innovation Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Tom Siebeneicher: A Deep Dive into Agile Dysfunction, And The Journey Back To Healthy Scrum

Tom shares the story of a team that slowly drifted away from Scrum, and it’s values, but without noticing it themselves! The team followed the rituals, but their retrospectives pushed them aways from Agile and Scrum principles. The team inadvertently, and over time, adopted a waterfall approach. To avoid this in your teams, Tom advocates for digging into root causes instead of symptom-fixing. Eventually, Tom helped the team do a “scrum reset” which realigned the team, prompting a valuable tip: conduct resets every six months. Tom emphasizes double-loop learning, urging a focus on long-term improvement amidst day-to-day challenges.

Featured Book of the Week: The Lean Startup, by Eric Ries

Tom delves into the transformative impact of Eric Ries’ “The Lean Startup.” The book revolutionized his perspective on Minimum Viable Products (MVPs), emphasizing radical experimentation and learning over rigid planning. It liberated him from the constraints of plan-driven approaches, emphasizing the dynamic nature of execution. Tom underscores the criticality of continuous measurement and learning, a principle he now prioritizes in his approach. He shares valuable advice: never underestimate the power of measuring and learning in the pursuit of agile success.

Transform Your Agile Teams with Hard-Earned Lessons from Super-Experienced Scrum Masters

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 Tom Siebeneicher

Tom is an engaging speaker, who has delivered presentations at conferences like the Atos DREAM Conference, the Agile Leadership Day, and TED XKE by Xebia. Their enthusiasm for discussing Agile is evident in those talks.

You can link with Tom Siebeneicher on LinkedIn.

Rohit Ratan Mani: Motivating Teams With a Proactive and Inspirational Product Owner

The Great Product Owner: The Power of a Proactive and Inspirational Product Owner

In this episode, Rohit shares his experience working with a highly enthusiastic Product Owner (PO) who joined from the business side. This PO actively sought knowledge by attending training sessions and conferences, generously sharing their learnings with Rohit. They introduced the concept of NoEstimates and encouraged experimentation. Despite initially being unfamiliar with NoEstimates, Rohit appreciated the PO’s drive for innovation. He emphasizes that Product Owners like this create a safe environment for the team to explore, challenge, and improve. The episode highlights the importance of a proactive and knowledgeable PO in fostering a culture of continuous learning and growth.

The Bad Product Owner: Collaboratively Establishing Clarity in Scrum Master and Product Owner Roles

In this episode, Rohit recounts his experience with a problematic Product Owner (PO) and how he addressed the situation. Initially, the PO relied heavily on Rohit to build and write the backlog, causing him to become a substitute PO. Realizing the negative impact of this pattern, Rohit initiated a conversation with the PO to clarify his need to prioritize the team’s focus. He emphasizes the importance of setting clear boundaries and saying “no” to taking on others’ responsibilities. The episode underscores the significance of establishing accountability and ensuring a healthy balance between the Scrum Master and Product Owner roles.

The Ultimate Guide to Supporting Product Owners as a Scrum Master

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 Rohit Ratan Mani

Rohit is an Enterprise Agile Coach, helping Leaders, individuals and teams to develop a growth mindset to be top achievers in their respective work area and in personal life.

You can link with Rohit Ratan Mani on LinkedIn and connect with Rohit Ratan Mani on Twitter.

Mirela Mus: The Product Owner’s View on Understanding and Overcoming Agile Team Self-Destructive Patterns

In this episode, Mirela discussed a team that self-destructed, highlighting various anti-patterns and providing helpful tips. She emphasized the negative impact of being overly focused on competition rather than individual work. Toxic personalities within the team and the acceptance of individuals who didn’t align with the team culture were identified as destructive factors. Mirela suggested ignoring disruptive behaviors selectively and being mindful of personal anxiety when starting work. Working “around” difficult team members was discouraged, while assuming good intentions and engaging in one-on-one discussions were recommended. The Nonviolent Communication (NVC) approach was mentioned, and open discussions in team channels were advised to address problematic behaviors transparently.

Featured Book of the Week: Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice by Clayton Christensen

In this episode, Mirela shared her recommended books. The first recommendation was “Competing Against Luck” by Clayton Christensen, which helps cut through the noise and understand the underlying factors in successful innovation. The next recommendation was “Thinking in Systems” by Donella Meadows, a book that aids in navigating organizations and comprehending incentives by emphasizing the impact of systems. Mirela humorously mentioned the phrase, “it’s because of the system, man!” Lastly, Mirela refers to the concept of “OODA Loop,” which is the cycle observe–orient–decide–act, developed by military strategist and United States Air Force Colonel John Boyd. These books provide valuable insights for understanding innovation, organizational dynamics, and the PO role.

Transform Your Agile Teams with Hard-Earned Lessons from Super-Experienced Scrum Masters

About Mirela Mus

Mirela is the founder of Product People, a Product Management Consultancy on a mission to help companies discover and deliver great products faster. They have 41 full-time Product Managers who help companies focus on product-led growth and/or profitability.

