facilitation Archives - Page 14 of 14 - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Stefano Porro explains how he helps his team take ownership of the daily meeting

Teams don’t often take ownership of the daily meeting. They turn to the scrum master as if expecting an order, or confirmation. Stefano created a technique that helps his teams take ownership of the daily meeting, and make it a productive part of the daily routine.

About Stefano Porro

Stefano is from Turin, Italy. He has worked since 2001 in IT projects and he feels lucky because he does what he loves. He learned about Scrum in 2007 when the company where he was working decided to adopt Scrum. For the first two years he was part of a Scrum team, and he was fascinated from the role of the Scrum Master because he always loved to help team’s members. For him, becoming a Scrum Master, was a natural evolution.

You can find Stefano Porro on Twitter, and connect with Stefano Porro on Linkedin.

Stefano would also like you to be in touch with him through gmail (stefano.porro81@gmail.com) or skype (stefano.bowen). mail: stefano.porro81@gmail.com

You can follow Stefano’s blog to know more about his work and his ideas.

Antti Tevanlinna helps break the team anti-pattern: “nothing ever changes here”

“Nothing ever changes here” is a team anti-pattern that sometimes takes over and freezes team behavior. Teams experiencing that anti-pattern will often complain, be discouraged, but will not take action to change their situation. How to help teams like that? Antti tells us a story of a team that was in that situation and what he and his colleagues did to change the situation and save the project.

About Antti Tevanlinna

Antti is an agile practitioner, who got started with agile in my own very first Agile project way back in 2004. He’s been through all kinds of roles, from team member, to management, to customer-facing roles.
You can connect with Antti Tevanlinna on twitter, and check Antti Tevanlinna’s blog.

Stephen Thomas shares his recipe to help the organization adopt scrum and engage with the scrum team

How do we help organizations to recognize the value that scrum teams can bring, and the obstacles they face in the process? Stephen Thomas shares his recipe and describes a few ideas of how the retrospectives can be an effective practice to help organizations evolve and get better.
Stephen’s recipe for organization improvement:

Help the teams understand their progress with a physical (as opposed to digital) and visual burndown (colorful if possible).
Write the principles on the wall and make sure people see them regularly. Point to them when needed.
Have lots of wall space for teams to use and create their shared view of their work.
Help start and facilitate organization-level retrospectives, because improving one team is not enough for lasting change.
Make the team independent

Before implementing all of this, make sure that the organization has the necessary knowledge to work in an agile manner, helping organize training if needed, and working with stakeholders regularly.

About Stephen Thomas

Stephen has been managing digital projects since 2004. Initially specialising in e-learning, he now looks after multiple projects that range from rapidly produced native apps to large-scale social networks. Based in Oxford, he is also one of the founders of the DOPM meetup.
You can connect with Stephen Thomas in LinkedIn, and follow Stephen Thomas on Twitter.