agile hr Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Khwezi Mputa: From Silos to Synergy, A Story of Agile Coaches and HR Integration during change

Khwezi shared insights from an Agile transformation journey involving collaboration between Agile coaches and the Human Resources department HR business partners. They recognized overlap in their responsibilities and merged into a cohesive team. Challenges surfaced through joint meetings, leading to the realization that their work needed to be aligned. They adopted the SPINE model for effective change, emphasizing starting with the “need” for change. Co-facilitation and shared knowledge enhanced their efforts. To bridge communication gaps, HR partners were encouraged to attend Agile bootcamps. Khwezi emphasized the universality of Agile principles, advocating for their application beyond IT teams, and promoting tool-sharing for wider team benefits.

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About Khwezi Mputa

Khwezi is an experienced Agile coach, trainer, and IT professional since 2008. With diverse roles like Scrum Master, Agile Project Manager, and Business Analyst, she’s active in the Agile community, promoting diversity. Passionate about teaching, she empowers individuals and organizations to reach their full potential through coaching and mentoring.

You can link with Kwhezi Mputa on LinkedIn.

Pino Decandia: How company policies can destroy collaboration in Agile teams

This segment starts with a statement that we should understand and interiorize in our role as Scrum Masters, and continuous improvement experts: “Organization structures and policies are the cage we must free ourselves from in the day to day collaboration in the team.”

In this context, we discuss how the “it’s not my job” anti-pattern can cause intense conflict in a team, and how Scrum Masters can reach out to management and HR to help change this anti-pattern.

Featured Book of the Week: Nonviolent communication by Marshall Rosenberg

In Nonviolent Communication by Rosenberg, Pino found important lessons that helped him learn how to listen and think about what “they” say when talking about the problems they see and face.

In this segment, we also talk about Clean Language, a dialogue model that aims to help clients access their own inner wisdom and resources to achieve their goals.

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About Pino Decandia

Pino started in software development but realized he was more interested in people than code. With experience, Pino came to believe that people can change; they don’t resist change but offer their own vision, which needs to be met.

Secondly, needs drive behaviors. To provide help, we must allow them to be clearly expressed. To set the example, we need to be ready to be the first to state our needs.

And thirdly, that ideological battles are meaningless.

You can link with Pino Decandia on LinkedIn.

Peter Janssens: A Scrum Master superpower that CEO’s wish they had!

Experienced Scrum Masters have a superpower that many think is a CEO or a top-leader’s skill. When Peter got asked, with only a few days notice, to organize a leadership team offsite, he knew it was time to use that superpower! Listen in to learn about that Scrum Master superpower that even CEO’s need!

In this episode, we refer to a blog post explaining why Vasco thinks that the future of the Scrum Master profession is a learning path towards the CEO role!

About Peter Janssens

Peter built a long career in agile coaching and training, and worked in leadership positions leading a PO team, and recently became CTO in a SAAS product company. Peter loves all conversations on effectiveness of team decisions, but he quickly realized that being responsible is different from being a coach. As a leader there is the challenge of sticking to the same foundations when dealing with delivery pressure.

You can link with Peter Janssens on LinkedIn.

Yousef T. Fahoum: Scrum Master job descriptions tell you a lot about the company hiring

When applying to a Scrum Master position, you should pay attention to the job description. Does it describe the job as you see it? Yousef shares a story of a Scrum Master job that did not go as expected. The manager wanted to be in all the meetings, and asked the Scrum Master to record and share of the Retrospective sessions. This was not looking good! Listen in to learn how Yousef got out of this tricky situation.

About Yousef T. Fahoum

When starting out as a ScrumMaster and BA years ago Yousef passionately followed the ScrumMaster Podcast. Yousef is a SAFe Enterprise Coach at Elabor8 with experience implementing Agile and SAFe at some of the largest and most recognized brand leaders across industry domains in the U.S. and Australia.

You can link with Yousef T. Fahoum on LinkedIn and connect with Yousef T. Fahoum on Twitter.

Gunther Verheyen on humanizing the workplace with Scrum

As Scrum Masters we try to help our teams, and team members find their inner motivation. The intrinsic motivation that helps them grow and succeed. Gunther shares his views on where intrinsic motivation comes from. In this episode Gunther also covers self-organization and its impact and role for scrum teams.

About Gunther Verheyen

Gunther left consulting in 2013 to partner with Ken Schwaber, Scrum co-creator, at Scrum.org. He represented Ken and Scrum.org in Europe. Gunther left Scrum.org in 2016 to continue his journey of Scrum as an independent Scrum Caretaker.

He calls himself a connector, writer, speaker, humaniser. Gunther assists, serves, advices teams, individuals and executives.

Gunther believes that Scrum – the most applied software development framework – will not only increase the value that software delivers to organizations but is also a way to re-humanise the workplace for people. Gunther likes to inspire individuals, teams, departments, and organizations to realize their potential.

Beyond Scrum, Gunther is all about his family, life, books, and music. He communicates in Dutch and in English. Gunther is co-creator to Agility Path and the Nexus framework for Scaled Professional Scrum.

You can link with Gunther Verheyen on LinkedIn and connect with Gunther Verheyen on Twitter.