Felix Handler Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Felix Handler: when shared responsibility does not work

When teams, and organizations grow in size they suffer from totally different problems from when they were smaller. That’s to be expected. However, we often react by “doubling down” on what worked before, even if that is not the best approach. Felix shares a story of a growing organization, and the struggles they went through to be able to cope with that growth.

In this episode we refer to the book “Team of Teams”, by General McChystal, which explains how you can work with extremely large teams.

About Felix Handler

Felix likes to bring out the best in as many people as possible by providing an environment in which people can sustainably thrive. After his Bachelor in Computer Science he wanted to develop people rather than software. He also is part of 12min.me, a movement for inspiring people.

You can link with Felix Handler on XING and connect with Felix Handler on Twitter.

Felix Handler: 4 questions Scrum Masters can reflect on to evaluate their success

Each Scrum Master should spend some time reflecting on their work, and its impact. Felix likes 4 questions that he asks regularly to understand the impact of his work.

He also shares some tips to check if the team is evolving and trusting each other.

Retrospective format of the week: the Starfish retrospective

Similar to the good/bad or keep/drop formats, the Starfish retrospective also focuses on some categories of problems/work. However, it does so in a more subtle way. As Felix describes it, it allows for more space to be creative because of some ambiguous categories like “What should we start doing?”

About Felix Handler

You can link with Felix Handler on XING and connect with Felix Handler on Twitter.

Felix Handler on how growing companies can end up drowning in meetings

Companies that are successful are likely to grow. As they grow, they enter the meeting inflation period, and some may even become meeting obsessed. In this episode we review such a situation, and the tools and approaches Felix used to create a healthier culture around meetings. He shares many tips on how to re-evaluate and eventually drop some the meetings that end up removing the focus from the real work.

About Felix Handler

You can link with Felix Handler on XING and connect with Felix Handler on Twitter.

Felix Handler: The infinite loop of bug fixing

Teams want to do their best, and many want to deliver high-quality. It is only natural that they would focus on improving the quality of the software that they develop. However, without the understanding of why the quality is important, we may get stuck in an infinite loop of bug fixing. In this episode we review such a story, and how Felix was able to help the team understand better their true goal.

Featured book of the week: #NoEstimates, how measure project progress without estimates

This week we discuss the #NoEstimates book, and how it helped Felix adopt Agile ideas in any kind of project.

About Felix Handler

You can link with Felix Handler on XING and connect with Felix Handler on Twitter.

Felix Handler: Agile adoption in remote / distributed teams

Adopting Agile in a co-located organization is hard enough, but when you need to adopt Agile in distributed team, things get even more complicated. In this episode we discuss how Agile adoption in a distributed / remote team can create problems that are hard to solve, unless you are ready for it. We also discuss many different tips on how to tackle agile adoption in a distributed organization.

About Felix Handler

You can link with Felix Handler on XING and connect with Felix Handler on Twitter.