Jeroen de Jong Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Jeroen de Jong: The Product Owner that “knows it all”, an anti-pattern to be aware of

The Great Product Owner: Organized, and able to communicate the value and “why” for the stories in the backlog

Great Product Owners are able to keep everyone in the loop and engaged with the product development process. They share the “why” for the product ideas they want to move forward, they share the value of what is being done, and what was delivered in the previous sprint, but they are also organized and structured about their work, including the use of the Getting Things Done method which we talked about on the Tuesday episode.

In this segment, we also refer to the Coach Your Product Owner e-course that we produced here at the Scrum Master Toolbox podcast, to help you work with the Product Owner.

The Bad Product Owner: The PO that “knows it all”

This PO thought they had nothing to learn. They acted as if they knew everything, even better than the team! This type of PO’s are more likely to want to “replace” the team and do things themselves, effectively killing collaboration in the process.

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 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.

Jeroen de Jong: Keeping a list of the small successes to gain energy and keep focus

When looking to have an impact in the teams we work with, Jeroen suggests that it’s very easy to get lost in the many lofty goals we have, and sometimes feel discouraged by not achieving them for a long time. He suggests we focus on celebrating the small successes as a way to keep our focus, but also our energy high at all times!

In this segment, we refer to the Getting Things Done method, which we also talked about in the Tuesday episode with Jeroen.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: The M&M’s retrospective

Jeroen shares a fun retrospective that combines our love for sweets with some more serious aspects like asking important questions in certain categories (the colors of the M&M’s) from the team: The M&M’s retrospective!

Jeroen also shares other, less sugar-intensive, options for the same effect. And we also discuss the Agile Monopoly game.

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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.

Jeroen de Jong: Kickstarting a community to effect change in large organizations

This is the story of a large bank that was going through an Agile transformation. The transformation was not going very well, and Jeroen worked with his colleagues to start a community. To kick start that process, they organized an open space event, to help the most interested people share what they were passionate about.

In this segment, we refer to a podcast episode and blog about how to organize an open space in a remote organization (unconference), and Jeroen’s blog post about the open space organization experience.

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.

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.

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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.

Jeroen de Jong: A Scrum Master anti-pattern we must avoid at all costs

“This is what it says in the Scrum Guide” is probably the most importantly overused phrase among the Scrum Master community. In this episode, we explore how using phrases like this can actually make our work harder, and the message harder to understand and accept. An anti-pattern we must avoid at all costs.

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.