lean change management Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Kirill Golubev: A Scrum Master’s Insights on Being a Change Agent in the Pharmaceutical Industry

In this episode, Kirill shares the story of when he was a Scrum Master in the pharmaceutical industry, and learned some important lessons about being a change agent in an organization. He highlights the importance of having the team’s support and readiness when implementing any change. Kirill also emphasizes the value of training management to showcase the benefits of Agile to them.

Kirill believes that Scrum Masters have a revolutionary role in bringing change to the workplace and that it’s essential to define a Scrum Master vision and have a mentor to understand critical things that are necessary for success in the role.

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 Kirill Golubev

Kirill considers himself an Agile and common-sense apologist. He wants to see simple processes in place, when people self-organize and manage themselves without constant push from management.

You can link with Kirill Golubev on LinkedIn.

Gemma Murray: Small Commitments for Large Organizational Change, A Practical Approach for Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches

In this episode, Gemma discussed the concept of organizational change and how to approach it in an effective and practical way. She emphasized the importance of starting with small commitments, using the example of a team struggling with capacity and carrying issues from sprint to sprint. Gemma suggested asking for a commitment from the team to try a new approach for three sprints, as the first sprint may feel clunky, the second sprint will have less cognitive load, and the third sprint will provide empirical data to assess the impact.

She also shared her approach to making changes in large organizations, by seeking a small set of volunteer teams to try out the change and give feedback. This method helps to make the change practical, removes resistance, and gives empirical data for reassessment. Overall, Gemma emphasized the importance of giving change a chance by committing to trying it for three sprints before making a final decision. This “give it 3 sprints” mantra Gemma shares with us is not only helpful when collecting data but also energizes the team and removes resistance.

About Gemma Murray

Gemma works as an Agile Coach for MOO, a branding company whose vision is to provide ‘Great design for everyone’. Having worked in various change roles using both waterfall and agile approaches throughout her career, Gemma believes in the diversity of teams to unlock innovation, creativity and delivering value.

You can link with Gemma Murray on LinkedIn.

Bram De Block: The case for Agile Evolution, Overcoming Dependencies, and Improving Team Collaboration through Product Domains

In this episode, Bram discusses the topic of agile evolution, a process of going beyond adoption, and adapting, and improving their agile methodologies. He explains that his organization used to work in Squads (based on the Spotify Model), each with their own backlog, but found that this resulted in a lot of dependencies and some teams had no “high value” items on their backlog, while others were too busy to deliver on the valuable items they had in their backlog.

He describes how that organization evolved to using Product Domains instead. The change team used MURAL to help visualize the changes, and invited people from every team to join and build a picture of the future with Product Domains. In that process, they went from 17 squads to 7 product domains.

Bram also provides tips on how to make the changes super clear, write down what the teams and organization will STOP/START/CONTINUE, and have follow-up sessions while timeboxing the whole work of defining the “future state”.

He highlights the importance of commitment and timeboxing as a trigger for action, and advises to avoid the anti-pattern of considering the “next change” as the final word. The episode aims to help organizations evolve their agile methodologies, to overcome common challenges and to improve the collaboration and communication within their teams.

About Bram De Block

Bram is not an official trainer, consultant nor freelancer. He is just himself, supporting colleagues in applying and growing their own potential and getting stuff done. Bram started as a software developer for 10 years, then grew into a half-time agile coach, and finally, full-time “Global Agile Lead” at Skyline Communications. Something “special” he learned (even if he wishes it wasn’t special): the meaning and impact of “respect”.

You can link with Bram De Block on LinkedIn, or meet Bram face-to-face at this meetup he hosts in Belgium.

BONUS: The hardest lesson I’ve had to learn as a Scrum Master and Agile Coach

In this episode, Vasco explores one of the hardest lessons he’s had to learn as a Scrum Master and Agile Coach. He shares what led him to that lesson, and how he’s been able to overcome some of the critical, but also natural blockers to learn this important lesson.

In this segment, Vasco talks about how important it is to grow as a person, and get coaching support. If you are interested in receiving coaching support from Oikosofy and from Vasco, you can contact us at: coaching@oikosofy.com.

As Vasco puts it: “you should not be a coach for others, until you’ve started your own coaching journey with a coach!”

The biggest Agile trends for 2023

In the final segment of this episode, Vasco shares what he thinks will be the biggest trends for the Agile community in 2023. He talks about Invitational Change and Agile Product Management. If you want to learn more about those trends, listen to this show to the end!

Leave us your thoughts on 2023 Agile trend predictions below, or send us an email at: podcast@oikosofy.com

About Vasco Duarte

Author of http://NoEstimatesBook.com, and daily podcast host at https://scrum-master-toolbox.org/. I try to give back to the community every single day in an effort to improve the IT and product industry all over the world.

Product Manager, Scrum Master, Project Manager, Director, Agile Coach are only some of the roles that I’ve taken in software development organizations. Having worked in the software industry since 1997, and Agile practitioner since 2004. I’ve worked in small, medium and large software organizations as an Agile Coach or leader in agile adoption at those organizations.

BONUS: A DevOps transformation from the point of view of the development teams with János Csorvási and Jeff Campbell

Jeff is the author of Actionable Agile tools (available on Amazon, and direct from the author at bit.ly/aatbook).

Jeff and János share the story of a DevOps transformation at Meltwater, where they both work. We start by discussing the big differences between an Agile and a DevOps transformation.

The big difference between Agile and DevOps transformations

As they describe it, a DevOps transformation is more about the technical aspects of software development. While in an Agile transformation we may look at processes, and team composition, the DevOps transformation that Jeff and János describe was focused on removing the hand-overs, and building the technical infrastructure necessary for that to happen. Their goal was to create, and support cross functional teams that would be able to implement, deploy and operate their software in production.

Change management in a DevOps transformation

Continue reading BONUS: A DevOps transformation from the point of view of the development teams with János Csorvási and Jeff Campbell