Juan Rodriguez Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Juan Rodriguez: What Product Owners do that disengages, and demotivates Scrum teams!

The Great Product Owner: When lack of experience becomes an asset for a PO!

This PO was new to the organization, and didn’t have a lot of knowledge about the product. However, that was not an obstacle for this Product Owner. She took that as an opportunity to ask question, and learn as much as possible from the team. Because of that learning journey, she also learned to be present, and help the team answer some critical questions. Even if she did not know the answer to those questions, she was able to find out who else to involve, and helped the team at the same time as she discovered the product herself.

In this segment, we refer to the book Fish! By Stephen Lundin, and how the PO exemplified the model described in the book: Play, Make the Day, Be There, Choose Your Attitude!

The Bad Product Owner: PO actions the disengage, and demotivate Scrum teams

This was a marketing team working with a sales tool. The Product Owner decided by themselves that the team was “not going fast enough”, and started asking some team members to “work on this project during your lunch break”. When that was found out by the rest of the team, the team felt betrayed, and started to disengage from the work! Listen in to learn how Juan helped the team overcome this disengagement, and how a different attitude completely transformed the team’s attitude!

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 Juan Rodriguez

Juan started his career as a Drafter. He then transitioned to Engineering IT support, eventually landing in software development. His first introduction to agile-like practices was in 2014, which did not go that well. A few years later, Juan was introduced to Scrum, where he now enjoys being a Scrum Master.

You can link with Juan Rodriguez on LinkedIn.

Juan Rodriguez: Progressing Scrum teams towards self-sufficiency and independence

There’s progressive journey to independence for every Scrum team. At first they will need a lot more support, with reflection, with ownership and, in some cases, even with decision making. However, as Juan puts it, at some point they will still want our help, but will at the same time be ready to be fully independent. That is the moment of “success” for Juan. In this episode, we discuss some of the techniques we can use to encourage, and even foster that independence!

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: The Timeline Retrospective, involving the team in Collecting Data

One of the steps in the Retrospective lineup is “collecting data”, the Timeline Retro is a format that helps the team be part of that process, by collecting data points throughout the whole sprint, ahead of the retrospective. This format helps the team feel involved in the process of finding and removing obstacles.

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 Juan Rodriguez

You can link with Juan Rodriguez on LinkedIn.

Juan Rodriguez: The Backward Bike, or why organizations CAN’T learn Agile until… (video inside)

The company that Juan worked for had started an Agile transformation. Some time after that, Juan was asked to evaluate the transformation. As he looked into what was going on, he started to note that the teams were being asked to change, but the rest of the organization was still sticking to the old processes. That’s when Juan thought of a video he had seen: the backward bike, which helped him explain to his stakeholders what was missing! WARNING: this backward bike video is addictive, don’t watch it unless you have 10min to waste!!!!!!

About Juan Rodriguez

You can link with Juan Rodriguez on LinkedIn.

Juan Rodriguez: Helping to bridge the foreign language barrier in a distributed Scrum team

Juan was working with a marketing team. This team was divided between China and the USA, and on top of that, the team did not share a language. While the USA part of the team used English to communicate, the China based portion of the team would not feel comfortable with English in all situations, and preferred to use Chinese. This meant that the manager, who spoke Chinese, quickly became the bottleneck in communication, as she needed to translate all the conversations in the team. Juan had a problem to solve: how to help a team communicate regularly (in the daily meeting) without the manager having to be in the middle? Listen in to learn what Juan tried, and what eventually unblocked the communication between the team members!

Featured Book of the Week: Fish! A proven way to boost morale and improve results by Stephen Lundin

Fish! By Stephen Lundin, is a book that uses the story of the fish market in Seattle, to show how teams can become happier and more productive. In this section, we also refer to The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey, a book that helped Juan introduce the role of the Scrum Master using a metaphor that even non-technical people can understand.

How can Angela (the Agile Coach) quickly build healthy relationships with the teams she’s supposed to help? What were the steps she followed to help the Breeze App team fight off the competition? Find out how Angela helped Naomi and the team go from “behind” to being ahead of Intuition Bank, by focusing on the people! Download the first 4 chapters of the BOOK for FREE while it is in Beta!

About Juan Rodriguez

You can link with Juan Rodriguez on LinkedIn.

Juan Rodriguez: The unavoidable explosive team conflict, lessons learned for Scrum Masters

This story starts with what was supposed to be a normal, routine daily standup. However, that was not to happen. Two team members started a shouting match that left Juan confused, and surprised. Listen in to learn what happened next, and how to prepare for those, unexpected, but eventually unavoidable conflicts that Scrum Masters will face!

About Juan Rodriguez

You can link with Juan Rodriguez on LinkedIn.