Jill Stott: The Product Ownership perfect storm, and how to solve it with the help of the Scrum team

The Great Product Owner: Willing to learn, and ready to experiment, the secret to great newbie PO’s!

This PO had never heard about Scrum before they started their work as PO for a Scrum team. They were also new to Agile in general. However, the PO decided and took action on learning quickly what was expected, and sought out a strong collaboration with the team, participating in their retros, and by being willing to try new things that might have seemed confusing or even scary at first.

The Bad Product Owner: Unable to make decisions, and with low confidence, the PO perfect storm! And how to solve it!

This Product Owner was not empowered by their stakeholders, and therefore not confident. To add to the problems, the PO was also not available, and took a long time to be able to make decisions. This led to the team sometimes having very undefined and unclear requirements. When the team asked questions, the PO was often not able to answer their questions, nor did they take those questions forward to someone who could answer them. The scene was set for a disaster, but thankfully something happened that changed the dynamics. Listen in to learn how Jill and the teams were able to change things, and ultimately got to a point where they got what they needed from the PO.

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 Jill Stott

Jill Stott is here to make friends! She’s worked in IT for too many years to count. She is passionate about assisting ScrumMasters to be successful and happy in their roles. Jill knows that there is no such thing as a perfect chocolate chip cookie and she isn’t afraid to use puppets.

You can link with Jill Stott on LinkedIn.

Jill Stott: Introducing Retrospectives on Demand, an Agile approach to Agile retrospectives!

When it comes to reviewing, and assessing our own success as Scrum Masters, Jill chooses to focus on a few metrics that she follows and discusses with the team. In this episode, we share and discuss what those metrics are, and how you can introduce the idea to the team.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Introducing Retrospectives on Demand, an Agile approach to Agile retrospectives!

Jill has used many different formats in her role as Scrum Master. But lately, she’s shifted to “retrospectives on demand”. She encourages teams to raise their hand whenever something is on their mind, and they want to discuss it. As a heuristic for these retrospectives on demand, she started a board with the team, and whenever there are a certain number of cards on that board, the team gets together and discusses those topics.

Retrospectives, planning sessions, vision workshops, we are continuously helping teams learn about how to collaborate in practice! In this Actionable Agile Tools book, Jeff Campbell shares some of the tools he’s learned over a decade of coaching Agile Teams. The pragmatic coaching book you need, right now! Buy Actionable Agile Tools on Amazon, or directly from the author, and supercharge your facilitation toolbox!

About Jill Stott

Jill Stott is here to make friends! She’s worked in IT for too many years to count. She is passionate about assisting ScrumMasters to be successful and happy in their roles. Jill knows that there is no such thing as a perfect chocolate chip cookie and she isn’t afraid to use puppets.

You can link with Jill Stott on LinkedIn.

Jill Stott: Adopting Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), a real life story of success

Jill was working with a UI toolkit team. This team served a lot of other teams as their direct users/customers. All seemed to be going fine, but as the number of client teams was growing, senior management came in and asked them to adopt the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) as a way to help coordinate the work of these multiple teams. This started a process of SAFe adoption that Jill describes in detail in this episode!

As Scrum Master we work with change continuously! Do you have your own change framework that provides the guidance, and queues you need when working with change? The Lean Change Management framework is a fully defined, lean-startup inspired change framework that can be used as the backbone of any change process! You can buy Lean Change Management the book at Amazon. Also available in French, Spanish, German and Portuguese.

About Jill Stott

Jill Stott is here to make friends! She’s worked in IT for too many years to count. She is passionate about assisting ScrumMasters to be successful and happy in their roles. Jill knows that there is no such thing as a perfect chocolate chip cookie and she isn’t afraid to use puppets.

You can link with Jill Stott on LinkedIn.

Jill Stott: Learning to work with dominant people in Scrum teams

Jill was working in a team where all the team members knew each other well, it was almost like a group of friends. However, this team was not perfect. They struggled to complete even a third of all the stories they took into the Sprint. When looking back, she can recognize the pattern of the dominant/opinionated developer who wanted to take a lot into every sprint. This left the Product Owner and Business Analyst for that team frustrated, because the unpredictability had already become a problem. Listen in to learn how that team was able to move away from the “take as much as you want” mentality into the sprint.

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

In Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins, Jill found an essential guide to her work as a Scrum Master. It was the book that helped her understand the different responsibilities of a Scrum Master, the difference between Agile Coaching and the Scrum Master role. It’s a book she still refers to even now.

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 Jill Stott

Jill Stott is here to make friends! She’s worked in IT for too many years to count. She is passionate about assisting ScrumMasters to be successful and happy in their roles. Jill knows that there is no such thing as a perfect chocolate chip cookie and she isn’t afraid to use puppets.

You can link with Jill Stott on LinkedIn.

Jill Stott: Learning to be a Scrum Master for a team under pressure

Jill was helping a team under a lot of pressure. In her journey as a Scrum Master at the time, Jill wanted to help the team, and therefore took the role of the organizer for the team, setting up their meetings, and ensuring the team was following Scrum. However, the team did not want to do Scrum at the time. On top of that, Jill was also a tester on the team! The scene was set for a major problem. Listen in to learn what happened, and how Jill learned what it means to be a Scrum Master for a team under pressure!

Recovering from failure, or difficult moments is a critical skill for Scrum Masters. Not only because of us, but also because the teams, and stakeholders we work with will also face these moments! We need inspiring stories to help them, and ourselves! The Bungsu Story, is an inspiring story by Marcus Hammarberg which shows how a Coach can help organizations recover even from the most disastrous situations! Learn how Marcus helped The Bungsu, a hospital in Indonesia, recover from near-bankruptcy, twice! Using Lean and Agile methods to rebuild an organization and a team! An inspiring story you need to know about! Buy the book on Amazon: The Bungsu Story – How Lean and Kanban Saved a Small Hospital in Indonesia. Twice. and Can Help You Reshape Work in Your Company.

About Jill Stott

Jill Stott is here to make friends! She’s worked in IT for too many years to count. She is passionate about assisting ScrumMasters to be successful and happy in their roles. Jill knows that there is no such thing as a perfect chocolate chip cookie and she isn’t afraid to use puppets.

You can link with Jill Stott on LinkedIn.

 

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Down-to-earth, hard-earned Scrum Masters lessons and the Tips from the Trenches e-book table of contents, delivered by email
Enter e-mail to download a clickable PO Cheat Sheet
This handy Coach Your PO cheat-sheet includes questions to help you define the problem, and links to handy, easy techniques to help you coach your Product Owner
Enter e-mail to download a clickable PO Cheat Sheet
This handy Coach Your PO cheat-sheet includes questions to help you define the problem, and links to handy, easy techniques to help you coach your Product Owner
Enter e-mail to download a checklist to help your PO manage their time
This simple checklist and calendar handout, with a coaching article will help you define the minimum enagement your PO must have with the team
Enter e-mail to download a checklist to help your PO manage their time
This simple checklist and calendar handout, with a coaching article will help you define the minimum enagement your PO must have with the team
Internal Conference
Checklist
Internal Conference
Checklist
Download a detailed How-To to help measure success for your team
Motivate your team with the right metrics, and the right way to visualize and track them. Marcus presents a detailed How-To document based on his experience at The Bungsu Hospital
Download a detailed How-To to help measure success for your team
Read about Visualization and TRANSFORM The way your team works
A moving story of how work at the Bungsu Hospital was transformed by a simple tool that you can use to help your team.
Read about Visualization and TRANSFORM The way your team works