collaboration Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Tom Siebeneicher: A Deep Dive into Agile Dysfunction, And The Journey Back To Healthy Scrum

Tom shares the story of a team that slowly drifted away from Scrum, and it’s values, but without noticing it themselves! The team followed the rituals, but their retrospectives pushed them aways from Agile and Scrum principles. The team inadvertently, and over time, adopted a waterfall approach. To avoid this in your teams, Tom advocates for digging into root causes instead of symptom-fixing. Eventually, Tom helped the team do a “scrum reset” which realigned the team, prompting a valuable tip: conduct resets every six months. Tom emphasizes double-loop learning, urging a focus on long-term improvement amidst day-to-day challenges.

Featured Book of the Week: The Lean Startup, by Eric Ries

Tom delves into the transformative impact of Eric Ries’ “The Lean Startup.” The book revolutionized his perspective on Minimum Viable Products (MVPs), emphasizing radical experimentation and learning over rigid planning. It liberated him from the constraints of plan-driven approaches, emphasizing the dynamic nature of execution. Tom underscores the criticality of continuous measurement and learning, a principle he now prioritizes in his approach. He shares valuable advice: never underestimate the power of measuring and learning in the pursuit of agile success.

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 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.

Khwezi Mputa: The Product Owner that knew how to collaborate with the Agile team

The Great Product Owner: The PO that knew how to collaborate with the team

In this segment, Khwezi highlights an exceptional Product Owner (PO) she collaborated with. The PO possessed a deep understanding of the product’s market, customers, and business context, enabling her to continuously update the product effectively. She exhibited excellent teamwork despite the distributed nature of the team, showing awareness of diverse cultures. Her proficiency in user story mapping facilitated smoother processes, including onboarding new team members. Overall, the PO’s comprehensive grasp of the product’s ecosystem and her collaborative skills stood out as instrumental in driving the team’s success.

The Bad Product Owner: The Unavailable and Bossy PO

While POs typically hold respected roles with authority over the product backlog, some misuse this status, behaving as if superior to the team. Often from management, such POs pose various challenges, including not being available often enough when the teams need their presence. Scrum Masters play a role in educating POs, advising team lift-offs to define roles, and coaching the POs to be active team participants. Khwezi emphasizes the Scrum Master’s mediation role, and we discuss the “Coach Your PO e-course” which aims to help Scrum Masters have an effective PO collaboration.

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 Khwezi Mputa

Khwezi is an experienced Agile coach, trainer, and IT professional since 2008. With diverse roles like Scrum Master, Agile Project Manager, and Business Analyst, she’s active in the Agile community, promoting diversity. Passionate about teaching, she empowers individuals and organizations to reach their full potential through coaching and mentoring.

You can link with Khwezi Mputa on LinkedIn.

Khwezi Mputa: Visualizing Success And Coaching With Impact, With The Help Of A Coaching Backlog

In this episode, Khwezi emphasizes empowering teams over personal recognition. She highlights the importance of informing and involving stakeholders and sponsors, using a coaching backlog as a valuable tool. This backlog aids in feedback provision, achievement tracking, and maintaining focus. It also visually represents the team’s journey. Khwezi acknowledges the challenge of conveying intangible scrum master efforts to sponsors and recommends visual tools like MURAL for clarity. Her insights encourage fostering empowerment and sharing impact beyond tangible metrics, reflecting her holistic approach to effective scrum mastering.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: The Movie Critic Retrospective

In the episode, Khwezi introduces “The Movie Critic” retrospective, a creative approach to retrospectives using movies. By asking the team to liken their experience to a movie genre, such as action or drama, they delve into struggles and reasons behind their choices. The question “do you recommend this movie?” prompts reflection. Utilizing tools like MURAL enhances the process, and Khwezi advises encouraging additional sharing to ensure comprehensive insights are captured. This cinematic retrospective technique offers an engaging way to explore team challenges and insights collaboratively.

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 Khwezi Mputa

You can link with Khwezi Mputa on LinkedIn.

Khwezi Mputa: From Silos to Synergy, A Story of Agile Coaches and HR Integration during change

Khwezi shared insights from an Agile transformation journey involving collaboration between Agile coaches and the Human Resources department HR business partners. They recognized overlap in their responsibilities and merged into a cohesive team. Challenges surfaced through joint meetings, leading to the realization that their work needed to be aligned. They adopted the SPINE model for effective change, emphasizing starting with the “need” for change. Co-facilitation and shared knowledge enhanced their efforts. To bridge communication gaps, HR partners were encouraged to attend Agile bootcamps. Khwezi emphasized the universality of Agile principles, advocating for their application beyond IT teams, and promoting tool-sharing for wider team benefits.

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 Khwezi Mputa

You can link with Kwhezi Mputa on LinkedIn.

Zach Stone: Strategies for Healing a Disrupted Team-Product Owner Connection

The Great Product Owner: The Ideal Product Owner, Balancing Strategy, Collaboration, and Care

In this episode, Zach highlights an exceptional Product Owner (PO) who showcased a unique blend of tactical and strategic prowess. This PO’s deep care for the team was evident in their collaborative and engaging approach. They fostered open dialogue, valuing team input and seeing engineers as partners in solving problems. The PO’s commitment to understanding stakeholder requests in-depth allowed them to effectively shield the team. Their transformative and protective actions were a testament to their collaborative leadership style, making them a beloved and effective bridge between stakeholders and the engineering team.

The Bad Product Owner: Restoring Harmony, Strategies for Healing a Disrupted Team-PO Connection

In this episode, Zach reflects on a challenging experience with a struggling Product Owner (PO). The PO’s performance was hindered by environmental factors and burnout, leading to breakdowns in team collaboration and psychological safety. A lack of connection with the team and berating behavior adversely affected team morale and relationships. The adversarial atmosphere hindered healthy conflict resolution and led to self-sabotage. Zach shares valuable tips for improving such situations, emphasizing the importance of gauging safety for conversations, individual validation, and creating a secure space for difficult discussions. He underscores the potential for growth through acknowledging mistakes, highlighting that the PO eventually transformed into a sought-after collaborator through positive change.

The Ultimate Guide to Supporting Product Owners as a Scrum Master

About Zach Stone

Zach has worked as a process facilitator for over 17 years, as a specialist in behavioral science. He co-founded a firm that uses techniques to rebuild war zones for organizational dynamics. He has been an agilist for the past 7 years and was recently a speaker at the Global Scrum Conference. He lives in Santa Fe with his Wife and spends his time exploring canyons and trails.

You can link with Zach Stone on LinkedIn.