Kathryn Tancos Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Kathryn Tancos: The Product Owner anti-pattern that destroys collaboration

The Great Product Owner: Working with the team to make decisions

Great Product Owners understand that they are part of the team, and try to setup collaborative decision making through active conversations with team and stakeholders. This develops the relationship between PO and team, and setups up a powerful partnership.

The Bad Product Owner: When the PO stands back and does not drive the product or the collaboration between teams

When product organizations are separated into different silos, and the Product Owner stands back, problems emerge quickly. On top of that, when the PO does not feel, or want to be accountable for the product, things get even worse. We also discuss the anti-pattern of missing, losing the customer voice in the work of the Product Owner.

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 Kathryn Tancos

Kathryn is a certified Scrum Master focused on Agile transformations and helping teams build a better way of working. How did this Emmy Award-winning news producer become an avid Agilist? Through communication, curiosity, and collaboration, the pillars of successful Agile teams. Her goal is to inspire teams and organizational cultures to foster a sense of self-leadership throughout the transformation journey.

You can link with Kathryn Tancos on LinkedIn and connect with Kathryn Tancos on Twitter.

Kathryn Tancos: Tweaking Retrospectives to help silent Agile teams speak up

Even when measuring our success can be difficult, we can define a set of questions that help us reflect and help teams. Kathryn shares some of those questions, as well as a “guideline” for our success as Scrum Masters. Listen in to learn about Kathryn’s success questions.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Tweaking Start/Stop/Continue to help teams that have a hard time speaking up

Kathryn likes to adapt the format to the team. Even when using simple formats, such as Start/Stop/Continue, Kathryn prefers to add some twists so that all team members participate actively. In this segment, Kathryn shares a story of a team that had a hard time speaking up, and what she did to help the team contribute actively in the retrospective.

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About Kathryn Tancos

You can link with Kathryn Tancos on LinkedIn and connect with Kathryn Tancos on Twitter.

Kathryn Tancos: Scaling up an Agile transformation through practical actions by Scrum Masters

An organization that started an Agile transformation, hired 2 external consultants to help the transformation. However, the 2 transformation coaches were not enough to cover the many teams in that organization. This put Kathryn and other Scrum Masters in a tough spot. In order to contribute, Kathryn started to ask questions, and discuss with the 2 transformation coaches, which turned out to be a practical way to scale their knowledge and influence in the overall organization. In this segment, we discuss how we can help setup the Agile transformation in our organizations, starting by focusing on the “why” and the values the transformation is supposed to bring into the organization.

About Kathryn Tancos

You can link with Kathryn Tancos on LinkedIn and connect with Kathryn Tancos on Twitter.

Kathryn Tancos: How to Agile transformations succeed or fail

Kathryn was part of an agile transformation and working with 6 different teams. As she dug deeper into the ways of working in those teams, she found that there were patterns in their behaviors that negatively affected their performance. Among these, there was the belief that the team knew all the solutions and did not need to talk to, or listen to other teams. In this segment, we hear about how Scrum Masters can help change these patterns, and the other organizational patterns that make Agile transformations fail.

Featured Book of the Week: Radical Candor by Kim Scott

In Radical Candor by Kim Scott, Kathryn found a framework for giving and receiving feedback that helped her with the difficult conversations she needed to have in her Scrum Master role. The book shares ideas, and stories on how to build an environment of trust and respect.

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 Kathryn Tancos

You can link with Kathryn Tancos on LinkedIn and connect with Kathryn Tancos on Twitter.

Kathryn Tancos: How to help Agile teams collaborate

Kathryn started as a journalist, and was “recruited” to help in an IT project that aimed to help journalists in their day-to-day work, that took her on a journey towards Agile and eventually she took on the PO and later the Scrum Master role. As a Scrum Master, later on in her career, she tried to help a team working remotely, and that was only part of the challenge. As the team started to work on the product, they did not seek feedback from the partners and stakeholders, leading to a lot of surprises in the Sprint Reviews. This story helped Kathryn learn an important lesson for her as a Scrum Master. Listen in to learn about the critical tip she has to share based on this story.

About Kathryn Tancos

You can link with Kathryn Tancos on LinkedIn and connect with Kathryn Tancos on Twitter.