum Masters. Not only because of us, but also because the teams, and stakeholders we work with will also face these moments! We need inspiring stories to help them, and ourselves! The Bungsu Story, is an inspiring story by Marcus Hammarberg which shows how a Coach can help organizations recover even from the most disastrous situations! Learn how Marcus helped The Bungsu, a hospital in Indonesia, recover from near-bankruptcy, twice! Using Lean and Agile methods to rebuild an organization and a team! An inspiring story you need to know about! Buy the book on Amazon: The Bungsu Story - How Lean and Kanban Saved a Small Hospital in Indonesia. Twice. and Can Help You Reshape Work in Your Company.
About Alina Thapliyal
Alina is the Scrum Master for a team within the public sector. Her aspiration is to become an agile coach. She grew up in Romania and has been living in Germany for 13 years. She loves jogging, reading and actively listening to people’s life stories.
You can link with Alina Thapliyal 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 segment, Gemma highlights the importance of a great Product Owner (PO) in agile methodologies. A great PO is always asking "why", and is constantly seeking to understand the value of the product and the work being done by the team. Gemma describes a PO that came into a team that was maintaining a product, but with their focus on value and constant seeking of feedback, they were able to pivot and make improvements based on data and customer feedback. The PO was able to maintain a great relationship with the team by always listening and acting on feedback from the outside.
The PO focused on collecting metrics to validate their ideas and make data-driven decisions. By being able to listen to and act on feedback, the PO was able to make quicker and better decisions that were in line with the needs and wants of the customer. This ability to listen and act on feedback is a superpower for any PO and is key to their success in agile methodologies.
In this segment, Gemma discussed a common anti-pattern in product ownership, where the Product Owner may not feel empowered to make decisions. This can result in the team looking for clarity from other sources and the PO not feeling like they are part of the team. Gemma recounted out a real-life scenario where a PO manager became involved in the product development process and started imposing ideas onto the backlog. The manager believed they were supporting the PO and team but this resulted in the PO becoming a silent voice in the team.
To address this issue, Gemma offered several tips. She advised sharing observations with the manager to help them reflect on their behavior, separating behavior from consequences, and avoiding assumptions about others' thoughts. It is important to clarify the consequences of the behavior, in this case, the PO not feeling confident enough to make decisions on the product. By taking these steps, Gemma aimed to help others resolve similar challenges in product ownership.
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 Gemma Murray
Gemma works as an Agile Coach for MOO, a branding company whose vision is to provide 'Great design for everyone'. Having worked in various change roles using both waterfall and agile approaches throughout her career, Gemma believes in the diversity of teams to unlock innovation, creativity and delivering value.
You can link with Gemma Murray 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, Gemma discusses her work as an agile coach at Moo and how they measure the impact they have on the organization. She emphasizes that feedback is important but measurement helps us reflect and grow. When it comes to defining success, she shares that to measure the impact of their coaching, the coaches at Moo use engagement surveys that touch on Scrum values and use one or two of the survey questions to build their agile coach OKR's. These metrics provide a lagging indicator but at the same time, they help the coaches define shorter term actions, and metrics, and eventually the OKR’s help measure their impact on a longer time scale.
In addition to using engagement surveys, they also use collaboration questions for which they ask an evaluation on a 1-5 scale to measure the level of collaboration among teams towards a shared goal. The collaboration questions align with their OKR’s as Agile Coaches and help them to see the impact they are having on the organization.
In this segment, Gemma shares her favorite approach to conducting agile retrospectives. She emphasizes the importance of keeping the format simple, especially for new teams or teams that are adapting to retrospectives. Gemma shares one example, where she uses a smiley face column, a sad face column, and a question mark column to initiate a wide-ranging conversation and to capture various types of feedback and perspectives. To complement the conversation, she captures the action items that the team wants to put into practice, using frameworks such as CAT (Concrete, Attainable, Timely) and SMART. Gemma views retrospectives as a conversational format and emphasizes the importance of asking "what's the next immediate step?" and making small changes that have a big impact. Additionally, she mentions the 15% solutions from liberating structures and Toyota Kata as helpful tools in facilitating agile retrospectives.
Retrospectives, planning sessions, vision workshops, we are continuously helping teams learn about how to collaborate in practice! In this Actionable Agile Tools book, Jeff Campbell shares some of the tools he’s learned over a decade of coaching Agile Teams. The pragmatic coaching book you need, right now! Buy Actionable Agile Tools on Amazon, or directly from the author, and supercharge your facilitation toolbox!
