Franziska Moenster Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Franziska Moenster: How Scrum Masters can help organize and prioritize a chaotic Product Backlog

The Great Product Owner: The focused PO that asked the right questions

This Product Owner asked a lot of questions, because she focused on the value the organization wanted to achieve with the product or feature to be developed. Not having a technology background also helped her ask questions from the team, and getting them involved in the decision making process. In this segment, we also talk about one characteristic of the PO’s personality that is critical for the team: being focused!

The Bad Product Owner: Helping organize and prioritize a chaotic Product Backlog

This Product Owner was not able to focus, and that was visible in the backlog which was “chaotic”, without ranking or prioritization. Given that prioritization is a key aspect of the PO role, we discuss how Franny was able to help this PO figure out that prioritization needed to happen, and how she helped the PO get to a difficult, but very important prioritization of work!

Are you having trouble helping the team work 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 Franziska Moenster

Franny (short for Franziska) loves seeing the power of building strong performing teams that build products in a customer centric way. She’s been working as a Scrum Master/Agile Coach for over 5 years. Profiting from her hands-on experience on scaling agile across teams and her joy of trying out new things she is always inspecting and adapting on an organizational level as well! On a personal note, she has recently moved to Tenerife to follow her passion of freediving.

You can link with Franziska Moenster on LinkedIn.

Franziska Moenster: Fixing a major retrospective Anti-pattern and helping Scrum teams speak up in the Retrospective!

Franny likes to focus on what type of conversations the team members have with her during the Sprint. To evaluate her own success she asks: are the team members coming to me with uncomfortable situations and seeking my support and help? In this segment, we also talk about how we can mirror the right behaviors to the team, and that way influence their ability to share with us things that otherwise they might choose not to!

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Fixing a major retrospective Anti-pattern and helping Scrum teams speak up in the Retrospective!

One of the common Retrospective anti-patterns is the lack of focus on defining and taking action on improvement ideas. In this segment, we talk about how to help teams focus on improvement ideas, and share one tip on how to make sure the teams engage and share their own ideas. After all, we don’t want to be the only ones talking during the retrospective!

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About Franziska Moenster

You can link with Franziska Moenster on LinkedIn.

Franziska Moenster: Leading change in a traditional, non-tech company. From traditional to Agile!

Franny was working in a very traditional, and old company. She was hired to work with a small team in their Digital Transformation. If being an Agile Coach in a tech organization is hard enough, what Franny was about to face was orders of magnitude harder! However, thanks to the fact that the organization was not ready for Agile, Franny learned the importance of going through the change process with patience and persistence! Listen in to learn the process they followed in that organization, that helped them transform!

About Franziska Moenster

You can link with Franziska Moenster on LinkedIn.

Franziska Moenster: The missing ingredient for a Scrum team to be able to work remote!

This is the story of a team that, even if they had a long history of working together, was faced with a new reality: remote work! During the pandemic years, many teams had to change from co-located work to remote work, and that change had big impacts on their work, and relationships. We discuss the lessons learned by Franny about teams that made that transition, and what is usually missing that leads to problems!

Featured Book of the Week: The Five Dysfunctions Of A Team by Lencioni

In The Five Dysfunctions Of A Team by Lencioni, Franny found a reminder that conflict is a necessary, and – if managed correctly – productive part of the team’s development. We discuss how everyone in the team has a different relationship with conflict, and why Scrum Masters should take that into account when observing, and intervening in team conflicts.

In this segment, we also talk about the book New Work needs Inner Work: Ein Handbuch für Unternehmen auf dem Weg zur Selbstorganisation, a German language book that helped Franny understand that the inner structures we have as Scrum Masters also need some work for us to be able to adapt ourselves to Agile.

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 Franziska Moenster

You can link with Franziska Moenster on LinkedIn.

Franziska Moenster: Designing Agile Retrospectives for maximum engagement, lessons learned

When we are starting our journey as Scrum Masters, one of the ceremonies that most scares us is the retrospective. There’s so much hanging on that ceremony, from the need to get an action that leads to improvement, to having the team engaged and everybody participating. In that context, it’s natural that we try our best and prepare extensively for the Retrospective. However, there’s a point when preparation is just too much! In this episode, we talk about what is that limit, and how to look at Retrospective facilitation in a way that leaves space for the team to take ownership, and be active in the Retrospective.

About Franziska Moenster

You can link with Franziska Moenster on LinkedIn.