Definition of Done Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Dominika Bula: Building Stronger Agile Teams Through Working Agreements And Deliberate Collaboration

Dominika shares a story about a growing team in a scaling agile environment where new members were joining frequently. This team lacked a proper working agreement, which resulted in disengaged team members who didn’t participate fully in daily discussions. Dominika’s approach was to help the team start a buddy system for new joiners and ensure that everyone, especially new members, felt heard. She emphasizes the importance of developing a deliberate decision-making model and the need to differentiate between the Definition of Done (DoD) and a team working agreement.

Self-reflection Question: Is your team’s working agreement fostering participation and inclusion from every member, especially new joiners? Leave your answer in the comments, let’s get this conversation started!

Featured Book of the Week: Kanban Pocket Guide by Dan Vacanti

Dominika recommends Kanban Pocket Guide by Dan Vacanti as a must-read for anyone interested in improving team flow. It’s a concise and practical guide that helps integrate Kanban into Scrum teams by focusing on value and transparency. Dominika appreciates its clarity, specific examples, and how it helps Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches refine their understanding of Kanban to enhance team performance. The guide is also a great resource to revisit regularly.

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🔥 In the ruthless world of fintech, success isn’t just about innovation—it’s about coaching! 🔥

Angela thought she was just there to coach a team. But now, she’s caught in the middle of a corporate espionage drama that could make or break the future of digital banking. Can she help the team regain their mojo and outwit their rivals, or will the competition crush their ambitions? As alliances shift and the pressure builds, one thing becomes clear: this isn’t just about the product—it’s about the people.

🚨 Will Angela’s coaching be enough? Find out in Shift: From Product to People—the gripping story of high-stakes innovation and corporate intrigue.

Buy Now on Amazon

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About Dominika Bula
Dominika is an Agile Coach at SAP Signavio with a strong background in agile practices from her experiences at Oracle and Red Hat. She is passionate about Kanban and firmly believes that Agile and DevOps are the perfect combination. As a facilitator for the Women in Agile mentorship program, Dominika is dedicated to supporting and nurturing the next generation of agile leaders.
You can link with Dominika Bula on LinkedIn.

BONUS: From journalism to Scrum Mastery, collected lessons on working with teams by Ian McGrady

Ian’s journey from journalism to becoming a Scrum Master is a testament to his adaptable mindset and persistence. His transition stemmed from a unique start; he secured his first job due to his fast typing skills and a desire to meet Peter Jennings. Ian’s persistence in seeking a meeting with Jennings honed his tenacity. The introduction to the Scrum Master role came through recognizing the news industry’s agile, continuous delivery setup. Despite challenges, like sending out 400 resumes for just 3 interviews and a job offer, Ian’s honesty on his resume and his ability to relate his existing skills to the software field were pivotal. In interviews, he remained coachable, acknowledged his learning curve, and emphasized genuine interest in others. He underlines the importance of not striving to be the smartest person in the room, instead focusing on collaboration and curiosity.

From TV News Deadlines to Agile Leadership, learning how to work under pressure

Continue reading BONUS: From journalism to Scrum Mastery, collected lessons on working with teams by Ian McGrady

Oguz Ozyurt: The Importance of Defining Done and Partnering with the Product Owner, to help the Scrum team deliver

In this episode, Oz (Oguz Ozyurt) shares a story of a difficult collaboration with a Product Owner. He was working with a team and Product Owner who had different levels of experience, and while the team had completed the functionality for the iteration, they were not ready to release it. The Product Owner was surprised and pressed the team to release the functionality, which led to a failure. From this experience, Oz learned the importance of defining the definition of done with the team, as well as partnering with the Product Owner to define the goal together. He also emphasizes the importance of accepting that sometimes we fail, and working together with the team and Product Owner to define a plan for how to handle failures.

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 Oguz Ozyurt

Oz came from a technical background, and has worked across multiple industries, applying agile practices toward the technical and non-technical areas. He is passionate about agile, he has leveraged his passion for delivery value and agile practices by coaching, teaching, mentoring many teams to transform from traditional software development life cycle to Agile principles and practices.

You can link with Oguz Ozyurt on LinkedIn.

Samantha Menzynski and Brian Ziebart: When setting a high-bar for the Definition of Done is a bad idea

Brian’s story is enlightening regarding the value of the Definition of Done. A team that had set the DoD bar too high, and chose to not change the DoD. That led to an anti-pattern that had to be untangled by the Scrum Master.

Samantha shares the story of a Scrum Master that had the tendency to lead all the conversations and how she was able to recover from that pattern with a technique she calls “the pregnant pause”.

About Samantha Menzynski and Brian Ziebart

Samantha Menzynski has spent her entire career in software. Starting in support and account management, moving to customer support management, and with Penta’s transformation to Scrum becoming Scrum Master for the Core product team.

You can link with Samantha Menzynski on LinkedIn.

Brian Ziebart started his career in software as a developer, but found himself wanting to move towards coaching and developing people rather than product development. When Penta’s Scrum transformation started in August 2019, he jumped at the opportunity to work more with people while still staying involved with development.

You can link with Brian Ziebart on LinkedIn.

You can read more about Samantha’s and Brian’s work and the Agile transformation they were part of in this Scrum.org blog post.

Nick Stewart: Why the Definition of Done is critical for Scrum teams wanting to be more predictable

This team that Nick was working with had trouble delivering on time. When Nick looked into it, he discovered that the team did not take into account all the work necessary to adhere to the Definition of Done. Once he found that, however, he had to work with the team to help them realize what was going on, and how they could become more predictable by simply taking into account what they had committed to: the Definition of Done criteria.

Featured Book of the Week: The Goal by Elyahu Goldratt

When reading The Goal by Goldratt, Nick had a lightbulb moment. In that book, the author describes the impact that one single aspect of work can have: throughput.

The book describes how not paying attention to that aspect may destroy the ability to deliver value.

In this episode, we also discuss The Phoenix Project by Gene Kim et al.

About Nick Stewart

Nick has worked in the “Projects Space” for the last 5 years, initially working with business change, then in IT using Prince 2, Waterfall and ultimately found Agile organically through pain of delivering projects using the other methodologies. More recently he has taken on a Delivery Lead role which allows him to continue to learn whilst helping teams deliver continuous value.

You can link with Nick Stewart on LinkedIn and connect with Nick Stewart on Twitter.