Small steps can lead to big changes. As Jiri says, there’s no point in going against the big wall of large steps in change, it is often disappointing and prone to failure. Identifying the pain points and then taking one step at a time can lead to amazing results.
The book Lean Change Management by Jason Little is referred to as a guide to understand effective change management.
About Jiri Sitina
Jiri works at GoodData. He is currently based in Prague and helps GoodData’s engineering teams to work better, cooperate more, keep on improving and enjoy what they are doing.
You can connect with Jiri Sitina on LinkedIn and link with Jiri Sitina on Twitter.
Retrospectives are one of the key ceremonies for teams. Well prepared and executed retrospectives can take a team from ordinary to extraordinary and can help teams avoid the anti-patterns that so often lead to difficult problems down the line.
One of the resources that Jiri uses when preparing his retrospectives is Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives.
About Jiri Sitina
Jiri works at GoodData. He is currently based in Prague and helps GoodData’s engineering teams to work better, cooperate more, keep on improving and enjoy what they are doing.
You can connect with Jiri Sitina on LinkedIn and link with Jiri Sitina on Twitter.
The Product Owner role can enable to make the work of the team very difficult. In this episode Jiri talks about how important the Product Owner role really is and how to help teams align. We also talk about aligning remote teams discussing some of the techniques that Jiri uses to have remote teams collaborate effectively.
About Jiri Sitina
Jiri works at GoodData. He is currently based in Prague and helps GoodData’s engineering teams to work better, cooperate more, keep on improving and enjoy what they are doing.
You can connect with Jiri Sitina on LinkedIn and link with Jiri Sitina on Twitter.
Event Storming is a technique that comes from Domain Driven Development. Alberto has adapted that technique to his work as a coach to help organizations identify their own patterns and therefore be able to change them. In this episode we explore how this technique can be used to foster organizational change.
About Alberto Brandolini
Alberto looks at himself as sit at the intersection between the Agile/Lean community and the Domain-Driven Design community. Sometimes, he says, the solution is to write better software, sometimes the solution is to take a big modelling surface and see "the problem" in all its magnificence, sometimes the solution is to have a beer.
You can link up with Alberto Brandolini on LinkedIn, or connect with Alberto Brandolini on Twitter.
When are we successful as Scrum Masters? We don’t really know until we start observing the patterns of behaviour and communication between the team members and other stakeholders involved. Alberto describes some patterns of behaviors he looks for to assess his success.
About Alberto Brandolini
Alberto looks at himself as sit at the intersection between the Agile/Lean community and the Domain-Driven Design community. Sometimes, he says, the solution is to write better software, sometimes the solution is to take a big modelling surface and see "the problem" in all its magnificence, sometimes the solution is to have a beer.
You can link up with Alberto Brandolini on LinkedIn, or connect with Alberto Brandolini on Twitter.
Sometimes we enter organizations and teams where everybody talks about how messy things are. This language prevents the people in that organization from seeing the situation clearly and does not allow them to move on. Alberto uses many techniques to help teams and organizations recognize and remove the “messiness” from their lives. In this episode he explains how he does that.
About Alberto Brandolini
Alberto looks at himself as sit at the intersection between the Agile/Lean community and the Domain-Driven Design community. Sometimes, he says, the solution is to write better software, sometimes the solution is to take a big modelling surface and see "the problem" in all its magnificence, sometimes the solution is to have a beer.
You can link up with Alberto Brandolini on LinkedIn, or connect with Alberto Brandolini on Twitter.
Alberto entered a team that needed help, but had nothing to be proud of. This team was not ready to collaborate, yet Alberto tried to force that collaboration. Listen to what he learned from that experience and how he would approach the same situation today.
About Alberto Brandolini
Alberto looks at himself as sit at the intersection between the Agile/Lean community and the Domain-Driven Design community. Sometimes, he says, the solution is to write better software, sometimes the solution is to take a big modelling surface and see "the problem" in all its magnificence, sometimes the solution is to have a beer.
You can link up with Alberto Brandolini on LinkedIn, or connect with Alberto Brandolini on Twitter.
As Scrum Masters we start working with teams and sometimes miss the context of the start for that relationship. Alberto shares with us a story of a failed “insertion point”, where he realized that we must actively understand and shape how our assignments start.
About Alberto Brandolini
Alberto looks at himself as sit at the intersection between the Agile/Lean community and the Domain-Driven Design community. Sometimes, he says, the solution is to write better software, sometimes the solution is to take a big modelling surface and see "the problem" in all its magnificence, sometimes the solution is to have a beer.
You can link up with Alberto Brandolini on LinkedIn, or connect with Alberto Brandolini on Twitter.
