agile Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Caterina Palmiotto: The Phantom Product Owner, How Lack of Decision-Making Impacts the Team and Kills Innovation

The Great Product Owner: The Collaboration Between PO and Team as Key to PO Success

In this segment, Caterina shares a story of a great Product Owner who worked closely with their team. The PO took the time to share the high-level vision and timeline for a new module, collected doubts and comments from the team, and presented user stories with enough information to start a discussion. The PO listened to all suggestions and was available every day to collaborate. The refinement process was done in two parts, with the second part focused on investigating technical aspects. The PO even participated in retrospectives and worked with the team to improve the product based on either technical or functional ideas by the team. Caterina emphasizes the importance of building this kind of productive collaboration between POs and their teams, with the help of Scrum Masters.

The Bad Product Owner: The Phantom PO, How Lack of Decision-Making Impacts the Team and Kills Innovation

In this segment, Caterina talks about a Product Owner who only wrote user stories but was unable to make decisions. The Product Owner always needed to report to his boss, which caused a delay in decision-making. This led to delays in the team’s work, resulting in not completing the story in the sprint. Additionally, the team lost trust in the PO, and did not have enough information or support from the PO to bring their contribution to the product through technical innovation. Eventually, the team started to make decisions on their own and stopped suggesting ideas to the PO. Caterina emphasizes the importance of Product Owners being able to make decisions and not causing delays in the team’s work.

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 Caterina Palmiotto

Caterina started as a software developer but soon realized that she was passionate about team dynamics and communication, and embraced agility from the moment she saw it.

Caterina believes a team can be more than the sum of its parts and that growing the right culture is essential. When people are surrounded by good examples they will be motivated to do their best. So the first step is doing your best to be a good example of the culture you want to nurture.

You can link with Caterina Palmiotto on LinkedIn.

Caterina Palmiotto: Autonomy and Accountability, Key Team Skills That Make You A Successful Scrum Master

In this segment, Caterina discusses how success for Scrum Masters depends on the team’s ability to be autonomous in defining and changing their working agreements. She suggests asking questions such as whether the team members are active when the Scrum Master isn’t there and if they are following the agreements they made together. She emphasizes the importance of the team being mature enough to trust themselves to make decisions and call out each other when they break the rules. Finally, she shares a tip on how keeping each other accountable to the work agreements is crucial to maintaining the desired team culture.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Metaphor, or simple format? Which one to use and when?

In this segment, Caterina discusses an agile retrospective format based on team maturity. For new or less mature teams, she suggests using a metaphor, such as a favorite movie or sport, to change perspective. However, for more mature teams, a simple format like MAD/SAD/GLAD works well as they want to jump into and quickly solve problems they already know about. In the end, we must always adapt the retrospective format to the level of the team, as well as the current situation they are facing.

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About Caterina Palmiotto

Caterina started as a software developer but soon realized that she was passionate about team dynamics and communication, and embraced agility from the moment she saw it.

You can link with Caterina Palmiotto on LinkedIn.

Kirill Golubev: How the Scrum Master’s Role Contributes to Team Success

In this episode, Kirill discusses the difficulty of measuring the value of a Scrum Master and how success is ultimately tied to the success of the team. He emphasizes the importance of paying attention to retrospective preparation and capturing concerns expressed by the team. Kirill measures his own success and that of the team by the value delivered to a satisfied customer.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Making Agile Accessible and Using User-Friendly Retro Formats

In this segment, Kirill discusses the importance of using different retrospective formats depending on what the team wants to achieve and the inputs involved. He mentions examples such as the hot air balloon and sailboat retrospectives, which can visually illustrate the key principles of Agile and help the team reflect on how they implement those. Kirill emphasizes the importance of avoiding the use of hard vocabulary in retrospectives, and making sure that everyone, including those unfamiliar with Agile, can actively participate and benefit from the session.

About Kirill Golubev

Kirill considers himself an Agile and common-sense apologist. He wants to see simple processes in place, when people self-organize and manage themselves without constant push from management.

You can link with Kirill Golubev on LinkedIn.

Kirill Golubev: A Scrum Master’s Insights on Being a Change Agent in the Pharmaceutical Industry

In this episode, Kirill shares the story of when he was a Scrum Master in the pharmaceutical industry, and learned some important lessons about being a change agent in an organization. He highlights the importance of having the team’s support and readiness when implementing any change. Kirill also emphasizes the value of training management to showcase the benefits of Agile to them.

Kirill believes that Scrum Masters have a revolutionary role in bringing change to the workplace and that it’s essential to define a Scrum Master vision and have a mentor to understand critical things that are necessary for success in the role.

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 Kirill Golubev

Kirill considers himself an Agile and common-sense apologist. He wants to see simple processes in place, when people self-organize and manage themselves without constant push from management.

You can link with Kirill Golubev on LinkedIn.

BONUS: The Collaboration Equation, Fostering Effective Collaboration in Agile Software Development with Jim Benson

In this episode, we explore Jim Benson’s latest book: The Collaboration Equation. Scrum Masters should read this book because it offers a systematic approach to building the right environment for Agile software development. Having been involved in Agile since 1997, Jim has seen many projects start with excitement, only to fall apart over time. His book offers an approach to avoid the Agile adoption decay, and a way to make changes stick by helping professionals learn to act with agency in an environment that supports their efforts. Jim has applied this approach in many different organizations, and shares some aspects of those stories in this episode.

According to Jim, every Scrum master and product owner is a change agent, responsible for bringing opportunities for change to humans. However, these change agents can become frustrated when others don’t see the clarity that Agile methodologies are supposed to bring. This is where his book comes in, helping change agents to identify the right environment for their organization by considering factors such as how work flows and what culture they want to create. By providing this systematic approach to Agile software development, Jim’s book offers a valuable resource to anyone involved in the process of change within an organization.

Discovering Agile: A Story of Continuous Improvement and Paying Attention to End-Users

Continue reading BONUS: The Collaboration Equation, Fostering Effective Collaboration in Agile Software Development with Jim Benson