flow Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Salvatore Rinaldo: When helping a Scrum team is unable to stick to a Sprint plan, look outside the team

Salvatore was working in a startup with a team that, on paper, was a star team. However, when he started to observe how they worked, he noticed that the team was rarely sticking to what they had planned for the Sprint, and even the PO was at a loss on how to help the team stay on track and focus on what they had planned. In this segment, we refer to Cost of Delay, one of the topics discussed in The Principles of Product Development Flow, and share some tips on how to help a team that is stuck in this situation.

Featured Book of the Week: The Goal by Elyahu Goldratt

In The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement by Eliyahu Goldratt, Salvatore found the principles behind lean thinking as well as a model that helped him in his work as a Scrum Master. The Goal is a book where Theory Of Constraints is introduced to a business focused audience concerned with improving the performance of their businesses. In this segment, we also refer to The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development by Don Reinertsen, which helped Salvatore understand how the flow of work can be investigated and improved in organizations.

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 Salvatore Rinaldo

Salvatore is an Agile Coach and Scrum Master based in London. His background is in telecommunications and software engineering. For the past 7 years, Salvatore has been helping organizations leverage Lean, agile, Flow principles and system thinking to achieve better business agility.

You can link with Salvatore Rinaldo on LinkedIn.

Yousef T. Fahoum: The missing ingredient for a Scrum team to succeed

Yousef was working with a team that others call “trouble team”. But, as he observed the team, it looked like they were trying hard to do a good job. So he started working through 1-on-1’s to try to get a better, more detailed picture of what was going on. In that process, he realized that something critical was missing for that team to work well.

Featured Book of the Week: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Lencioni

In The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Lencioni, Yousef learned how to diagnose a team by looking at their dynamics. He also learned a model that helps him work with teams and grow the people in it.

In this segment, we also refer to Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World by General McChrystal, and MobProgramming, a topic we’ve covered before here on the podcast.

About Yousef T. Fahoum

When starting out as a ScrumMaster and BA years ago Yousef passionately followed the ScrumMaster Podcast. Yousef is a SAFe Enterprise Coach at Elabor8 with experience implementing Agile and SAFe at some of the largest and most recognized brand leaders across industry domains in the U.S. and Australia.

You can link with Yousef T. Fahoum on LinkedIn and connect with Yousef T. Fahoum on Twitter.

Jeroen de Jong: The Project Manager disguised as a Product Owner, and the impact on the Scrum team

This story starts with a team that is doing detailed tasking and planning during a refinement session. The Product Owner for that team behaved like a project manager, dictating what each of the team members should do, and in what order. This was not helped by the fact that the team was heavily silo-ed around skills.

In this segment, we discuss the importance of understanding the “flow” in the team, and Jeroen refers to the talk by Henrik Kniberg on the impact of not limiting the work in progress.

Featured Book of the Week: Getting Things Done by David Allen

In Getting Things Done by David Allen, Jeroen found a method that helps him manage the stress that comes from being deliberate and structured about managing our own work. In this segment, we talk about some of the main aspects of the GTD (Getting Things Done) method, and the lessons we can take from that method and apply with the teams we work with.

About Jeroen de Jong

Jeroen started his career as a self-employed jack-of-all-trades in IT and is passionate about Agile. He is determined to keep learning and to share his knowledge with others.

You can link with Jeroen de Jong on LinkedIn and connect with Jeroen de Jong on Twitter.

Luís Santos Silva: Focusing on flow, a must for Scrum Masters and teams

Sometimes teams want to have too many stories in progress. This detracts from their ability to deliver. Luís suggests that, instead, teams should be focusing on “flow”, and instead highlight and solve the possible priority conflicts that sometimes lead to this anti-pattern of having too much in progress.

Featured Book of the Week: Inspired by Marty Cagan

The book Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love, by Marty Cagan, helped Luís understand that he needed to get out of the Scrum Master comfort zone, and work on the “upstream” activities as well. The book broadened Luís’ sision on what product development is. Luís leaves us a call-to-action as Scrum Masters, to stop focusing only on the “downstream” activities and learn how to help the organizations we work with focus on “the right things”.

About Luís Santos Silva

Luís is not your typical Agile Coach as he doesn’t have an IT background. He worked his way from a contact center up to Lean and Agile Coach and is now a Agile Coach team lead at OutSystems.

You can link with Luís Santos Silva on LinkedIn.

BONUS: The psychology of great teams with Christian Heidemeyer

The myth of Psychological Safety and the contrasting views on motivation

Right at the start of this episode, we talk about the study from Goole that originated the idea that you had to establish Psychological Safety for teams to have a chance to succeed. Even if psychological safety certainly plays a role, Christian shares with us why we should be skeptical about the study that originated the myth. This study was conducted by Google, exclusively with Google teams. Christian shares other theories with us that go beyond the fuzzy definition of psychological safety, and can help us analyze our team, and their work to help them reach a high level of performance.

In this segment, we refer to Self-determination theory, which focuses on what drives our intrinsic motivation and can lead to a high level of performance in any task.

Continue reading BONUS: The psychology of great teams with Christian Heidemeyer