We all face silos in our organizations, and sometimes even in our teams. Henri did just that, and found a way to replace those silos with collaboration. Listen to hear how Henri removed the silos, step by step.
About Henri Karhatsu
Henri is a consultant at his own company Karhatsu IT Consulting in Helsinki, Finland.
He is a very experienced software developer that has worked for and with many clients over his career. He's also been exploring how to improve our industry of software development and sharing his learnings in his blog.
You can connect with Henri Karhatsu on LinkedIn, and reach out to Henri Karhatsu on Twitter.
Success for a Scrum Master is defined in many ways. For Henri this means focusing on constant evolution and change. He refers to the Toyota Kata by Rother as a model to follow when working with teams and defining success for you, and the team. He emphasizes how important it is to focus on one improvement goal at a time.
About Henri Karhatsu
Henri is a consultant at his own company Karhatsu IT Consulting in Helsinki, Finland.
He is a very experienced software developer that has worked for and with many clients over his career. He's also been exploring how to improve our industry of software development and sharing his learnings in his blog.
You can connect with Henri Karhatsu on LinkedIn, and reach out to Henri Karhatsu on Twitter.
When helping a team or an organization go through a change process we tend to be very goal and plan oriented. Henri shares a different story, where progress was more important than “the right” thing to change. Keeping the change progressing becomes more important than doing the right kind of changes at the expense of commitment and acceptance by the team and the organization.
About Henri Karhatsu
Henri is a consultant at his own company Karhatsu IT Consulting in Helsinki, Finland.
He is a very experienced software developer that has worked for and with many clients over his career. He's also been exploring how to improve our industry of software development and sharing his learnings in his blog.
You can connect with Henri Karhatsu on LinkedIn, and reach out to Henri Karhatsu on Twitter.
In teams, just like in all relationships, the routine kills the ability to innovate and evolve. Henri shares with us a story of such an anti-pattern in one of the teams he worked with. He shares one advice for all Scrum Masters: start with small changes, and one at a time. And don’t stop helping the team to change.
About Henri Karhatsu
Henri is a consultant at his own company Karhatsu IT Consulting in Helsinki, Finland.
He is a very experienced software developer that has worked for and with many clients over his career. He's also been exploring how to improve our industry of software development and sharing his learnings in his blog.
You can connect with Henri Karhatsu on LinkedIn, and reach out to Henri Karhatsu on Twitter.
A Scrum Master must be able to perform at many levels when working with a team. One of those levels is self-discipline and self-control. In this episode we discuss the need to learn to be patient. Sometimes we are too eager to propose solutions, and then bad things happened because we did not consider the team in our actions. Henri presents two tools that can help you learn to be patient.
About Henri Karhatsu
Henri is a consultant at his own company Karhatsu IT Consulting in Helsinki, Finland.
He is a very experienced software developer that has worked for and with many clients over his career. He's also been exploring how to improve our industry of software development and sharing his learnings in his blog.
You can connect with Henri Karhatsu on LinkedIn, and reach out to Henri Karhatsu on Twitter.
In this episode Angel shares many of the tools and techniques he uses to support the start of a change process in a system. There’s plenty of work to prepare the change before it can get started, and most of that work is about understanding the system we are about to be part of. We talk about many tools, like using Experiments, A3 problem solving and PDCA cycles for learning at the organisational level.
About Angel Diaz-Maroto
Angel is a seasoned and very energetic Agile coach and a frequent speaker at international conferences and Agile events in Europe and America. He is Certified Scrum Coach. Currently he is member of Agilar, one of the leading Agile coaching firms in Europe and Latin-America.
He is now at Agilar, but before he was the leader at one of the biggest Agile transformations in europe, including business and IT at the Spanish branch of a multinational bank (ING). He lead the transformation from the trenches and starting from scratch. He as more than 15 years of experience in many different roles and is a professor at ESNE (University School of design, innovation & technology).
You can link up with Angel Diaz-Maroto on LinkedIn and connect with Angel Diaz-Maroto on Twitter.
The role of the Scrum Master is not the same as the team’s role. The team is there to grow the product, and the Scrum Master is there to grow the team. These may be complementary roles, but they are not the same. Angel explains why this distinction is important and how that matters to define success. We also discuss one of Angel’s favorite books: Lyssa Adkins' Coaching Agile Teams.
About Angel Diaz-Maroto
Angel is a seasoned and very energetic Agile coach and a frequent speaker at international conferences and Agile events in Europe and America. He is Certified Scrum Coach. Currently he is member of Agilar, one of the leading Agile coaching firms in Europe and Latin-America.
