Dimitri Favre Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Dimitri Favre: Product Ownership in Scrum is teamwork!

An often missed aspect of Product Ownership is the fact that it is mostly teamwork. That a team can bring a lot of input to the solution definition if they are able to interact with the Product Owner. But there is a dark side to this realization: when the PO is absent, or unable to justify the requirements… We discuss these anti-patterns, and why teamwork is so important when it comes to Product Ownership.

The Great Product Owner: Product Ownership is teamwork

In this segment, we talk about how the Product Owner role is not really only the Product Owner’s responsibility, but that the nest Product Owners are able to work together with the team to answer the question: “What is the minimum solution that fulfills this need?”

The Bad Product Owner: The Pass-through Product Owner

Sometimes, Product Owners act as mere channels for requirements. These “pass-through PO’s” convey the information they collect elsewhere but are often unable to share the reasoning for their ideas with the team, which leads to poor quality requirements, poor quality implementations, and a lack of collaboration with the teams.

In this segment we also refer to the “ghost PO”, a Product Owner that is present only in planning and in the review but is mostly absent, not being able to interact with the team to clarify questions and help the team fine-tune the implementation with early feedback.

Are you having trouble helping the team working 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 Dimitri Favre

Dimitri is a business, transformation, and agile coach and a repented project manager. Dimitri works side by side with executives, managers, and teams to uncover better ways of developing software and delighting customers.

Dimitri is the author of a recent book, on the topic of #NoProjects: Live Happily Ever After Without Projects: A #NoProjects book.

You can link with Dimitri Favre on LinkedIn and connect with Dimitri Favre on Twitter.

Dimitri Favre: Helping Scrum teams take ownership of their improvements

How can the Scrum Master step out of the “leader” role, and let the team learn to lead itself? We discuss simple techniques that Dimitri experimented with to make sure that the team does not lean on the Scrum Master, but rather takes the initiative.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: The Circles of Influence

Circles of Influence is a tool we’ve referenced often here on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast, and Dimitri’s favorite retrospective format uses that tool. Through this format, Dimitri helps the teams he works with a focus on what they can influence, rather than despair over what they can’t.

About Dimitri Favre

Dimitri is the author of a recent book, on the topic of #NoProjects: Live Happily Ever After Without Projects: A #NoProjects book.

You can link with Dimitri Favre on LinkedIn and connect with Dimitri Favre on Twitter.

Dimitri Favre: When a Scrum team needs to change an organization in order to succeed

Sometimes, we can succeed so well with the teams, that the teams start feeling that the organization as a whole is not ready for them. In this episode, we talk about a team that was pushing the boundaries and getting push back from the organization. We discuss the different approaches Dimitri took to help the organization and the team find a common agreement and a new way of working.

In this episode, we refer to the Jobs To Be Done framework, and Dimitri’s book: Live Happily Ever After Without Projects: A #NoProjects book.

About Dimitri Favre

Dimitri is the author of a recent book, on the topic of #NoProjects: Live Happily Ever After Without Projects: A #NoProjects book.

You can link with Dimitri Favre on LinkedIn and connect with Dimitri Favre on Twitter.

Dimitri Favre: Helping Scrum teams collaborate better with the Product Owner

In this team, the developers only wanted to focus on their own tasks and did not care to help the Product Owner. This was, as it turned out, a recipe for disaster. We discuss with Dimitri, what drives teams to be task-focused, instead of impact-focused, and discuss techniques we might be able to use to bring the team’s attention to the overall goals and the collaboration with the Product Owner.

Featured Book for the Week: Creating Great Teams by Mamoli and Mole

In Creating Great Teams: How Self-Selection Lets People Excel by Sandy Mamoli and David Mole, Dimitri discovered an approach that helps create teams who are motivated from the start. In this segment, we also refer to the books by Craig Larman and Bas Vodde. Bas was a previous guest on the podcast. We also refer to Anton Zotin, who has also been on the podcast before.

About Dimitri Favre

Dimitri is the author of a recent book, on the topic of #NoProjects: Live Happily Ever After Without Projects: A #NoProjects book.

You can link with Dimitri Favre on LinkedIn and connect with Dimitri Favre on Twitter.

Dimitri Favre: From Projects to #NoProjects, by focusing on impact, and not requirements

Dimitri is a Scrum Master, Agile Coach, but Dimitri Favre is also the author of a book about #NoProjects, an approach that removes many of the problems that projects bring to software projects. In this first episode with Dimitri, we talk about one of the possible consequences of having a project mindset: wanting to follow the plan no matter the consequences.

We discuss why it is problematic for teams and Product Owners to focus on the Features in the Backlog, and how to get out of the “solution space” to better understand the impact the product should have in the market and our customer’s lives.

We also have an interview with Allan Kelly on #NoProjects, check that for more details on the #NoProjects approach.

About Dimitri Favre

Dimitri is the author of a recent book, on the topic of #NoProjects: Live Happily Ever After Without Projects: A #NoProjects book.

You can link with Dimitri Favre on LinkedIn and connect with Dimitri Favre on Twitter.