About Gemma Murray
Gemma works as an Agile Coach for MOO, a branding company whose vision is to provide 'Great design for everyone'. Having worked in various change roles using both waterfall and agile approaches throughout her career, Gemma believes in the diversity of teams to unlock innovation, creativity and delivering value.
You can link with Gemma Murray 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, Gemma discussed the concept of organizational change and how to approach it in an effective and practical way. She emphasized the importance of starting with small commitments, using the example of a team struggling with capacity and carrying issues from sprint to sprint. Gemma suggested asking for a commitment from the team to try a new approach for three sprints, as the first sprint may feel clunky, the second sprint will have less cognitive load, and the third sprint will provide empirical data to assess the impact.
She also shared her approach to making changes in large organizations, by seeking a small set of volunteer teams to try out the change and give feedback. This method helps to make the change practical, removes resistance, and gives empirical data for reassessment. Overall, Gemma emphasized the importance of giving change a chance by committing to trying it for three sprints before making a final decision. This "give it 3 sprints" mantra Gemma shares with us is not only helpful when collecting data but also energizes the team and removes resistance.
As Scrum Master we work with change continuously! Do you have your own change framework that provides the guidance, and queues you need when working with change? The Lean Change Management framework is a fully defined, lean-startup inspired change framework that can be used as the backbone of any change process! You can buy Lean Change Management the book at Amazon. Also available in French, Spanish, German and Portuguese.
About Gemma Murray
Gemma works as an Agile Coach for MOO, a branding company whose vision is to provide 'Great design for everyone'. Having worked in various change roles using both waterfall and agile approaches throughout her career, Gemma believes in the diversity of teams to unlock innovation, creativity and delivering value.
You can link with Gemma Murray 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, Gemma discusses a project where the team was building a database of customer data and a UI to interact with that data. The team was highly motivated and excited about the solution they had come up with, but slowly started to conflate the solution with the outcome. They became so focused on the "one big idea" that they struggled to let go, which resulted in burnout for some team members. The team was great at inspection but not at adaptation.
To avoid this type of situation, Gemma suggests seeking outside perspectives and speaking with your peers. As a Scrum Master, she fell victim to the team's energy in the beginning, but realized something was wrong and sought insights from an Agile Coach. It is important not to get too focused on the work without thinking about the process, and seeking outside perspectives can help to prevent this. To get different perspectives, and get out of the day-to-day work focus, why not join our podcast community to network and seek additional perspectives? Join us here.
In Scrum Mastery By Geoff Watts (Geoff was a previous guest on the podcast), Gemma found a reminder that, even if the Scrum Master role can sometimes be seen as “the facilitator”, in practice it is much more than that. In this segment, we also talk about the book Right to Left: The digital leader's guide to Lean and Agile by Mike Burrows, that helps Scrum Masters understand how they contribute to the production of value in their role.
In this segment, we also refer to the book Lean UX, whose authors were previous guests on the podcast: Jeff Gothelf, and Josh Seiden, and about Lean in general, an approach that can inspire how we implement Scrum in practice.
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 Gemma Murray
Gemma works as an Agile Coach for MOO, a branding company whose vision is to provide 'Great design for everyone'. Having worked in various change roles using both waterfall and agile approaches throughout her career, Gemma believes in the diversity of teams to unlock innovation, creativity and delivering value.
You can link with Gemma Murray 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, Gemma shares her experience with a project where she learned the importance of being comfortable with failure. One of the first projects she was involved with had a new PO role and the PO was a former project manager who did not understand the differences between the two roles. This lack of understanding caused the PO to not feel part of the team, resulting in a vacuum of decision-making on the day-to-day tasks and lack of help with backlog refinement, which led to blockers creeping in.
To resolve the issue, Gemma set up a coaching relationship with the PO and shared her observations. The PO was eager to learn and the relationship improved. However, Gemma found herself taking on some PO responsibilities, which was a sign of overstepping. She learned two important lessons from this experience: 1) prioritize the PO relationship and have a 1-on-1 relationship with the PO as they are one of the two pillars that support the team and 2) be more explicit about the coaching and support you will be providing and align expectations with the PO. Gemma emphasizes that every PO is different and it is important to adapt to what they need to be great Product Owners.
In this episode, we refer to the Coach Your PO e-course, which helps Scrum Master setup and be ready for a coaching relationship with their Product Owner.
