agile Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

The Agile Advantage: How to Succeed with Agile in Business Intelligence Projects

Tired of BI projects stuck in the slow lane? Dive into the fast and furious world of Agile! 🚀

If you want to know how your projects can be adaptable to the inevitable changes, how you can deliver value quickly (even in less than a week), and incrementally, and if you want to learn about how to create a collaborative environment, even under pressure of deadlines, this is the book for you! And you can download the first three chapters now!

Whether it is a Big Data project, or simply getting some market or sales data to your sales people, BI (business intelligence) projects are critical for most companies today.

These projects are often manned, and managed by IT departments, which don’t have the same resources or access to Agile consultants as Engineering departments do. However, IT-led, or business-led internal software projects need to be Agile as much, if not more than, engineering departments today.

Introducing “How to Succeed With Agile Business Intelligence” – your ticket to Agile BI success. Packed with battle-tested methods and Agile tools, this book is your secret weapon for steering data-driven projects through the Agile maze.

Download the first 3 chapters of the book, and start reading now!

Continue reading The Agile Advantage: How to Succeed with Agile in Business Intelligence Projects

Kaisa Martiskainen: Coaching your Product Owner transitioning from a project manager role

The Great Product Owner: How a PO Can Be a Great Coach for Your Scrum Team

In this episode, Kaisa shares their experience with a PO who was an expert in lean product development. Kaisa explains that the PO was very generous with their time and knowledge, and ended up being a coach for Kaisa and the team. The PO was able to explain critical lean product development aspects, and showed the team how they worked. Kaisa notes that a great PO can be a mentor and a teacher, and this experience helped them grow and learn more about lean.

The Bad Product Owner: Coaching your Product Owner transitioning from a project manager role

In this episode, Kaisa shares her experience of working with a new Product Owner (PO) who had previously worked as a waterfall project manager. The PO was only focused on planning, executing, and delivering, which went against the principles of agile methodology. The PO struggled with defining the vision and direction of the product, and had to go back to the manager for decisions. To help the PO transition and learn the role, Kaisa recommended having a conversation with the PO and their manager, having a mentor for the PO, and having the Scrum Master support and coach the PO. Kaisa emphasizes the importance of coaching the PO to become an effective member of the agile team.

In this episode, we refer to the Coach Your PO e-course, which tackles 18 key aspects when coaching your PO.

The Ultimate Guide to Supporting Product Owners as a Scrum Master

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 Kaisa Martiskainen

Kaisa is an Agile coach working for a large multinational software company. Originally from Finland, her thirst for learning new things and passion for languages led her to live in Sweden, and Scotland before settling in Montreal, Canada. She is an avid Redditor who spends her free time reading, knitting, investing and playing with her two daughters.

You can link with Kaisa Martiskainen on LinkedIn.

Cynthia Kracmer: Lessons learned from a team of Agile Coaches that failed to work as a team

In this episode, Cynthia shares her experience as part of an agile center of excellence. The team was responsible for deploying agile coaches to help different functions achieve their objectives. However, the Agile Coaching team faced challenges in aligning and organizing themselves as everyone was convinced their way was the better way. The team had a young Scrum Master, but had high expectations and did not support that junior Scrum Master. Unfortunately, the Scrum Master failed and left the company, and the team missed an opportunity to help that Scrum Master improve, and improve themselves as a team.

Cynthia reflects on the importance of humility as a value of Agile and emphasizes the need to be open-minded and accept different ways of working. She also discusses the importance of leading by example when inspiring people through Agile principles. Additionally, they note that not all tools resonate with all team members, and it’s okay to have different preferences. Cynthia emphasizes the importance of accepting ideas from others and being receptive to help, even from juniors. This episode highlights the need for a collaborative and open-minded approach to Agile and the importance of valuing and supporting all team members, regardless of seniority or experience.

Featured Book of the Week: Design Sprint, by Banfield et al.

