Anna Mbengam Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Anna Mbengam: When Roles Blur In Agile Teams, the Product Owner and Manager Anti-Pattern

The Great Product Owner: Personal Connection and Growth, The Power of Supportive Product Ownership

Anna shares her experience with an exceptional Product Owner who stood out for his genuine care and personal investment in team members. Beyond professional expertise, he took the time to understand Anna and offered invaluable support in communication and interactions within the organization. This Product Owner’s willingness to seek and provide feedback, both positive and constructive, played a crucial role in Anna’s growth and development. This episode sheds light on the qualities that make a Product Owner truly great, emphasizing the importance of empathy, mentorship, and effective communication.

The Bad Product Owner: When Roles Blur, The PO Who Was Also A Manager

In this episode, Anna shares the story of a PO that was too involved with the team, bordering on micromanagement. On top of that, this PO had the dual role of PO and manager, leading to confusion for the team. In the planning meetings, the PO interfered with the sizing of tasks. Anna offers valuable tips such as asking questions to highlight the impact of such behavior and providing education with respect. Addressing these patterns involves open communication with the PO, seeking their perspective, and ongoing coaching to support their evolution in the role.

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 Anna Mbengam

Anna, an accomplished Scrum Master and SAFe Coach since 2018, thrives in diverse industries like Personal Investments, Healthcare, Food & beverage, and Banking. She’s authored 5 self-published guides aiding aspiring Scrum Masters, and her mentoring has transformed 200+ professionals into highly effective individuals for any organization.

You can link with Anna Mbengam on LinkedIn and read Anna’s books.

Anna Mbengam: Prioritizing People And Empowering Teams in the Scrum Master’s Absence

In this episode, Anna emphasizes the critical role of a Scrum Master in ensuring team happiness. She prioritizes facilitating self-organization and meaningful interactions among team members. Anna’s success criteria extend beyond metrics to encompass factors like continuous improvement, agile mindset adoption, and positive team culture. She advocates for open dialogue and hosts regular one-on-one meetings to gauge individual team members’ progress and well-being. Anna also empowers the team to take ownership of the Scrum Master role in her absence, assessing the impact upon her return.

Featured Retrospective Format For The Week: Start/Stop/Continue, To Help Scrum Masters Listen Better

Anna likes the ‘Start/Stop/Continue’ retrospective format, as it fosters understanding and alignment within the team. Initially driven to implement sweeping changes, Anna learned the value of stepping back to enable teams to drive their own transformations. This format allows her to actively listen and discern the team’s focal points, resulting in more effective and meaningful retrospectives.

How can I, as a Scrum Master, supercharge my facilitation?

Retrospectives, planning sessions, vision workshops, we are continuously helping teams learn about how to collaborate in practice! In this Actionable Agile Tools book, Jeff Campbell shares some of the tools he’s learned over a decade of coaching Agile Teams. The pragmatic coaching book you need, right now! Buy Actionable Agile Tools on Amazon, or directly from the author, and supercharge your facilitation toolbox!

About Anna Mbengam

You can link with Anna Mbengam on LinkedIn and read Anna’s books.

Anna Mbengam: Strategies for Aligning Distributed Agile Teams In A Large Scale Agile Adoption

In this episode, Anna shares experiences from a large-scale tech company, detailing the challenges of setting up distributed teams across different products while implementing scaled agile practices. Leadership alignment on the change’s purpose was established, but resistance arose due to time constraints for training. Anna advises comprehensive training for all, along with piloting the change with one team. Balancing role transitions and training proved overwhelming, prompting Anna to involve leadership. She underscores the importance of leadership buy-in, advocating their participation in key processes like PI planning and Inspect and Adapt sessions. Supporting team autonomy and experimentation is crucial for successful change management.

Want to Improve Your Change Management Results? Discover the Lean Change Management Approach Today!

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 Anna Mbengam

You can link with Anna Mbengam on LinkedIn and read Anna’s books.

Anna Mbengam: Strategies for Navigating Difficult Conversations, Solving Conflicts, And Coaching Scrum Teams

In this episode, Anna shares a scenario where a team grappled with a fear of conflict. She emphasizes the need to step back and listen attentively, advising against cornering teams during discussions on sensitive topics. Anna highlights how team members confided in her privately, often about cultural disparities. She offers practical tips, such as gauging comfort levels for public discussions and maintaining confidentiality. Anna advocates for transparency, suggesting collaboration with the Product Owner to demonstrate openness and acknowledge mistakes. Additional advice includes fostering trust, utilizing icebreakers to bridge diverse perspectives, and encouraging active leadership within the team.

Featured Book For The Week: Coaching for Success: Integrating ‘The Five Dysfunctions’ and ‘Agile Coaching’

In this episode, Anna delves into the influential book ‘The Five Dysfunctions of a Team’, emphasizing its role in recognizing and mitigating detrimental behavioral patterns within teams. She highlights the fear of conflict as a particularly crucial aspect. Anna stresses the importance of active listening and avoiding cornering teams during discussions on challenging topics. Additionally, she introduces ‘Agile Coaching’ by Rachel Davies as another valuable resource for enhancing team dynamics and performance in agile environments.

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 Anna Mbengam

You can link with Anna Mbengam on LinkedIn and read Anna’s books.

Anna Mbengam: Rising From Disruption, After The Departure Of A Key Scrum Team Member

In this episode, Anna discusses a critical juncture at a startup where a key developer left, disrupting the team’s dynamics. The team struggled to self-organize and lacked expertise after that senior developer left. Stakeholder expectations were high, making the situation even worse for the team. Anna implemented smaller group discussions, fostering a sense of ownership for specific development areas. This led to knowledge-sharing and a collaborative approach to improve performance. The team also sought stakeholder support in hiring. The episode highlights the importance of adaptability, stakeholder collaboration, and teamwork in agile development, especially in the face of unexpected departures.

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 Anna Mbengam

You can link with Anna Mbengam on LinkedIn and read Anna’s books.