Ali Asl Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Ali Asl: Empathy as a key skill for Scrum Product Owners

The Great Product Owner: Empathy as a key skill for Scrum PO’s

Great Product Owners have empathy for the customer, the organization and the team. As Ali describes it: it’s key to be human! Even if knowledge of the product and the business is very important, knowledge can be acquired, but the skill of empathy is not easy to acquire.

The Bad Product Owner: Cheap and inexperienced, a combination that destroys value for the customer and the company

This company that Ali worked at used to hire graduates as Product Owners. Inevitably, with their lower salaries came a whole host of other problems. The PO’s would not have experience on the product, or the process of developing products and would focus on the wrong things. In this segment, we also discuss how to help Product Owners focus on value and impact.

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About Ali Asl

Ali is an experienced and accomplished Independent Agile Coach, Trainer and Scrum Master focused on supporting organizations and teams in the application of Agile values and principles to deliver quality and value.

You can link with Ali Asl on LinkedIn.

Ali Asl: Simple Agile Retrospective formats to help drive conversations

Ali’s focus, as a Scrum Master, is to get the team to be autonomous, and run their own Sprints. In Ali’s opinion, a good team can self organize and self manage, and he uses that as his own success measure. In this segment, we refer to #NoEstimates.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Simple formats to help drive conversations

Although Ali uses many different retrospective formats, he likes the simpler formats like Mad/Sad/Glad or the Good/Bad/Ugly movie retrospective. He likes the simplicity of the 3 categories, which helps him focus on asking probing questions. In this segment, we refer to the Prime Directive of Agile Retrospectives.

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About Ali Asl

You can link with Ali Asl on LinkedIn.

Ali Asl: Using Portfolio Kanban to help coordinate work in multiple Agile teams

Ali had been in that organization for 9 months. When he started, the team was too large (40 people), and he had to help split and reform the team. In this episode, we explore the steps and techniques Ali learned about helping teams re-form after splitting a team that is too large.

In this episode, we refer to Portfolio Kanban, as a technique to help coordinate work in multiple teams.

About Ali Asl

You can link with Ali Asl on LinkedIn.

Ali Asl: How to recover a Scrum team after a “hero” leaves the team

In this company, there was one developer who was considered the “hero” by everyone. Junior developers felt intimidated, and the management further promoted the view that this person was a “hero”. Even the Product Owner no longer acted as the Product Owner. Ali noticed that the team was deferring too much to the “hero”, who had become arrogant in their ways of communicating. Ali had to help move the “hero” to another team, and started a process of rebuilding the team again. Listen in to learn what you can do, to help recover a team after an “hero” anti-pattern.

Featured Book of the Week: The Four Agreements, by Ruiz

In The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom by Don Miguel Ruiz, Ali found a book that helped him shape his way of thinking and acting as a Scrum Master. Even if this is not an Agile book, it shares important lessons for personal growth.

How can Angela (the Agile Coach) quickly build healthy relationships with the teams she’s supposed to help? What were the steps she followed to help the Breeze App team fight off the competition? Find out how Angela helped Naomi and the team go from “behind” to being ahead of Intuition Bank, by focusing on the people! Download the first 4 chapters of the BOOK for FREE while it is in Beta!

About Ali Asl

You can link with Ali Asl on LinkedIn.

Ali Asl: Learning to set boundaries, a must-have skill for Scrum Masters and Agile teams

This team was stuck in a pattern where they used over-time and holidays to work on releasing their software. Ali was puzzled as to how to help the team. Over time he learned what was needed to help that team establish healthy boundaries to the demands their manager and Product Owner wanted to put on them!

About Ali Asl

You can link with Ali Asl on LinkedIn.