Recovering from failure, or difficult moments is a critical skill for Scrum Masters. Not only because of us, but also because the teams, and stakeholders we work with will also face these moments! We need inspiring stories to help them, and ourselves! The Bungsu Story, is an inspiring story by Marcus Hammarberg which shows how a Coach can help organizations recover even from the most disastrous situations! Learn how Marcus helped The Bungsu, a hospital in Indonesia, recover from near-bankruptcy, twice! Using Lean and Agile methods to rebuild an organization and a team! An inspiring story you need to know about! Buy the book on Amazon: The Bungsu Story - How Lean and Kanban Saved a Small Hospital in Indonesia. Twice. and Can Help You Reshape Work in Your Company.
About Gemma Murray
Gemma works as an Agile Coach for MOO, a branding company whose vision is to provide 'Great design for everyone'. Having worked in various change roles using both waterfall and agile approaches throughout her career, Gemma believes in the diversity of teams to unlock innovation, creativity and delivering value.
You can link with Gemma Murray on LinkedIn.
Tinatin highlights the key traits of a good Product Owner (PO) in this segment. She emphasizes that great PO's are knowledgeable about the product they are working on, as well as its competitors. This knowledge helps the PO to understand what the team needs in order to deliver the best possible product. The PO should be hands-on with the team, and should work closely with them on defining clear acceptance criteria. This helps the team to understand what is expected of them and enables the PO to be more effective in their role.
Tinatin also notes that a great PO is easy to work with and has a good synergy with the team. She mentions that the synergy between the PO and the team is a telling factor in the team's success. She stresses that there's not only one way to be a great PO, as different PO's can have different approaches to the role, but when a PO combines knowledge about the product and its competitors with a hands-on approach to working with the team, the result is an awesome PO.
In this segment, Tinatin starts by questioning the essence of the PO role and highlights the importance of commitment and ownership of the product for a team's success. Tinatin emphasizes that a PO should have a clear vision and evolve it based on data and feedback. She stresses the need for a PO to have a foot in both development and business and to be hands-on with the product. As a Scrum Master, Tinatin suggests testing the product and making time to play with it to help the PO understand it better. She also suggests sitting down with the PO to build a roadmap for the product and to ask why they value certain features or deliveries. Lastly, Tinatin highlights the importance of the PO being able to sell the ideas in the backlog to the Scrum team and recommends using tools to help the PO take a more active role with the team. Tinatin also mentions the books by Roman Pichler as resources for Scrum Masters and Product Owners.
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 Tinatin Tabidze
Tinatin Tabidze is a Scrum Master currently working in Stuttgart, Germany. Originally she started out as a project manager. She has experience with multiple scrum and kanban teams, working with scaled agile frameworks.
You can link with Tinatin Tabidze 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 podcast episode, Tinatin focuses on the idea that the less a scrum master is needed, the more successful they are. She emphasizes the importance of helping teams become more self-organizing and notes that the path to achieving this will vary for each team. Tinatin stresses the role of the product owner in promoting self-organization, and she suggests checking the team's level of participation in ceremonies as a starting point for evaluating the team's self-organization. She also encourages scrum masters to be honest about any areas where the team may be lacking in self-organization, and to discuss these areas with the team in retrospectives. Tinatin reminds scrum masters to keep themselves accountable for the level of self-organization in their team, and asks the question of how to take teams to the next level.
Tinatin discusses the Spotify squad health check, a process of self-reflection for a team to evaluate their performance. She emphasizes the importance of regularly conducting health checks and tailoring retrospectives to the current sprint. Tinatin suggests using ice breakers to start the health check, then moving into an inspection of the completed sprint by checking metrics and the improvement backlog. She emphasizes the importance of evaluating what happened in the last sprint to identify areas for improvement.
Retrospectives, planning sessions, vision workshops, we are continuously helping teams learn about how to collaborate in practice! In this Actionable Agile Tools book, Jeff Campbell shares some of the tools he’s learned over a decade of coaching Agile Teams. The pragmatic coaching book you need, right now! Buy Actionable Agile Tools on Amazon, or directly from the author, and supercharge your facilitation toolbox!
About Tinatin Tabidze
Tinatin Tabidze is a Scrum Master currently working in Stuttgart, Germany. Originally she started out as a project manager. She has experience with multiple scrum and kanban teams, working with scaled agile frameworks.
You can link with Tinatin Tabidze 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.
Tinatin highlights the importance of being proactive in change. She stresses the need to be aware of what can be changed in one's role and in the team, and to talk to the manager and peers to assess the changes needed.
