Jeff Bubolz Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

BONUS: Mastering the Product Backlog, lessons for Product Owners with Jeff Bubolz and Chad Beier

Jeff and Chad start the podcast by describing the key differences between a frantic and stressful backlog vs a strategic and focused one. In this segment, Jeff and Chad describe their observations of product backlogs in many of the clients they work with, noting that the backlogs tend to be task-based and the Product Owners try to please everyone.

They emphasize that saying “yes” to something in the backlog means saying “no” to something else, and they suggest that focusing on outcomes and impacts and thinking about options can help prioritize backlog items.

They caution against task-based backlogs leading to a project management pattern for the Product Owner and suggest that helping the team get clarity while focusing on setting goals can be more effective.

They introduce the idea of “strategic distance”, i.e. how far from strategy is a certain backlog item. They determine that distance by asking the “why” question for any item on the backlog, and they give an example of how it might take many “why” questions to get to the essence of a backlog item.

They suggest zooming out and capturing more of the what and the why for backlog items and caution against using the backlog as a “catch-all” in an anti-pattern.

Creating Strategic and Focused Backlogs with Impact/Outcome Statements

Continue reading BONUS: Mastering the Product Backlog, lessons for Product Owners with Jeff Bubolz and Chad Beier

BONUS: The Agile Wire hosts interview Vasco Duarte on #NoEstimates – Jeff Maleski & Jeff Bubolz

This is a BONUS episode on the topic of #NoEstimates. The Agile Wire podcast hosts Jeff Bubolz and Jeff Maleski interview Vasco Duarte.

Some of you might have heard about #NoEstimates, and want to know more, and for others, it might be the first time you hear about it. Either way, in this episode we talk about the origins of #NoEstimates and why you may want to consider it when helping your teams.

This is a shared episode with a fellow Agile podcast The Agile Wire, where hosts Jeff Maleski and Jeff Bubolz interview Agile practitioners. Both Jeff Maleski and Jeff Bubolz have been guests here on the Scrum Master Toolbox podcast.

About Jeff Bubolz and Jeff Maleski

Jeff Bubolz is a speaker, trainer, and agile coach. He has been a Product Owner, Scrum Master and Development Team member. Jeff has worked with enterprise companies to small start-ups. His goal is to end human suffering in organizations, by nudging people to be the change they want to see in the world.

You can link with Jeff Bubolz on LinkedIn and connect with Jeff Bubolz on Twitter.

Jeff Maleski is passionate about working with and building up both individuals and teams using ideas from Jurgen Appelo’s Management 3.0 and Dan Pink’s Drive. When leading project teams, Jeff strives for empirical based planning and forecasting, continuous learning, and delivering high quality software products that exceed expectations. Jeff believes in leading by actions and focusing on building relationships with others.

You can link with Jeff Maleski on LinkedIn.

Jeff Bubolz on how deeply held beliefs shape the system of work

One of the least spoken about system conditions is the deep belief that “more is better”. Many organisations make decisions and organize their work based on that model: more features = more success for the product. But is it really like that?

Looking at the system conditions also means understanding what are the deeply held beliefs that the organisation acts on, and shape its ways working.

About Jeff Bubolz

Jeff is a speaker, trainer, and agile coach. He has been a Product Owner, Scrum Master and Development Team member. Jeff has worked with enterprise companies to small start-ups. His goal is to end human suffering in organizations, by nudging people to be the change they want to see in the world.

You can link with Jeff Bubolz on LinkedIn and connect with Jeff Bubolz on Twitter.

Jeff Bubolz on the importance of having the team measure their own success

Success is when a team has reached a point where they improve regularly, and perhaps don’t even need a Scrum Master present at every meeting, or facilitating every session with the team. When that happens it is time to move on to other topics. Is the team learning how to measure themselves and the flow of work? In this episode we talk about team self-measurement and how the team can learn from starting and maintaining their own dashboard.

In this episode we refer to the book Scrum Mastery by Geoff Watts.

In this episode we refer to the team dashboard created by Troy Magennis of Focused Objective.

Featured retrospective format of the week: Have the team own the retro

Learning happens at the team level. The retrospectives are the key ceremony where that aspect of our work is most visible. In this episode we talk about the different phases of the retrospective and how get teams to own the retrospective.

We refer to the book Agile Retrospectives by Esther Derby and Diana Larsen.

About Jeff Bubolz

You can link with Jeff Bubolz on LinkedIn and connect with Jeff Bubolz on Twitter.

Jeff Bubolz: Solving bottlenecks by changing from component teams to feature teams

When we visualise the work, how it flows in the organization we discover the real bottlenecks that prevent us from delivering. In this episode we study the case of an organisation that was divided into component teams instead of feature teams. That was discovered thanks to visualisation. But the hard work was about to start. How do we help an organisation transform from component teams to feature teams?

Listen in to hear Jeff’s journey through the change process, and what approaches he successfully used.

About Jeff Bubolz

You can link with Jeff Bubolz on LinkedIn and connect with Jeff Bubolz on Twitter.