He is now at Agilar, but before he was the leader at one of the biggest Agile transformations in europe, including business and IT at the Spanish branch of a multinational bank (ING). He lead the transformation from the trenches and starting from scratch. He as more than 15 years of experience in many different roles and is a professor at ESNE (University School of design, innovation & technology).
You can link up with Angel Diaz-Maroto on LinkedIn and connect with Angel Diaz-Maroto on Twitter.
How to effectively help an organisation change? That’s the topic we cover on this episode, and Angel shares his approach from a project in a large organization that went through a massive change. He mentions some of the critical tools he used in his role as a change agent in that organization.
About Angel Diaz-Maroto
Angel is a seasoned and very energetic Agile coach and a frequent speaker at international conferences and Agile events in Europe and America. He is Certified Scrum Coach. Currently he is member of Agilar, one of the leading Agile coaching firms in Europe and Latin-America.
He is now at Agilar, but before he was the leader at one of the biggest Agile transformations in europe, including business and IT at the Spanish branch of a multinational bank (ING). He lead the transformation from the trenches and starting from scratch. He as more than 15 years of experience in many different roles and is a professor at ESNE (University School of design, innovation & technology).
You can link up with Angel Diaz-Maroto on LinkedIn and connect with Angel Diaz-Maroto on Twitter.
Scrum has a foundational story that many of us know. The Pig and the Chicken story. Through that story we learn that in Scrum there are “insiders” (the Pigs, who are committed), and outsiders (the Chickens, who are merely involved). The role of the Product Owner is often looked at as a “chicken”, however Angel relates a different perspective. He talks about the critical role of the Product Owner in a Scrum team as well as the approach he used to bring the Product Owner role back into the team.
About Angel Diaz-Maroto
Angel is a seasoned and very energetic Agile coach and a frequent speaker at international conferences and Agile events in Europe and America. He is Certified Scrum Coach. Currently he is member of Agilar, one of the leading Agile coaching firms in Europe and Latin-America.
He is now at Agilar, but before he was the leader at one of the biggest Agile transformations in europe, including business and IT at the Spanish branch of a multinational bank (ING). He lead the transformation from the trenches and starting from scratch. He as more than 15 years of experience in many different roles and is a professor at ESNE (University School of design, innovation & technology).
The journey we are in as Scrum Masters has many different forms. Angel tells us the story of his transition from Developer to Leader, and what were the critical lessons he learned in the process. We also mention a critical book for us in the software world: Lean Software Development by Mary and Tom Poppendieck.
About Angel Diaz-Maroto
Angel is a seasoned and very energetic Agile coach and a frequent speaker at international conferences and Agile events in Europe and America. He is Certified Scrum Coach. Currently he is member of Agilar, one of the leading Agile coaching firms in Europe and Latin-America.
He is now at Agilar, but before he was the leader at one of the biggest Agile transformations in europe, including business and IT at the Spanish branch of a multinational bank (ING). He lead the transformation from the trenches and starting from scratch. He as more than 15 years of experience in many different roles and is a professor at ESNE (University School of design, innovation & technology).
You can link up with Angel Diaz-Maroto on LinkedIn and connect with Angel Diaz-Maroto on Twitter.
How can we identify, and hopefully change the systems conditions that affect our teams? Jovan shares with us, on this Xmas day of 2015, 9 gifts you can use when you go back to work. Enjoy Christmas, and get ready for a new year with these techniques.
About Jovan Vidic
Jovan Vidić is an Agile Practitioner who repeatedly finds passion and inspiration in his job. He calls himself a people person, and when he had an opportunity to lead a team at the age of 24, that experience transformed him into an advocate of the self-organization, which does not impose limits on the thinking, working and creative processes of the team members, but on the contrary, it drives them to jointly contribute and prosper. This is actually the goal of the group Agile Coaching Serbia he founded in Novi Sad Serbia in 2014.
You can connect with Jovan Vidic on LinkedIn and connect with Jovan Vidic on Twitter.
Experiments are a tool we can use to create a safe environment, and allow the team to try out a new idea without being immediately judged by others if that idea does not work as well as expected. As Scrum Masters we should create that space for the teams to experiment, and Jovan shares his ideas on how we can do that.
About Jovan Vidic
Jovan Vidić is an Agile Practitioner who repeatedly finds passion and inspiration in his job. He calls himself a people person, and when he had an opportunity to lead a team at the age of 24, that experience transformed him into an advocate of the self-organization, which does not impose limits on the thinking, working and creative processes of the team members, but on the contrary, it drives them to jointly contribute and prosper. This is actually the goal of the group Agile Coaching Serbia he founded in Novi Sad Serbia in 2014.