Working with her colleagues in a change team, they decided to create a framework/guide for scaling agile in that company and with the teams involved. The process involves finding the need, identifying the source of the need, minimizing dependencies when scaling, accepting and preparing for initial failures, being one's own critic, staying focused on the change, defining a clear picture of where they want to be, and presenting data to the team to help them reflect and define the changes they want to commit to. Tinatin's tip is to listen to the team, present data, but avoid jumping to conclusions and let the team come up with their own interpretation. A challenge that we should take on as Scrum Masters!
As Scrum Master we work with change continuously! Do you have your own change framework that provides the guidance, and queues you need when working with change? The Lean Change Management framework is a fully defined, lean-startup inspired change framework that can be used as the backbone of any change process! You can buy Lean Change Management the book at Amazon. Also available in French, Spanish, German and Portuguese.
About Tinatin Tabidze
Tinatin Tabidze is a Scrum Master currently working in Stuttgart, Germany. Originally she started out as a project manager. She has experience with multiple scrum and kanban teams, working with scaled agile frameworks.
You can link with Tinatin Tabidze 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.
Tinatin discusses the importance of the scrum values in a team and how well the team is living those values. She highlights the importance of team health checks to identify inefficiencies, which can often result from a lack of collaboration and trust between team members. Tinatin uses the example of the Spotify Squad health check (mentioned several times here on the podcast) that reveals a lack of trust between developers and testers, and offers tips for identifying a lack of trust in a team, such as monitoring levels of comfort among team members, monitoring communication, and observing meetings for signs of discomfort or silence.
In Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Sutherland, the author describes how to optimize work through Agile methodology and Scrum principles. In this episode, Tinatin also refers to Scaling Lean and Agile Development by Craig Larman, and Bas Vodde. Bas Vodde has been a previous guest on the podcast. And she also refers to Strategize: Product Strategy and Product Roadmap Practices for the Digital Age by Roman Pichler.
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About Tinatin Tabidze
Tinatin Tabidze is a Scrum Master currently working in Stuttgart, Germany. Originally she started out as a project manager. She has experience with multiple scrum and kanban teams, working with scaled agile frameworks.
You can link with Tinatin Tabidze 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.
Tinatin, a non-technical scrum master, faced challenges in her role due to unfamiliar terminology and the desire to contribute actively, and from the start. She faced a tough learning curve while implementing an authentication and authorization system for a fintech company. At the same time, her team was unable to deliver at the end of each sprint. For her own learning as well as to help the team, she helped the team create a roadmap with an emphasis on visualization. This roadmap was used by the team to communicate deliveries to stakeholders and understand project delays.
As junior scrum masters, we may face situations like this. Tinatin suggests that, at the start, technical knowledge is not necessary, but over time it is important to be adaptable and participate in technical discussions as scrum masters change from team to team, and participate in different technical domains.
Recovering from failure, or difficult moments is a critical skill for Scrum Masters. Not only because of us, but also because the teams, and stakeholders we work with will also face these moments! We need inspiring stories to help them, and ourselves! The Bungsu Story, is an inspiring story by Marcus Hammarberg which shows how a Coach can help organizations recover even from the most disastrous situations! Learn how Marcus helped The Bungsu, a hospital in Indonesia, recover from near-bankruptcy, twice! Using Lean and Agile methods to rebuild an organization and a team! An inspiring story you need to know about! Buy the book on Amazon: The Bungsu Story - How Lean and Kanban Saved a Small Hospital in Indonesia. Twice. and Can Help You Reshape Work in Your Company.
About Tinatin Tabidze
Tinatin Tabidze is a Scrum Master currently working in Stuttgart, Germany. Originally she started out as a project manager. She has experience with multiple scrum and kanban teams, working with scaled agile frameworks.
You can link with Tinatin Tabidze 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 can have a technical background, and use it to the team’s and their own advantage. Bram notes that the PO’s understanding of the impact of technical debt makes it easier for them to understand the team’s struggles. Leading to productive conversations, and the team being given time to handle technical debt issues.
Bram advises that a great Product Owner should be present and available to the team, sitting down with them during lunch breaks to discuss issues and concerns. He suggests helping the PO develop their own system to keep the product backlog manageable and addresses common counter arguments he gets from PO’s when asking them to limit the size of their backlog. Bram also provides tips on how to have a conversation about the consequences of adding too many things to the backlog and how to help the PO say “no” to stakeholders.
