Alina Thapliyal: A new Scrum Master’s journey to agility, a real-life story

In this episode, Alina explains the idea of the “law of attraction” and how aligning yourself with what you want can bring it into your life. Alina shares her personal experience of becoming a Scrum Master and her journey to bring agility to her organization. She initially felt overwhelmed and struggled to understand and apply Agile. However, all that changed after her participation in the Agile Online Summit, she learned to ask questions and see the opportunities. Alina emphasizes the importance of finding peace and enjoying the process of change, rather than feeling overwhelmed.

In this episode, Alina refers to the book The Secret by Rhonda Byrne.

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 Alina Thapliyal

Alina is the Scrum Master for a team within the public sector. Her aspiration is to become an agile coach. She grew up in Romania and has been living in Germany for 13 years. She loves jogging, reading and actively listening to people’s life stories.

You can link with Alina Thapliyal on LinkedIn.

Alina Thapliyal: From Frustration to Faster Document Creation, The Journey of a Scrum Master in an Infrastructure Team

Alina was a scrum master for a platform team responsible for building infrastructure. The team faced a challenge when delivering an increment of their product, which happened to be a document. The team struggled with stories that would just take too long to complete, and the associated problems that arose in the PI event and the retrospectives. Alina felt frustrated with the long stories, but eventually found a training that taught the team how to write a concept more efficiently.

By focusing on the success factors from that training, and documenting what helped them write the concept more quickly, the team was able to find a new perspective on the problem they were facing. They applied the “double loop learning” concept by focusing on why a problem exists rather than how to solve it. The team used a quadrant to gain an overview of the concept document, which helped them progress. Alina’s tip is to find a way to get a different perspective on the problem you are facing, which can lead to positive outcomes.

Featured Book of the Week: Make Your Bed, by William McRaven

In Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life…And Maybe the World by Amiral William McRaven, Alina found a book that reminded her that small habits, small gestures can have a very large impact on ourselves and the people we work with. The book shares  10 things you can do to change the world, or yourself, and helps the reader learn the impact of learning to face our own fears.

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 Alina Thapliyal

Alina is the Scrum Master for a team within the public sector. Her aspiration is to become an agile coach. She grew up in Romania and has been living in Germany for 13 years. She loves jogging, reading and actively listening to people’s life stories.

You can link with Alina Thapliyal on LinkedIn.

BONUS: 5AMMesterScrum podcast host interview with Bubbles and a Fortune Cookie surprise!

In this BONUS episode, we interview Greg Mester, the host of the 5AM Mester Scrum Podcast.

How did the Scrum Master Toolbox and the 5AM Mester Scrum podcast get started? Find out in this show!

In this episode, we also talk about the Agile Online Summit, as Greg is also the track host for the Happiness track at the Agile Online Summit.

About Greg Mester and the 5AM MesterScrum podcast

Greg is an Agile Coach, Breaker of Blockers, Facilitator of Spectacular Communications, Inspirer of Performance Acceleration, Mentor of Awesome People and Champion for Happy Teams.

He focuses on building Better Communications, Products (Material or Data) and Productive Teams.

You can link with Greg Mester on LinkedIn and connect with Greg Mester on Twitter.

BONUS: Agile Online Summit 2019, an Agile conference you can attend from home

In this BONUS episode, Tom Henricksen, the host of the Agile Online Summit presents this unique Agile conference that you can attend from home

The Agile Online Summit has been on since 2017, and is now in its third edition. From 500 participants in its first year, the AOS 19 will have 3000+ attendees from all over the world, and when you look at the list of speakers, it’s easy to understand why. AOS 19 will have, among others: 

  • Andrew Stellman will talk about the people aspects, and how those affect Agile adoption
  • Al Shallowly will explore the 3rd decade of Agile, and what it might bring
  • Rebecca Scott will share her ideas on how teams can improve their connection with other teams
  • Bob Gallen will speak about Product Ownership
  • Anantha Natarajan will share lessons from implementing agile in a non-IT organization
  • Richard Lawerence will share his experience and ideas about Behavior Driven Development

Date and place: October 7th to 11th

This session packed conference will take place online from October 7th to 11th. Beyond the recorded sessions that will be accessible in those dates, there will also be live sessions organized to help you ask direct questions from the participants as well as interact with your fellow conference attendees. 

For more details stay tuned to the Agile Online Summit website, where all the sessions are described, and where the information about upcoming live sessions will be added. 

A networking opportunity you can enjoy from home or at the office

As any IRL (in-real-life) conference, Agile Online Summit is a networking opportunity, which will help you get to know the speakers as well as other participants. There will be a slack channel available for all who sign-up at this link (NOTE: DISCOUNTED VIP TICKET for Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast fans). 

The Slack channel will be the preferred community hang-out area with channels for you to interact with participants from all over the world, but there will also be live sessions where you can ask questions directly from the speakers. Sign-up for the conference to know when those sessions take place (NOTE: Tickets are FREE for live attendance, purchase the VIP ticket for life-time access to the talks). 

About Tom Henricksen

Tom Henricksen is a technical professional and coach. After working for many years as a developer, Scrum Master, and manager he has made a lot of mistakes and wants to help others achieve their goals. Tom has a passion for sharing wisdom with other agilists.

Tom is the founder and host of the Agile Online Summit. 

You can link with Tom Henricksen on LinkedIn and connect with Tom Henricksen on Twitter

You can find Tom Henricksen’s website at MyITCareerCoach.com.

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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
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