cooperation Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Robbie Ross: Agile collaboration gone wrong, even with good intentions by the Scrum Master

Robbie was new to the Scrum Master role at this time. As many of us do, he was focusing on the stakeholders, and what they were asking from him, and the team. When an urgent situation came up, he accepted it immediately and canceled all the Sprint ceremonies, to let the team focus on the urgent request that had come up. Quickly, the team went in their own different ways, and Robbie noticed that some team members were working on similar topics, without knowing of each other’s work. But there was more to come! Listen in, to learn what anti-patterns are likely to emerge when the team stops with the Scrum ceremonies, and focuses on their own individual work.

About Robbie Ross

Robbie is an Agile Practice Manager at Jumar Technology with a passion for working with and empowering teams to foster an Agile environment at scale. He’s also a Certified Scrum Master, Kanban practitioner and Agile community member helping teams release their genuine potential to deliver value. Quite a career shift since completing a Sports Science degree at University.

You can link with Robbie Ross on LinkedIn and connect with Robbie Ross on Twitter.

Mher Nalbandyan: Overcoming the “only the senior team members are allowed to speak” Scrum anti-pattern

Sometimes we face teams where team members start, and then get used to making decisions on their own without involving the rest of the team, or communicating those decisions to their colleagues. In this team, the people were changing, and the new team members were not “given” the right to speak, which led to the oldest team members making all of the decisions on their own. Mher noticed that this was causing a motivation problem in the team, and started to work with the team to overcome this anti-pattern.

Featured Book of the Week: Scrum, the art of doing twice the work in half the time by Sutherland

In Scrum, the art of doing twice the work in half the time by Sutherland, Mher found a book that was easy to read and understand, which reminded him of what Agile, Scrum, and Extreme Programming are all about. The book includes stories and the “why” behind Scrum’s impact.

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 Mher Nalbandyan

Mher works at Mbition in Berlin, where they develop the next generation of information systems for Mercedes-Benz.

You can link with Mher Nalbandyan on LinkedIn and connect with Mher Nalbandyan on Twitter.

Miguel Moro: Helping a Scrum team go from competing with each other, to helping each other

Miguel started observing that the team members in this Scrum team were constantly trying to establish their own ideas as the “winning ideas”. The behaviors he observed helped Miguel understand that the team members were competing with each other, instead of focusing on the shared success for their team. In this episode, we discuss how to help our teams move from competition to collaboration, through a series of deliberate, but small tweaks to the discussion, and decision making processes in the team.

Featured Book of The Week: The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development by Don Reinertsen

In The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development by Don Reinertsen, Miguel found a helpful understanding of queues, which affect the progress/flow of work in our organizations. In that book, there are also insights into how variability affects productivity of knowledge work teams, and Reinertsen also gives us concrete ways to work through these concepts with the teams we help.

About Miguel Moro

As an Agile practitioner, Miguel’s passion is to delight customers using Agile practices and Lean methodologies in development teams, to explore the best alternatives to deliver in an iterative and incremental way, with a continuous value of flow, as fast as possible, and with innovative solutions. He does that by focusing on high performance teams and happiness at work.

You can link with Miguel Moro on LinkedIn and connect with Miguel Moro on Twitter.