You can link with Mirela Mus on LinkedIn and connect with Mirela Mus on Twitter.

Caterina Palmiotto: The Phantom Product Owner, How Lack of Decision-Making Impacts the Team and Kills Innovation

The Great Product Owner: The Collaboration Between PO and Team as Key to PO Success

In this segment, Caterina shares a story of a great Product Owner who worked closely with their team. The PO took the time to share the high-level vision and timeline for a new module, collected doubts and comments from the team, and presented user stories with enough information to start a discussion. The PO listened to all suggestions and was available every day to collaborate. The refinement process was done in two parts, with the second part focused on investigating technical aspects. The PO even participated in retrospectives and worked with the team to improve the product based on either technical or functional ideas by the team. Caterina emphasizes the importance of building this kind of productive collaboration between POs and their teams, with the help of Scrum Masters.

The Bad Product Owner: The Phantom PO, How Lack of Decision-Making Impacts the Team and Kills Innovation

In this segment, Caterina talks about a Product Owner who only wrote user stories but was unable to make decisions. The Product Owner always needed to report to his boss, which caused a delay in decision-making. This led to delays in the team’s work, resulting in not completing the story in the sprint. Additionally, the team lost trust in the PO, and did not have enough information or support from the PO to bring their contribution to the product through technical innovation. Eventually, the team started to make decisions on their own and stopped suggesting ideas to the PO. Caterina emphasizes the importance of Product Owners being able to make decisions and not causing delays in the team’s work.

About Caterina Palmiotto

Caterina started as a software developer but soon realized that she was passionate about team dynamics and communication, and embraced agility from the moment she saw it.

Caterina believes a team can be more than the sum of its parts and that growing the right culture is essential. When people are surrounded by good examples they will be motivated to do their best. So the first step is doing your best to be a good example of the culture you want to nurture.

You can link with Caterina Palmiotto on LinkedIn.

BONUS: Ryan Jacoby on the 7 responsibilities of an innovation leader

Innovation is a topic that gets a lot of attention. There are innovation processes, specific creative games for teams to work with to seek innovative ideas. There’s the Lean Startup movement that tries to codify innovation-friendly processes, and there’s also the UX community pushing the argument that we need more innovation in software companies.

You’ve probably heard the same argument at work. We need to be more innovative to be competitive. Great! But how?

In this episode, we explore how leaders can set up their organizations for innovation. Ryan Jacoby helps us explore the how of that critical question: how can we be more innovative?

Ryan has written a book titled Making Progress – The 7 Responsibilities of an Innovation Leader to describe how organizations can focus on enabling innovation in practice.

The first action you, and your organization need to take

Ryan describes an approach that aims to focus on the team and organization on the customer needs. His approach is simple and immediately actionable. First start by jotting down in plain language and from the point-of-view of the user/customer: what problems are you trying to solve for that customer? Select the top 3.

The other dimension of innovation is your organization’s goals. Define what it means to meaningfully grow the impact of the organization over 6 to 18 months. This growth could be in the number of customers, revenue growth, profit, etc.

Now you have the start of a growth strategy that is centered on customer needs and also directly linked to the company’s/organization’s growth. Next, we talk about innovation in practice.

The 7 responsibilities of an innovation leader

When it comes to putting innovation in practice, Ryan argues that there are 7 areas to take into account.

Define progress for your organization, in other words: what is the impact you seek and the growth in that impact factor
Set an innovation agenda by prioritizing the innovation problems to solve, user and customer groups you want to serve, nature type of innovation to pursue.
Create support teams that build the product
Cultivate the ingredients for success for innovation
Giving great feedback to teams: prepare and setup the feedback moments so that teams can learn quickly.
Inspire progress
Reward progress (as defined in #1)

Ryan explains how he came to value these 7 responsibilities of an innovation leader by telling us his own story when he was responsible to help the New York Times grow their impact through innovative solutions.

Ryan’s book: lessons learned about each of the 7 responsibilities of an innovation leader

You can read more about Ryan’s work and find his detailed explanation of the 7 responsibilities of an innovation leader in his book: Making Progress – the 7 responsibilities of an innovation leader.

About Ryan Jacoby

Ryan Jacoby, is the founder of MACHINE, a strategy, and innovation company that helps its clients Think Big and Act Small.

MACHINE clients over the years have included people responsible for growth and innovation at The New York Times, Marriott, Viacom, Etsy, Google, Nike, The Washington Post, Feeding America, Fresh Direct, NBC Universal, and The Knight Foundation.

Prior to founding MACHINE, Ryan led teams and relationships at the design and innovation firm IDEO. He was a founding member and location head of the IDEO New York office and built the Business Design discipline at the firm.

Ryan is also the author of the book named “Making Progress” with Sense and Respond press. A book he describes as “a tactical guide for you, the person charged with leading innovation”

You can link with Ryan Jacoby on LinkedIn and connect with Ryan Jacoby on Twitter.

For more on Ryan Jacoby’s work, visit his company’s site at Machine.io.