Helen Garcia Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Helen Garcia: The PO that could listen and learn from the Scrum team

In this episode, we talk about one of the key skills for successful Product Owners: the ability to listen to, and learn from the team.

The Great Product Owner: The PO that could listen and learn from the team

The ability to listen to the team and take advantage of that is one of the key characteristics of great Product Owners. After all, the team are the experts on the “how to deliver” question. In this segment, we share some tips that can help Product Owners become great listeners.

The Bad Product Owner: The PO that was not able to listen

The opposite PO is the PO that can’t listen. Maybe they have too much going on, or it is just not how they work. In these cases, Scrum Masters must learn how to help Product Owners learn to listen. We discuss tips and tools to help PO’s that are too impatient to listen to the team.

Are you having trouble helping the team working 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 Helen Garcia

Helen’s been in projects for over 10 years, everything from construction to pharma to more recently gaming. Not only does she want to bring an Agile mindset to organizations that are ready for change but she also strongly believes that Agile can be just as effective at home. Bringing value sooner, safer and happier thanks to Jon Smart it’s a quote Helen take most places!

You can link with Helen Garcia on LinkedIn and connect with Helen Garcia on Twitter.

You can also visit Helen Garcia’s website to learn more about her work.

Helen Garcia: Helping Scrum teams improve, but not too fast!

Teams go through their own learning journey. During that process, they experience different learning perspectives, from following the rules to going beyond the rules of Scrum (the Shu-Ha-Ri model). However, we must help them reflect on when they are ready to go beyond the “rules of the game”. We discuss how we can best help our teams go through the learning journey at their own pace, without jumping over important steps!

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Strengths and Weaknesses for Remote teams

The format that Helen shares with us is tailored for remote teams and focuses on helping all team members share their perspectives on the team and its progress. Helen also shares a cool tip on how to keep the engagement throughout the retrospective.

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 Helen Garcia

You can link with Helen Garcia on LinkedIn and connect with Helen Garcia on Twitter.

You can also visit Helen Garcia’s website to learn more about her work.

Helen Garcia: Incremental change for Agile organizations – the Agile alternative to change management!

When it comes to software development, every Scrum Master knows about how the “incremental” approach is the way to go. That’s why it is so critical to learn from why that works and apply it to other changes, like organization or team changes. In this episode, we talk about the incremental approach to change leadership!

About Helen Garcia

You can link with Helen Garcia on LinkedIn and connect with Helen Garcia on Twitter.

You can also visit Helen Garcia’s website to learn more about her work.

Helen Garcia: Helping Scrum teams speak up and take responsibility for their success

This team would not speak up. That puzzled Helen. We explore the anti-pattern of the silent team that would not speak their mind, and what happened. Through this story, we discuss how we, as Scrum Masters, can help teams grow and be confident of their ideas, and take responsibility for their success.

Featured Book of the Week: Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins

In Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins, Helen found inspiring stories that changed her perspective on the Scrum Master role. Through this book, she started her learning journey, and explored how to coach teams, and become a better coach herself.

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 Helen Garcia

You can link with Helen Garcia on LinkedIn and connect with Helen Garcia on Twitter.

You can also visit Helen Garcia’s website to learn more about her work.

Helen Garcia: Meeting our team members where they are, a key lesson for Scrum Masters

Helen was a Project Manager before changing to the Scrum Master role. That transition was not an easy one, and she shares her struggles and lessons learned.

The story we explore in this episode is about how sometimes we fail to take into account that our team members may be at a different step of the journey than we are. We talk about what that means in practice, how it affects our performance, and discuss some tips to make sure that we always meet our team members where they are, in their own learning journey.

About Helen Garcia

You can link with Helen Garcia on LinkedIn and connect with Helen Garcia on Twitter.

You can also visit Helen Garcia’s website to learn more about her work.