Kim Hinsch Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Kim Hinsch: How to help a PO step down from the “clouds”, and help the Scrum team make decisions

The Great Product Owner: Trust your Scrum team

Great Product Owners are able to trust the teams they work with. They help the team establish, and gain self-confidence in their actions and decisions. This does not mean the PO resigns, but rather that they first trust the team, and pull rank only rarely – even if they are very experienced in the product. Great PO’s often say “go ahead, I trust you”, even if they have another idea of what the solution could be.

The Bad Product Owner: The “in the clouds” PO

There are several PO anti-patterns that detract from the PO’s performance. One such anti-pattern is when the PO is constantly in “the clouds”, and is unable to bring their vision to the reality of everyday decision making. The PO isn’t invested in the “now”, but the team can only make immediate decisions, and they need the PO to help them make those decisions.

Are you having trouble helping the teamwork 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 Kim Hinsch

Kim is an agile enthusiast, that has been stung by the power of games, communication, and psychology. Kim practices every day the fine art of making magic happen the agile way. And what makes her heart beat faster is supporting teams and organizations on their magical journey across the hills of excellence and effectiveness.

You can link with Kim Hinsch on LinkedIn.

Kim Hinsch: Measure all the things, to assess team and Scrum Master success

Kim likes to use metrics to assess her work and the evolution of the team. This helps the team reflect about their performance, but also about their motivation and engagement (when using team morale metrics, for example). Kim also mentions that your metrics should include a measure of value delivered to the customer.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Simple formats to get started with

As Kim puts it, the best format for the Retrospective is “one that works”. Of course, that means the Scrum Master must pay special attention to what is going on with the team at the time, and learn to read the signs on which method is the most appropriate for the team.

Kim shares with us her process to define what is the format “that works” for every sprint and every team. She also shares a few formats to get you started with a new team: The Agile Battleships (online version of Battleships retrospective) and Name Game Agile Retrospective formats.

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 Kim Hinsch

You can link with Kim Hinsch on LinkedIn.

Kim Hinsch: Helping a Scrum team come together to overcome huge challenges

Kim was working with a company in the middle of an Agile transformation. The team Kim was working mostly with was struggling with understanding what was required from them. They were working with a new product, for which the expectations and requirements were unclear. The Product Owner was also new to the job, and the team. Kim understood she needed the team to come together if they were to overcome the challenges they were facing. So, she took on the mission of making the team jell.

In this episode, we talk about The 5 Dysfunctions Of A Team by Lencioni, a book that has been mentioned several times here on the podcast.

About Kim Hinsch

You can link with Kim Hinsch on LinkedIn.

Kim Hinsch: Going beyond “best practice” a must for Scrum teams that want to learn and improve

Kim was working with a new team, with a new PO. However, this team had a history in that organization, and their culture was already established. A lot of people came in with their own beliefs, and the inevitable culture clash happened between the “new” PO and Scrum Master, and the “old” team members. In this segment, we talk about how important it is to bring these issues up with the team and have them process/learn from the conflicts that are happening. This led Kim to understand that when teams (think they) “know the best practices”, they are not motivated to learn and improve.

Featured Book of the Week: Corporate Rebels: Make work more fun by Joost Minaar et al.

In Corporate Rebels: Make work more fun, by Joost Minaar et al., Kim found examples of how different companies have taken decisions to the teams, and empowered them to take responsibility for their own work and success. She found those stories inspiring.

In this segment, we also talk about Turn The Ship Around! By David L. Marquet, a book we’ve reviewed with the author here on the podcast.

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 Kim Hinsch

You can link with Kim Hinsch on LinkedIn.

Kim Hinsch: How to recover from an Epic fail during a workshop you had prepared for!

When working with this team, Kim heard a predictable and unsettling question: “what does the Scrum Master do?” Many of us have faced this question from all kinds of directions. However, when Kim started digging into the question, she found that what the team needed was not to know what the Scrum Master did, but rather something else that is critical for any team. They had projected their lack of clarity on the role of the Scrum Master, even if what they needed as something else.

About Kim Hinsch

You can link with Kim Hinsch on LinkedIn.