extreme programming Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Konstantin Ribel: Rebuilding Scrum Team Dynamics To Overcome Remote Work Anti-Patterns

Konstantin recounts a team’s struggle rooted in prioritizing individual tasks over collective effort. Daily meetings centered on status updates fostered a fragmented and siloed work environment. The team working remote made the issue even worse, making it hard to have face-to-face interaction and pair-working. All of these patterns resulted in underperformance. Konstantin advises regular team gatherings, emphasizing the importance of on-site collaboration. He underscores the human element, urging teams to function cohesively as people.

Featured Book Of The Week: The Miracle Morning by Hal Erold

In this segment, Konstantin delves into how his morning routine, inspired by “The Miracle Morning,” by Hal Erold has profoundly influenced his role as a Scrum Master. He emphasizes the critical link between personal and professional development, crediting the book “Extreme Programming Explained” for its condensed wisdom. Konstantin highlights Kent Beck’s mantra of “do more of what works” and expresses a preference for pair working, acknowledging its occasional impracticality. He consistently applies the insights gained from this book, advocating against the anti-pattern of delayed feedback in his work with teams.

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 Konstantin Ribel

Konstantin drives organizational success through innovative thinking, simplifying processes, and building high-performing teams. With a strong track record in change management and process optimization, he leads agile transformations and applies systems thinking for adaptable, thriving businesses in dynamic industries.

You can link with Konstantin Ribel on LinkedIn.

Johannes Lindman: Lessons in Communication and Trust for Scrum Masters, helping teams overcome adversity

In this episode, Johannes Lindman shares a story about a small team he worked with for a few months leading up to a major release. The team was focused on delivery and even had checklists to ensure that they were well-prepared. However, they encountered a problem that they had not anticipated and had to stop and acknowledge their failure. The team was surprised because they believed they had prepared well and were not sure how they missed the issue.

The team started to point fingers and look at one person who did not talk much. They realized that they were not talking about the problems they were afraid of and needed to be super honest with each other. Johannes notes that the team trusted each other as individuals, but they did not pick up on each other’s signs. In the end, the team learned the importance of communication, honesty, and trust. They realized that they needed to work on their communication skills and ensure that everyone felt comfortable speaking up when there was an issue.

Featured Book of the Week: Extreme Programming Explained by Kent Beck

In this segment, Johannes shares the impact that the book “Extreme Programming Explained” by Kent Beck had on his career. Johannes explains that the book helped him in many ways, and he found so many valuable ideas in it. He recalls the mantra “make it work, make it right, make it fast,” which he believes summarizes the essence of the book’s philosophy.

He credits the book with helping him to become a better developer and to embrace a growth mindset.

Transform Your Agile Teams with Hard-Earned Lessons from Super-Experienced Scrum Masters

About Johannes Lindman

Despite many years of experience Johannes still learns new things every day in order to stay relevant. This aligns with his curiosity on life and people.

You can link with Johannes Lindman on LinkedIn.

Johannes Lindman: Failing Safely, Tips for Successfully Implementing Extreme Programming in a Team Environment

In this podcast episode, Johannes shares his experience with extreme programming and test-driven development. Johannes recounts his experience working with a team where he assumed a lot of things about their needs and desires. He quickly realized that his eagerness to bring his own value to the table was getting in the way of the team’s success. Johannes learned that it is essential to listen and watch the team and to ensure that they are asking for help rather than assuming that he knew what they needed. He advises that it is essential to slow down, be humble, and not be pushy.

Johannes also shares several tips for helping teams to fail safely, turning up the volume on transparency, and showing small failures. He notes that it is important to reflect on what is happening and to determine if the possible failure is catastrophic or not. If it is not catastrophic, then it is best to let it go and be patient for the right moment.

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 Johannes Lindman

Despite many years of experience Johannes still learns new things every day in order to stay relevant. This aligns with his curiosity on life and people.

You can link with Johannes Lindman on LinkedIn.

Elly Griffith-Ward: How to help an overwhelmed team deliver! Flow lessons for Scrum teams

The team Elly was working with had a very large number of items in progress (high WIP). This was also a result of the team being under a lot of pressure to deliver. The team was motivated to deliver, but was also feeling down because of the inability to deliver all they wanted, when they wanted. Elly started to help the team by understanding their context, and then trying to understand where the work was being held up. She started learning Value-Stream-Mapping, a technique that helped identify the bottlenecks, something she had learned about in the book The Goal by Goldratt. Through that research work, Elly found out some options to improve the flow of work for that team. Listen in to learn what those were, and what technique she used to help the team! In this segment, we talk about the concept of Shifting Left, and Extreme Programming.

Featured Book of the Week: Nonviolent Communication by Rosenberger

In Nonviolent Communication by Rosenberger, Elly found a book that helped her as a Scrum Master, but also in other aspects of her life. The book offers a model of communication that tries to focus on resolving conflicts, and helps us become more self-aware of how we communicate with others. In this segment, we also talk about the hand-brain model, and the two thinking/acting systems (System 1 and System 2) that Kahneman describes in the book Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow.

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 Elly Griffith-Ward

Elly is an Agile Coach at a major e-commerce company. Previously in user research (and a royal food historian). She aims to 1) improve the experience of work through reducing mental load, improving communication and forming strong teams 2) shift the focus from managing the worker to managing the work by focusing on flow and waste.

You can link with Elly Griffith-Ward on LinkedIn and connect with Elly Griffith-Ward on Twitter.

BONUS: Learning what makes a great place to work with Woody Zuill and Yves Hanoulle

The idea for this episode started with a conversation with Yves and Woody when recording one chapter for the Tips from the Trenches Audiobook (check out the audiobook). In this episode, we talk about, and try to define what makes a great place to work, or as Woody calls them: wonderful places to work!

Woody starts by describing two different workplaces, one that was “wonderful”, and one that was not. We explore what the differences were between those two places, and what we can learn from those stories as Scrum Masters.

As Scrum Masters, our role is to help our teams, and our organizations move towards a better place to work, therefore these lessons are critical for us to act on.

In this segment, we refer to MobProgramming, an approach to teamwork that Woody has been talking and writing about for some years; and Cynefin, a model that tries to describe the differences between different levels of complexity, and defines certain strategies for managing different types of work.

“Turn up the good” a heuristic to build great places to work

Continue reading BONUS: Learning what makes a great place to work with Woody Zuill and Yves Hanoulle