agile coaching Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

BONUS: How to answer commonly asked Scrum Master interview questions, with Jeff Campbell and Vasco Duarte

Jeff is the author of Actionable Agile tools (available on Amazon, and direct from the author at bit.ly/aatbook).

In this episode, Vasco and Jeff share answers to common Scrum Master interview questions. They also discuss how to address stakeholder resistance to Agile practices.

When it comes to resistance, Jeff suggests focusing on early adopters and individuals who are already open to change. It is important to understand the needs and concerns of those who resist Agile practices, rather than simply dismissing them as being wrong.

Jeff emphasizes the importance of being patient and dancing with the system, as there is no straight line to success. He also recommends building relationships with stakeholders and gaining their trust by being curious and asking questions.

Jeff and Vasco also discuss active versus passive resistance and suggests putting things on the table to differentiate between the two. They also encourages using real stories to illustrate an understanding of stakeholder concerns and focusing on the problems that can be solved. Jeff offers tips for improving storytelling abilities and recommends working with early adopters who can help amplify the impact of Agile practices.

In this episode, they refer to NoEstimates and Mooseheads on the Table, the book by Karin Tenelius.

About Jeff Campbell and Vasco Duarte

Jeff is an Agile Coach who considers the discovery of Agile and Lean to be one of the most defining moments of his life, and considers helping others to improve their working life not to simply be a job, but a social responsibility. As an Agile Coach, he has worked with driving Agile transformations in organizations both small and large and has published a book on the subject: bit.ly/aatbook.

You can link with Jeff Campbell on LinkedIn.

Vasco is a leading voice in the agile community, known for his contributions to the development of agile methodologies and practices. He is the co-founder of Agile Finland and the host of Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast, the most popular Agile podcast in the world, which has more than 8 000 000 unique downloads. He is also the author of “NoEstimates: A novel look at how Agile can transform software development, making it both more sustainable, as well as incredibly profitable.” Vasco is a keynote speaker at many conferences and events, sharing his knowledge and experience with the agile community. With his passion and expertise in agile, Vasco has made a significant impact on the way software development is done today, helping organizations to become more efficient, flexible, and responsive to changing requirements.lYou You can link with Vasco Duarte on LinkedIn and connect with Vasco Duarte on Twitter.

Gemma Murray: Maximizing Impact of Agile Coaching at Moo, Feedback and Measurement Strategies

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.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Simplifying Agile Retrospectives to amplify their impact on Scrum teams

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.

BONUS: Navigating the Path to SRE, A Guide to Adopting Site Reliability Engineering in Your Enterprise, with Vlad Ukis and Philipp Gündisch

Siemens Healthineers engaged Philipp and Vlad due to growing challenges with their platform. As more users started using the platform, the availability requirements increased, and they wanted to reduce downtime. However, their current operations capabilities did not allow them to achieve the uptime and availability needed, and there was also a problem with the time it took to recover from failures. To address these challenges, Siemens Healthineers decided to adopt SRE as a solution to improve their operations and increase reliability. The adoption of SRE was added to the list of big initiatives, and Vlad and Philipp worked through the organization to get buy-in and support for the change.

Overcoming Challenges in Adopting Agile, Scrum, SRE: A Journey in Change Management and Leadership

Continue reading BONUS: Navigating the Path to SRE, A Guide to Adopting Site Reliability Engineering in Your Enterprise, with Vlad Ukis and Philipp Gündisch

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.

Jill Stott: Learning to work with dominant people in Scrum teams

Jill was working in a team where all the team members knew each other well, it was almost like a group of friends. However, this team was not perfect. They struggled to complete even a third of all the stories they took into the Sprint. When looking back, she can recognize the pattern of the dominant/opinionated developer who wanted to take a lot into every sprint. This left the Product Owner and Business Analyst for that team frustrated, because the unpredictability had already become a problem. Listen in to learn how that team was able to move away from the “take as much as you want” mentality into the sprint.

Featured Book of the Week: Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins

In Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins, Jill found an essential guide to her work as a Scrum Master. It was the book that helped her understand the different responsibilities of a Scrum Master, the difference between Agile Coaching and the Scrum Master role. It’s a book she still refers to even now.

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 Jill Stott

Jill Stott is here to make friends! She’s worked in IT for too many years to count. She is passionate about assisting ScrumMasters to be successful and happy in their roles. Jill knows that there is no such thing as a perfect chocolate chip cookie and she isn’t afraid to use puppets.

You can link with Jill Stott on LinkedIn.