In this segment, Cynthia recommended the book “Design Sprint: A Practical Guidebook for Building Great Digital Products” by Banfield et al. which helped her see that the creative process can be structured to increase creativity and help teams make decisions. Cynthia initially believed that creative work had no structure, but the book helped her understand the connection between creativity and structure. She highlighted the importance of using structure to help teams generate ideas, make decisions, and ultimately be more creative. Overall, the book provided valuable insights into how to approach creative work in a more structured way to achieve better results.

Transform Your Agile Teams with Hard-Earned Lessons from Super-Experienced Scrum Masters

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 Cynthia Kracmer

Cynthia Kracmer is a Business Transformation & Human Capital Managing Consultant passionate about creating innovative, stimulating and ‘healthy’ organizations for people. She is Agile agnostic, and has worked as a Scrum master, agile coach and agile transformation lead in the Life Sciences area. She loves singing, traveling (she’s been to 63 countries), cycling and running.

Connect with Cynthia Kracmer on LinkedIn.

Cynthia Kracmer: The need for Scrum Masters to adapt to the reality they meet, and not force Scrum on Agile teams

In this episode, Cynthia shared her experience as a training lead for an insurance company. When she started, she quickly realized that the team was not ready and that there were people with different levels of knowledge. The team was struggling with late deliveries and a lack of communication between the Product Owner and the developer. Cynthia recognized that the team needed a Scrum Master, and she reached out to the Product Owner to suggest this. Cynthia also emphasized the importance of identifying client needs and suggesting what might be missing. She believes that in large organizations, it’s often best to jump in and help, remain open-minded, explore other frameworks, and focus on what is valuable for the company and the team.

Cynthia also discussed the importance of recognizing that every team and every client is different. She suggested looking beyond Agile and exploring other methods that might be interesting. Cynthia’s tips for success include understanding client needs, being open-minded, and exploring other frameworks. She emphasized the importance of focusing on value and finding what works best for each unique situation. Cynthia’s story highlights the need for effective communication, collaboration, and adaptability to ensure the success of a project.

The inspiring story of how a failing hospital turned things around with Agile and Lean

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 Cynthia Kracmer

Connect with Cynthia Kracmer on LinkedIn.

Harri Tunturivuori: Communicating the Product Vision, A Key Skill for Scrum Product Owners

The Great Product Owner: Communicating the Product Vision, A Key Skill for PO’s

According to Harri, the best Product Owners have a clear and compelling vision for the product, and they are able to communicate this vision effectively to the team. They are also collaborative and include the team in decision making, and are not afraid to talk to customers and stakeholders to get their input. In addition, they are able to give a lot of feedback to the team and use personas to communicate the ultimate user and customer for the product. Finally, they communicate the roadmap to the team so that everyone is on the same page. All of these skills combine to create a strong, effective Product Owner who can help the team deliver a successful product.

We provide, FREE, an e-course that can help you facilitate a Vision workshop with your PO. You can our Create A Compelling Product Vision e-course here..

The Bad Product Owner: From Task Managers to Product Owners, Breaking the Anti-pattern

In the episode, Harri discussed the anti-pattern of Product Owners who act more as task managers rather than empowered decision-makers. When POs become overly focused on task lists and assigning work to team members, they lose sight of the bigger picture and fail to understand the product as a whole. In many cases, the actual PO is someone else, leaving the task manager PO without the necessary knowledge to answer questions from the team. This lack of empowerment and understanding causes agility to disappear and ultimately hinders the progress of the product. To avoid this anti-pattern, Harri emphasizes the importance of empowering POs and ensuring they are motivated to push the product forward.

The Ultimate Guide to Supporting Product Owners as a Scrum Master

About Harri Tunturivuori

Harri is an experienced leader, Scrum Master, and Agile Coach who was introduced to the world of agile software development in 2010. Since then, Harri has had the pleasure of leading great agile teams in various forms.

Harri enjoys working in a fun environment where there is room for innovation, and Harri is driven by the challenge of growing a group of good people into a great team.

You can link with Harri Tunturivuori on LinkedIn.