Sometimes, Product Owners who have a technical background tend to dictate solutions to the team without considering other options. Bram notes that these PO’s are often not open to different or better solutions and even question the team's progress. He suggests addressing this issue by making it transparent, showing the impact it has on the team, and discussing how team members feel about the collaboration with the PO.
Bram also highlights the impact this behavior has on team motivation and provides tips on how to handle this situation, such as using real situations to help the product owner reflect and encouraging open discussion of team feelings in the retrospective.
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 Bram De Block
Bram is not an official trainer, consultant nor freelancer. He is just himself, supporting colleagues in applying and growing their own potential and getting stuff done. Bram started as a software developer for 10 years, then grew into a half-time agile coach, and finally, full-time "Global Agile Lead" at Skyline Communications. Something "special" he learned (even if he wishes it wasn't special): the meaning and impact of "respect".
You can link with Bram De Block on LinkedIn, or meet Bram face-to-face at this meetup he hosts in Belgium.
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, Bram emphasizes the importance of understanding the goal for the company and working with teams to align their goals with the company's vision. He believes that a Scrum Master's own success is tied to helping teams reach their goals. Bram provides insights on how to help teams define success, by challenging them to think about the vision for their product and having conversations about success, providing data points as examples, and using readily available product data to define what better could look like. The episode aims to help Scrum Masters to understand their role in the success of the team and the company, and to provide guidance on how to align goals and work towards achieving them.
Bram introduces the Lean Coffee format, a dynamic and engaging way to facilitate meetings and discussions. This format is designed to make sure that everyone is engaged, regardless of whether they are introverted or extroverted. In a Lean Coffee session, we discuss the most voted topic and change the format regularly to maintain engagement.
In this segment, Bram refers to a collection of recipes for agile retrospectives which he, and his team make available to everyone at DataMiner Dojo.
Retrospectives, planning sessions, vision workshops, we are continuously helping teams learn about how to collaborate in practice! In this Actionable Agile Tools book, Jeff Campbell shares some of the tools he’s learned over a decade of coaching Agile Teams. The pragmatic coaching book you need, right now! Buy Actionable Agile Tools on Amazon, or directly from the author, and supercharge your facilitation toolbox!
About Bram De Block
Bram is not an official trainer, consultant nor freelancer. He is just himself, supporting colleagues in applying and growing their own potential and getting stuff done. Bram started as a software developer for 10 years, then grew into a half-time agile coach, and finally, full-time "Global Agile Lead" at Skyline Communications. Something "special" he learned (even if he wishes it wasn't special): the meaning and impact of "respect".
You can link with Bram De Block on LinkedIn, or meet Bram face-to-face at this meetup he hosts in Belgium.
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, Bram discusses the topic of agile evolution, a process of going beyond adoption, and adapting, and improving their agile methodologies. He explains that his organization used to work in Squads (based on the Spotify Model), each with their own backlog, but found that this resulted in a lot of dependencies and some teams had no "high value" items on their backlog, while others were too busy to deliver on the valuable items they had in their backlog.
He describes how that organization evolved to using Product Domains instead. The change team used MURAL to help visualize the changes, and invited people from every team to join and build a picture of the future with Product Domains. In that process, they went from 17 squads to 7 product domains.
Bram also provides tips on how to make the changes super clear, write down what the teams and organization will STOP/START/CONTINUE, and have follow-up sessions while timeboxing the whole work of defining the “future state”.
He highlights the importance of commitment and timeboxing as a trigger for action, and advises to avoid the anti-pattern of considering the “next change” as the final word. The episode aims to help organizations evolve their agile methodologies, to overcome common challenges and to improve the collaboration and communication within their teams.
As Scrum Master we work with change continuously! Do you have your own change framework that provides the guidance, and queues you need when working with change? The Lean Change Management framework is a fully defined, lean-startup inspired change framework that can be used as the backbone of any change process! You can buy Lean Change Management the book at Amazon. Also available in French, Spanish, German and Portuguese.
About Bram De Block
Bram is not an official trainer, consultant nor freelancer. He is just himself, supporting colleagues in applying and growing their own potential and getting stuff done. Bram started as a software developer for 10 years, then grew into a half-time agile coach, and finally, full-time "Global Agile Lead" at Skyline Communications. Something "special" he learned (even if he wishes it wasn't special): the meaning and impact of "respect".
You can link with Bram De Block on LinkedIn, or meet Bram face-to-face at this meetup he hosts in Belgium.