Omar Perez: Escaping death-march projects in Agile teams, a breakthrough!

Omar was working with a team that had been assigned a project with a fixed schedule, fixed scope, and a fixed price! The team was struggling with the assignment, and the mood was somber. There was little motivation, and conflict was everywhere… until there was a breakthrough that helped the team overcome all the anti-patterns! Listen in to learn how to escape the death-march that fixed projects can become!

Featured Book of the Week: Audiobook Beyond The Phoenix Project by Kim and Willis

In the Audiobook Beyond The Phoenix Project by Kim and Willis, Omar found a book that helps clarify and describe the foundations on which devOps and Agile stand. As Omar describes it: these are the Newtonian Physics of our work with teams and software organizations. In this episode, we also refer to Out Of the Crisis by Deming, and Deming’s work in general.

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 Omar Perez

Omar is an Agile Coach from Barcelona who currently supports distributed teams that build data products to enable their company to be genuinely data-driven. He has had many previous lives as a design thinker, market analyst, communication consultant, project manager and startup founder. He aspires to become a “peopleware” expert.

You can link with Omar Perez on LinkedIn.

BONUS: The Agile gift I’d like to see by the Agile Christmas tree

In this BONUS episode, Vasco reflects on what is the gift the Agile community needs the most and why.

The gift Vasco refers to is something that many would think is an obvious part of any Agile adoption process. Some might even say it is a core aspect of any Agile adoption. Yet, it is often missing as Vasco shares in this episode.

What is that gift? Listen in to know more!

In this episode, Vasco refer to his #NoEstimates blog posts, as well as to the Podcast slack. If you are interested in joining our Slack, just drop us an email at: podcast@oiksofy.com!

What did you think about this episode? Leave as a comment below, or send us your thoughts at podcast@oikosofy.com!

About Vasco Duarte
Author of http://NoEstimatesBook.com, and daily podcast host at https://scrum-master-toolbox.org/. I try to give back to the community every single day in an effort to improve the IT and product industry all over the world.
Product Manager, Scrum Master, Project Manager, Director, Agile Coach are only some of the roles that I’ve taken in software development organizations. Having worked in the software industry since 1997, and Agile practitioner since 2004. I’ve worked in small, medium and large software organizations as an Agile Coach or leader in agile adoption at those organizations.

Stacey Taurah: How to step back, and help Scrum teams adopt Agile at their own pace

Stacey started as a very enthusiastic Scrum Master. She felt the role suited her, and she wanted the teams to “get” Agile and Scrum! In that role, she felt she knew all about Scrum because she knew it “by the book”. However, in practice Stacey found – in retrospective – that she was pushing the process to the team. Since then, she’s learned that we must help the teams adapt, and change, not push the process to the team. In this episode, we talk about what that means in practice, and how the Scrum Master can help teams adopt Agile and Scrum at their own pace.

In this episode, we refer to the Shift Left movement.

 

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 Stacey Taurah

A seasoned agile coach with a squiggly line into tech and delivery. From forensics to frameworks and all that’s in between.

You can link with Stacey Taurah on LinkedIn.

Elly Griffith-Ward: The impediment that kills Agile adoption in many organizations, and what to do about it

Many Scrum Masters will recognize the impediment to Agile adoption that Elly mentions in this episode: there are other, interdependent parts of the organization that are not using Agile! However, the way in which this impediment expresses itself is very diverse between organizations. In this episode, we explore one of the anti-patterns that comes from trying to implement Agile in a previously waterfall organization. Listen in to learn to recognize the signs of problems, and how to help your organization despite this “glass ceiling”.

About Elly Griffith-Ward

Elly is an Agile Coach at a major e-commerce company. Previously in user research (and a royal food historian). She aims to 1) improve the experience of work through reducing mental load, improving communication and forming strong teams 2) shift the focus from managing the worker to managing the work by focusing on flow and waste.

You can link with Elly Griffith-Ward on LinkedIn and connect with Elly Griffith-Ward on Twitter.

Ricardo Ribeiro: Waterfall to Scrum, a change process starting with the basics

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.

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This handy Coach Your PO cheat-sheet includes questions to help you define the problem, and links to handy, easy techniques to help you coach your Product Owner
Enter e-mail to download a checklist to help your PO manage their time
This simple checklist and calendar handout, with a coaching article will help you define the minimum enagement your PO must have with the team
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This simple checklist and calendar handout, with a coaching article will help you define the minimum enagement your PO must have with the team
Internal Conference
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Internal Conference
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Download a detailed How-To to help measure success for your team
Motivate your team with the right metrics, and the right way to visualize and track them. Marcus presents a detailed How-To document based on his experience at The Bungsu Hospital
Download a detailed How-To to help measure success for your team
Read about Visualization and TRANSFORM The way your team works
A moving story of how work at the Bungsu Hospital was transformed by a simple tool that you can use to help your team.
Read about Visualization and TRANSFORM The way your team works