You can connect with Jovan Vidic on LinkedIn and connect with Jovan Vidic on Twitter.
Retrospectives are one of the practices that gets the most attention on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast. They get attention because they are important engines of improvement for the teams we work with. Jovan explains some of the practices he uses to facilitate retrospectives in a way that supports the change that is needed.
In this episode we talk about Gamestorming by Dave Gray, a book that helps us create new exercises to help facilitate retrospectives.
About Jovan Vidic
Jovan Vidić is an Agile Practitioner who repeatedly finds passion and inspiration in his job. He calls himself a people person, and when he had an opportunity to lead a team at the age of 24, that experience transformed him into an advocate of the self-organization, which does not impose limits on the thinking, working and creative processes of the team members, but on the contrary, it drives them to jointly contribute and prosper. This is actually the goal of the group Agile Coaching Serbia he founded in Novi Sad Serbia in 2014.
You can connect with Jovan Vidic on LinkedIn and connect with Jovan Vidic on Twitter.
Scrum Masters can have a great impact in a team, sometimes in the wrong way. Jovan tells us a story of a Scrum Master that was too eager, and did not let the team take initiative. That’s unsustainable for the Scrum Master and does not help the team which will go back to the familiar practices when the Scrum Master is away. We must, as Scrum Masters, learn to help teams grow on their own and that’s the story that Jovan shares with us.
About Jovan Vidic
Jovan Vidić is an Agile Practitioner who repeatedly finds passion and inspiration in his job. He calls himself a people person, and when he had an opportunity to lead a team at the age of 24, that experience transformed him into an advocate of the self-organization, which does not impose limits on the thinking, working and creative processes of the team members, but on the contrary, it drives them to jointly contribute and prosper. This is actually the goal of the group Agile Coaching Serbia he founded in Novi Sad Serbia in 2014.
You can connect with Jovan Vidic on LinkedIn and connect with Jovan Vidic on Twitter.
We want to improve the world, change the way we work, fix all the problems we see. And often all of the above at the same time. That’s laudable, a great mission, but it has a dark side: burnout! Jovan shares with us a story of one such moment so that we may avoid that in our own career. Stay safe dear friends!
Keep an eye on those burnout signs with these 10 signs you may be on the verge of a burnout.
About Jovan Vidic
Jovan Vidić is an Agile Practitioner who repeatedly finds passion and inspiration in his job. He calls himself a people person, and when he had an opportunity to lead a team at the age of 24, that experience transformed him into an advocate of the self-organization, which does not impose limits on the thinking, working and creative processes of the team members, but on the contrary, it drives them to jointly contribute and prosper. This is actually the goal of the group Agile Coaching Serbia he founded in Novi Sad Serbia in 2014.
You can connect with Jovan Vidic on LinkedIn and connect with Jovan Vidic on Twitter.
When we start working with a team, we don’t actually work with that team. That team is part of a larger system, and we must understand the system before we can help the team. Amitai uses ideas from Theory of Constraints, and mentions The Goal, by Goldratt as a foundational book in his own journey as a Scrum Master. He also shares with us Schmoz’s theory, a critical insight when we work with and within human systems.
Today we play one more Agile in 3 Minutes episode which describes how we can reach freedom in our work. Today’s Agile in 3 minutes episode is episode #12, titled “Free”.
About Amitai Schlair
Amitai is a Software development coach, and legacy code wrestler, non-award-winning musician, award-winning bad poet, and creator of Agile in 3 Minutes, which is a great podcast about what Agile really is about. A must listen for anyone interested in Agile Software Development.
You can link with Amitai Schlair on LinkedIn and connect with Amitai Schlair on Twitter.
What makes us successful as Scrum Masters? This question has many possible answers. Amitai’s answer is about people and what we can do to help those people be happier at work (or elsewhere). Amitai’s personal approach to success is a little counter-intuitive, but focuses on the sustainability of organizational well-being.
We also mention the book Getting to Yes by Fischer, where they introduce techniques that have helped negotiate some of the most difficult agreements in our recent history.
Today we play one more Agile in 3 Minutes episode that focuses on why we do the work we do as Scrum Masters. Today’s Agile in 3 minutes episode is episode #8, titled “Care”.
About Amitai Schlair
Amitai is a Software development coach, and legacy code wrestler, non-award-winning musician, award-winning bad poet, and creator of Agile in 3 Minutes, which is a great podcast about what Agile really is about. A must listen for anyone interested in Agile Software Development.
You can link with Amitai Schlair on LinkedIn and connect with Amitai Schlair on Twitter.