Allison Zimmerman Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Allison Zimmerman: Does Technical Background affect the Scrum Product Owner performance? Yes and no… Here are two examples

The Great Product Owner: Coaching a PO into a great PO!

It is possible to help Product Owners improve their game, and as Scrum Masters, we should be ready to coach those PO’s that want to get better. In this segment, we share the story of a PO that was able to recover from some key anti-patterns and become a great PO!

The Bad Product Owner: Does Technical Background affect the PO performance? Yes and no… Here are two examples

In this segment, we talk about two different types of Product Owners. One had a strong technical background, and the other one didn’t. We discuss how these different types of background can negatively impact the performance of the PO. We also discuss the role of the Scrum Master in fostering and maintaining a good communication practice between PO and team!

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 Allison Zimmerman

Allison believes that all people have the power to succeed when they work together. As a teacher-turned-scrum master, she has spent the last five years helping enterprise teams build on their strengths to deliver customer value. She also serves as a Scrum Master Community of Practice leader, supporting growth and development of scrum masters across many teams.

You can link with Allison Zimmerman on LinkedIn.

Allison Zimmerman: The Agile Retrospective on Scrum team performance

Allison likes to refer to the Scrum Guide as a source of questions for her own self-assessment as a Scrum Master. She lists some of those questions and discusses the impact they can have in the development of our approaches with teams and stakeholders.

In this segment, we refer to the book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Covey.

Featured Retrospective Format of the Week: The High Performance Tree model

When considering the Retrospective format to use Allison invites us to consider what the teams are asking for, as well as what they are not asking for. But when a conversation about performance and team collaboration is necessary, Allison suggests we use the High Performance Tree model from Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins.

In this segment we also refer to the models ORID and OODA, which help us consider what might be the right topic for the team, as well as facilitate the conversation around that topic.

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 Allison Zimmerman

You can link with Allison Zimmerman on LinkedIn.

Allison Zimmerman: Solving problems in Agile teams, a motivation-centric approach

Allison was helping a group of scrum teams. The group of teams felt they had some issues that needed to be resolved. Allison then helped the teams explore the issues they were struggling with, and find the motivation to address the root causes they found in their analysis. Allison describes a process that can help you, not only find the root of the problem, but also create the necessary motivation to take action at the team level!

In this episode, we refer to Brené Brown and her “approach with curiosity” mantra.

About Allison Zimmerman

You can link with Allison Zimmerman on LinkedIn.

Allison Zimmerman: The “hero” anti-pattern and its many consequences for Agile teams

This team did not have a clear focus or vision of what the stakeholders wanted to deliver. The team leaders did not trust the team to deliver what was being asked of them. On top of that, the PO and the team did not have a good working relationship. Not surprisingly, all of these factors led the team to isolate themselves, and started to think that it would take more than 2 years to deliver even the “MVP”. Why did this happen? As Allison started to look into it, she found that the team was organized around one “hero” role. This person was the only one that was able to work with some critical parts of the product. Listen in to learn how a team can get into this anti-pattern.

Featured Book of the Week: Everything I Know About Lean I Learned in First Grade by Martichenko

In Everything I Know About Lean I Learned in First Grade by Martichenko, Allison found how a teacher’s day can show many examples of how Lean can be applied in our organizations. In this segment, we also refer to Coaching Agile teams by Adkins and The five dysfunctions of a team, Lencioni.

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 Allison Zimmerman

You can link with Allison Zimmerman on LinkedIn.

Allison Zimmerman: A surprising anti-pattern that many Scrum Masters fall into

Allison’s team loved her work. They even had a nickname for her. Allison worked hard everyday to protect the team from interference, interruption and all manner of disturbances. Everything seemed to be going great, until something unexpected happened that revealed to Allison that Scrum Masters can be going wrong, even when everything around them seems to tell them they are doing the right thing! Listen in to learn what was that mistake, and how to make sure you don’t fall prey to the same temptation!

About Allison Zimmerman

You can link with Allison Zimmerman on LinkedIn.