co-creation Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Tom Siebeneicher: From Resistance to Adoption, Change Management in Agile Transformation

Tom explores the process of change management when adopting Scrum. He shares some of the lessons he’s learned over the years, emphasizing the importance of understanding the “why” behind the change and garnering leadership support. Tom advocates for open communication through town hall meetings and QA sessions, fostering knowledge acquisition. He highlights the significance of individual empowerment and addresses the limitations of change capacity for teams and organizations. Tom offers a valuable tip to assess if teams are adopting change willingly or being pressured, underscoring the need to gauge the optimal pace of change adoption. In this episode, we refer to the Lean Change Management framework for effective implementation, which is described in Jason Little’s book: Lean 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 Tom Siebeneicher

Tom is an engaging speaker, who has delivered presentations at conferences like the Atos DREAM Conference, the Agile Leadership Day, and TED XKE by Xebia. Their enthusiasm for discussing Agile is evident in those talks.

You can link with Tom Siebeneicher on LinkedIn.

Seye Kuyinu: Shared Ownership of Change, Strategies for Effective Agile Transformation

In this episode, Seye delves into change leadership within an organization facing team cohesion challenges. He highlights the initial step of process assessment and the impact of conflicting factions within a team. The breakdown of processes led to differing interpretations of the team’s goals. Seye references Arlo Belshee’s work in Agile Engineering Fluency (detailed map here), and suggests establishing work agreements, visualizing the change process, and securing buy-in for effective change. He underscores the importance of collective ownership of change and introduces the idea of a team coaching canvas to facilitate progress. The episode emphasizes collaborative change leadership to address team dynamics and process issues.

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

About Seye Kuyinu

Seye has been a Scrum Master for about a decade now. He first connected to Agile, frustrated with the lack of adequate communication that plagues traditional complex projects. He finds People and Interactions over Processes & Tools cannot be overstated, while seeing that everything is a fractal- our individual, team, organization and societal challenges are the very same. The solution in every layer is the same- an understanding of ONENESS!

You can link with Seye Kuyinu on LinkedIn and connect with Seye Kuyinu on Twitter.

Bram De Block: The case for Agile Evolution, Overcoming Dependencies, and Improving Team Collaboration through Product Domains

In this episode, Bram discusses the topic of agile evolution, a process of going beyond adoption, and adapting, and improving their agile methodologies. He explains that his organization used to work in Squads (based on the Spotify Model), each with their own backlog, but found that this resulted in a lot of dependencies and some teams had no “high value” items on their backlog, while others were too busy to deliver on the valuable items they had in their backlog.

He describes how that organization evolved to using Product Domains instead. The change team used MURAL to help visualize the changes, and invited people from every team to join and build a picture of the future with Product Domains. In that process, they went from 17 squads to 7 product domains.

Bram also provides tips on how to make the changes super clear, write down what the teams and organization will STOP/START/CONTINUE, and have follow-up sessions while timeboxing the whole work of defining the “future state”.

He highlights the importance of commitment and timeboxing as a trigger for action, and advises to avoid the anti-pattern of considering the “next change” as the final word. The episode aims to help organizations evolve their agile methodologies, to overcome common challenges and to improve the collaboration and communication within their teams.

About Bram De Block

Bram is not an official trainer, consultant nor freelancer. He is just himself, supporting colleagues in applying and growing their own potential and getting stuff done. Bram started as a software developer for 10 years, then grew into a half-time agile coach, and finally, full-time “Global Agile Lead” at Skyline Communications. Something “special” he learned (even if he wishes it wasn’t special): the meaning and impact of “respect”.

You can link with Bram De Block on LinkedIn, or meet Bram face-to-face at this meetup he hosts in Belgium.