John Albrecht Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

John Albrecht: Helping to grow great Scrum Product Owners

From the focus on Value and Product Vision to the aspect of growing great PO’s. Two aspects that Scrum Masters must keep in mind at all times.

The Great Product Owner: Sharing and evolving the product Vision at all times

Great Product Owners aren’t afraid to share their Vision for the product or service they work with. But they also exhibit an interest in what other stakeholders (including the team) can bring to the product, and even change their Vision if that is needed. In this conversation with John, we discuss the focus on value, and how great PO’s focus the team on delivering value at all times.

In this episode, we refer to a previous episode on Lean and Agile Financial Planning, as well as the 2020 version of the Scrum Guide (PDF LINK).

The Bad Product Owner: Helping grow great Product Owners.

In this segment, we talk about how Scrum Masters can have a big influence on the role of the Product Owner. We discuss how that influence can derail the team, and the PO by focusing the PO on aspects that are not critical for the success of the team and the PO. We then discuss what Scrum Masters can do to help PO’s, starting from the perspective and experience they have at that time.

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 John Albrecht

Agile Person, for the team by the team, used to be a developer. Got into Agile via Extreme Programming (XP), then Kanban, then Scrum. Some of his key ideas are Principles over Practices, #noestimates, love working with teams and organizations, the softer side, finding what they and customers need and what works for them.

You can link with John Albrecht on LinkedIn and connect with John Albrecht on Twitter.

You can learn more about John Albrecht’s work at Scrum Lake, and All Agile websites.

John Albrecht: Scrum Builders, an effective Agile Retrospective format

When we discuss success with John, he brings up the idea that Scrum Masters that are successful have the ability to go off and do something else (outside the team) while the team focuses on their own goals and Sprint. In this episode, we also describe 7 characteristics of great Scrum teams.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Scrum Builders

The Scrum Builders game that John Albrecht developed, is about helping teams reflect on their actions during the Sprint. John was working with a team at the time that was constantly overcommitting and needed to reflect on what was pushing them towards that anti-pattern.

Listen in to learn how to use the game to help your teams reflect on their behavior during the Sprint.

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 experiences: 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 John Albrecht

You can link with John Albrecht on LinkedIn and connect with John Albrecht on Twitter.

You can learn more about John Albrecht’s work at Scrum Lake, and All Agile websites.

John Albrecht: Learning to lead change for Scrum Masters

“Everything we do is about change.” This is the phrase we start the episode with. John shares his experience on how to bring and support change in organizations and teams. In particular, we hear the story of a startup, and how bringing people together to a shared goal was the task at hand.

In this episode, we talk about the Google Design Sprint as well as the NoEstimates book.

About John Albrecht

You can link with John Albrecht on LinkedIn and connect with John Albrecht on Twitter.

You can learn more about John Albrecht’s work at Scrum Lake, and All Agile websites.

John Albrecht: Navigating Complexity and Conflict in Scrum teams

Conflict is a natural process in teams. How teams handle, and survive conflict becomes therefore a critical aspect of their work. In this episode, we explore some of the skills/tools that help teams survive and benefit from (constructive) conflict, instead of suffering and being destroyed by (destructive) conflict.

Featured book of the Week: One From Many, The Rise Of The Chaordic Organization by Dee Hock

In One From Many, The Rise Of The Chaordic Organization by Dee Hock, John found a book that gave him a different perspective of organizations and the role of “order” and “control” in management. In this real-life story about the creation of VISA (the credit card and payment processing organization), John found many ideas that help us navigate complex organizations. In this episode, we also talk about Wardley Maps, Complexity, and the Cynefin framework.

About John Albrecht

You can link with John Albrecht on LinkedIn and connect with John Albrecht on Twitter.

You can learn more about John Albrecht’s work at Scrum Lake, and All Agile websites.

John Albrecht: Struggling and discovering the true meaning of Servant Leadership for Scrum Masters

The story that John shares with us, starts when Project Management transformations were a thing. He went through a PRINCE2 adoption process, which led to the emergence of the inevitable silos. John started searching for better alternatives and found Extreme Programming, Scrum and Kanban. As he tried to play the servant leader role that comes with Scrum, however, he discovered that there’s a good and a bad way to be a servant leader. Listen in to learn when to stop serving, and when to be a true leader!

About John Albrecht

You can link with John Albrecht on LinkedIn and connect with John Albrecht on Twitter.

You can learn more about John Albrecht’s work at Scrum Lake, and All Agile websites.