Khwezi Mputa Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Khwezi Mputa: The Product Owner that knew how to collaborate with the Agile team

The Great Product Owner: The PO that knew how to collaborate with the team

In this segment, Khwezi highlights an exceptional Product Owner (PO) she collaborated with. The PO possessed a deep understanding of the product’s market, customers, and business context, enabling her to continuously update the product effectively. She exhibited excellent teamwork despite the distributed nature of the team, showing awareness of diverse cultures. Her proficiency in user story mapping facilitated smoother processes, including onboarding new team members. Overall, the PO’s comprehensive grasp of the product’s ecosystem and her collaborative skills stood out as instrumental in driving the team’s success.

The Bad Product Owner: The Unavailable and Bossy PO

While POs typically hold respected roles with authority over the product backlog, some misuse this status, behaving as if superior to the team. Often from management, such POs pose various challenges, including not being available often enough when the teams need their presence. Scrum Masters play a role in educating POs, advising team lift-offs to define roles, and coaching the POs to be active team participants. Khwezi emphasizes the Scrum Master’s mediation role, and we discuss the “Coach Your PO e-course” which aims to help Scrum Masters have an effective PO collaboration.

The Ultimate Guide to Supporting Product Owners as a Scrum Master

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 Khwezi Mputa

Khwezi is an experienced Agile coach, trainer, and IT professional since 2008. With diverse roles like Scrum Master, Agile Project Manager, and Business Analyst, she’s active in the Agile community, promoting diversity. Passionate about teaching, she empowers individuals and organizations to reach their full potential through coaching and mentoring.

You can link with Khwezi Mputa on LinkedIn.

Khwezi Mputa: Visualizing Success And Coaching With Impact, With The Help Of A Coaching Backlog

In this episode, Khwezi emphasizes empowering teams over personal recognition. She highlights the importance of informing and involving stakeholders and sponsors, using a coaching backlog as a valuable tool. This backlog aids in feedback provision, achievement tracking, and maintaining focus. It also visually represents the team’s journey. Khwezi acknowledges the challenge of conveying intangible scrum master efforts to sponsors and recommends visual tools like MURAL for clarity. Her insights encourage fostering empowerment and sharing impact beyond tangible metrics, reflecting her holistic approach to effective scrum mastering.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: The Movie Critic Retrospective

In the episode, Khwezi introduces “The Movie Critic” retrospective, a creative approach to retrospectives using movies. By asking the team to liken their experience to a movie genre, such as action or drama, they delve into struggles and reasons behind their choices. The question “do you recommend this movie?” prompts reflection. Utilizing tools like MURAL enhances the process, and Khwezi advises encouraging additional sharing to ensure comprehensive insights are captured. This cinematic retrospective technique offers an engaging way to explore team challenges and insights collaboratively.

How can I, as a Scrum Master, supercharge my facilitation?

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 Khwezi Mputa

You can link with Khwezi Mputa on LinkedIn.

Khwezi Mputa: From Silos to Synergy, A Story of Agile Coaches and HR Integration during change

Khwezi shared insights from an Agile transformation journey involving collaboration between Agile coaches and the Human Resources department HR business partners. They recognized overlap in their responsibilities and merged into a cohesive team. Challenges surfaced through joint meetings, leading to the realization that their work needed to be aligned. They adopted the SPINE model for effective change, emphasizing starting with the “need” for change. Co-facilitation and shared knowledge enhanced their efforts. To bridge communication gaps, HR partners were encouraged to attend Agile bootcamps. Khwezi emphasized the universality of Agile principles, advocating for their application beyond IT teams, and promoting tool-sharing for wider team benefits.

Want to Improve Your Change Management Results? Discover the Lean Change Management Approach Today!

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 Khwezi Mputa

You can link with Kwhezi Mputa on LinkedIn.

Khwezi Mputa: Breaking Down Dysfunctional Dynamics between a Scrum team and their Product Owner

In this episode, Khwezi discusses a challenging team scenario where great individuals struggled due to high-pressure dynamics and dysfunctional patterns. The Product Owner lacked decision-making authority, leading to delayed information and a proxy PO situation. This pressure caused scope creep and hindered technical debt management. Khwezi highlighted the importance of empowering the team to push back against excessive demands, coaching the PO to engage stakeholders effectively, and ensuring the right person fills the PO role. Addressing these issues was crucial for improving the product and fostering a healthier team dynamic.

If you need to support your Product Owner, we’ve created a course for you. You can access the Coach Your PO e-course here.

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

In this segment, Khwezi shares her recommended book, “Coaching Agile Teams” by Lyssa Adkins, which played a pivotal role in her self-improvement journey as a scrum master. This book provided valuable insights into guiding teams toward high performance. Khwezi emphasized using the Agile coaching competency framework and suggested self-assessment based on it. This framework led her to discover additional paths for growth. The book also highlighted the importance of exploring diverse topics to enhance skills. She mentioned the “Periodic Table of Scrum Master’s Competencies” as a useful resource for understanding various skills enhancement facets.

Transform Your Agile Teams with Hard-Earned Lessons from Super-Experienced Scrum Masters

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 Khwezi Mputa

You can link with Kwhezi Mputa on LinkedIn.

Khwezi Mputa: From Fear to Empowerment, How Scrum Masters Can Thrive By Facing Their Fears

Khwezi shares her challenges as a scrum master within a pressure-filled environment marked by discrimination. Recognizing her role as a team supporter, she confronts unemployment fears and ventures beyond her comfort zone. This shift motivated her to aim for helping teams be self-sufficient, empowering team members to thrive after her departure. Her story highlights the value of adaptation, risk-taking, and nurturing positive team dynamics.

The inspiring story of how a failing hospital turned things around with Agile and Lean

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 Khwezi Mputa

You can link with Kwhezi Mputa on LinkedIn.