vasco, Author at Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Mike Salogub: The ex-developer skills that help Product Owners excel at Agile software development

The Great Product Owner: The ex-developer skills that help PO’s excel with Agile software development

This segment describes an example of a great Product Owner who was also a developer before (like the anti-pattern example). However, this PO had a deep understanding of the product and the business, thought ahead and talked about opportunities with stakeholders. She made tradeoff decisions using her experience, talked to the team on their terms, and went to bat for the team. There was a great chemistry between the Scrum Master and the PO.

The Bad Product Owner: The ex-developer skills that destroy the PO’s performance

In this segment, Mike discusses Product Owner anti-patterns, including POs who think they are the boss, those who are clueless, and those with a development background who second-guess the team. The segment advises that POs should focus on overall aspects such as working with stakeholders, and recommends setting expectations on the role with each PO. The segment also emphasizes the importance of being deliberate about how we integrate our background in our future positions.

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 Mike Salogub

Mike’s an accomplished, committed and creative Scrum Master with over 10+ years of expanding horizons in the healthcare technology industry. Focused on continuous improvement using data to inform business decisions, and driving innovation to meet the needs of patients.

You can link with Mike Salogub on LinkedIn and connect with Mike Salogub on Twitter.

Mike Salogub: Learning to measure success as a Scrum Master, focusing on team behaviors

In this segment, we discuss how to measure the success of a scrum master. Mike mentions several questions that can help determine the effectiveness of a scrum master, including whether the team will continue to meet for sprint planning in their absence, or whether team members are actively participating and solving problems together. The goal is to assess whether the team is thriving and hitting their own ambitions even when the scrum master is not present.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: The Sailboat retrospective, as a conversation catalyst for Agile teams

In this segment, Mike shares his favorite retrospective format, which is the “Sailboat” format. He explains that this format involves visualizing a sailboat and discussing its different aspects, such as the wind, anchor, and rocks. This visualization helps the team reflect on their work and start conversations that they may not have had otherwise. The sailboat format also helps introverted team members share more and encourages those who tend to dominate discussions to listen more. Mike offers tips for facilitating this retrospective format, including knowing your team and finding ways to encourage everyone to participate.

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 Mike Salogub

You can link with Mike Salogub on LinkedIn and connect with Mike Salogub on Twitter.

Mike Salogub: How to help a team go from waterfall to Scrum in 3 sprints, the challenges to expect

In this episode, Mike talks about his experience with change leadership when his team transitioned from waterfall to Agile. The transition happened overnight, and Mike had to learn a new role quickly. After attending Scrum workshops, the team began working on their first sprint, but developers were eager to work on future projects and underestimated the amount of work to be done in the current sprint. This led to a pile-up of work and failure to meet sprint goals in the second sprint.

However, by the third sprint, team members started to understand the benefits of Agile, and by the fifth sprint, they were delivering more than expected. Mike shared three tips for successful change leadership: involve the boss in meetings, regularly remind team members of the mission, and have a leader who is committed to making the project a success. In this case, Mike’s boss acted as a Release Train Engineer (RTE), helping to steer the team towards success.

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 Mike Salogub

You can link with Mike Salogub on LinkedIn and connect with Mike Salogub on Twitter.

Mike Salogub: Overcoming Team Conflict in Remote Work Environments, lessons learned as a Scrum Master

In this segment, Mike recounted a situation where he was brought in to help a team where there was conflict between two team members who fought about roles and responsibilities. Despite being excellent people individually, when they were together in the same room, they would undermine each other and interrupt each other. Mike took the initiative to understand what was going on and went through every single issue with them.

Upon reflection, Mike realized that remote work was the reason for the misunderstandings and conflict. When the team members first came into the same physical room, they started to mellow out, and this face-to-face presence helped them to accept each other as humans. Mike noted that the team members had projected their problems onto each other, and when they met in person, those problems dissipated. Mike shared two tips based on this experience: first, to meet in person if possible, and second, to have cameras on for retrospectives.

Featured Book of the Week: Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink

Mike recommended two books related to agile software development and leadership in the podcast. The first book is “Extreme Ownership” by Jocko Willink, which Mike described as agile in a nutshell. The book emphasizes values that can be thought of as the core values for Scrum Masters and explains the key characteristics of a team player. It also helps readers understand what it means to be a servant leader. Mike highlighted the importance of transparency, ownership, and teamwork, which are critical components of agile methodologies. Overall, “Extreme Ownership” provides practical insights into how to become an effective leader and team player.

The second book that Mike recommended is “Trillion Dollar Coach” by Bill Campbell. The book follows the life and work of Bill Campbell, a legendary coach who worked with Google leaders and other leaders in Silicon Valley. Mike noted that the book explains many ideas that are equally applicable to being a Scrum Master and emphasizes the importance of transparency, ownership, and teamwork. Mike explained that the Scrum Master’s role is to help team members shine and facilitate effective collaboration. Overall, “Trillion Dollar Coach” provides valuable insights into leadership, team building, and helps understand why agile methodologies actually work.

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 Mike Salogub

You can link with Mike Salogub on LinkedIn and connect with Mike Salogub on Twitter.

Mike Salogub: Overcoming Dysfunction and Harnessing Constructive Conflict in Agile Teams

In this episode, Mike discusses his experience working on a project to develop a new app in just one month. Despite overcommitting without a clear scope of work and still learning how to structure the work, there was a lot of waterfall mentality among the team members. As pressure mounted, the team started to experience dysfunction, but they eventually came together to deliver the project on time.

The team’s retrospectives were initially conflictuous, but this competitive conflict helped the team to build up and become better. Listen in to learn how to harness constructive conflict and help your team achieve more than they thought was possible.

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 Mike Salogub

You can link with Mike Salogub on LinkedIn and connect with Mike Salogub on Twitter.