lean coffee Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Bram De Block: Aligning agile team and company goals for Scrum Master success

In this episode, Bram emphasizes the importance of understanding the goal for the company and working with teams to align their goals with the company’s vision. He believes that a Scrum Master’s own success is tied to helping teams reach their goals. Bram provides insights on how to help teams define success, by challenging them to think about the vision for their product and having conversations about success, providing data points as examples, and using readily available product data to define what better could look like. The episode aims to help Scrum Masters to understand their role in the success of the team and the company, and to provide guidance on how to align goals and work towards achieving them.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: The Lean Coffee Format for engaging retrospectives

Bram introduces the Lean Coffee format, a dynamic and engaging way to facilitate meetings and discussions. This format is designed to make sure that everyone is engaged, regardless of whether they are introverted or extroverted. In a Lean Coffee session, we discuss the most voted topic and change the format regularly to maintain engagement.

In this segment, Bram refers to a collection of recipes for agile retrospectives which he, and his team make available to everyone at DataMiner Dojo.

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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.

Bert Heymans: Lean Coffee, the most versatile retrospective format for Agile teams

Have you “nudged” the system in the right direction? Bert asks us. Have people in the team, and around the team become the best version of themselves? We discuss these and other questions that Bert asks himself when evaluating his own performance as a Scrum Master.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: The Lean Coffee the most versatile retrospective format for Agile teams

Bert calls himself a “Lean Coffee Traditionalist”. He explains how the format works and why the format works so well in all kinds of contexts and teams. We discuss the origins of Lean Coffee and link to a video by Jim Benson presenting the format he created.

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About Bert Heymans

Bert is a long time Lean Management aficionado and project management tool specialist, along the way he fell in love with business analysis and teaching business analysis techniques. In 2016 he founded Lean Coffee Ghent and has been at it since.

You can link with Bert Heymans on LinkedIn and connect with Bert Heymans on Twitter.

Pedro Silva: Four questions to assess your impact as a Scrum Master or Agile Coach

When it comes to defining success, Pedro has some key questions he asks of himself to assess his impact as a Scrum Master. Listen in to learn about the four questions Pedro asks when assessing his own work, and the impact on the Scrum team.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Team Canvas, a tool to help build great teams

Pedro likes to use the Team Canvas as a way to help teams come together, and define their joint, group identity. He also uses some ice-breaker exercises like the MAD/SAD/GLAD or Lean Coffee formats, which we’ve discussed in previous episodes here on the podcast.

About Pedro Silva

Pedro considers himself a Scrum Master supporting software development teams while keeping his focus on their growth towards the efficient delivery of value, while having a blast.

You can link with Pedro Silva on LinkedIn.

Jeremia Riedel: Key metrics to assess a Scrum teams’ progress towards delivering business value quickly

Jeremia suggests that, as Scrum Masters, our goal is to help Scrum teams “deliver business value fast”. He then suggests a few metrics that we can use to assess our progress towards that goal. Listen in to learn what metrics he suggests we keep as Scrum Masters.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: The Timeline Retrospective

When we do a timeline retrospective, we ask the team to plot their feeling/mood/confidence over time in a graph. Using the ups and downs of the lines the team draws, we try to extract information about what were the key moments in the Sprint. The findings from the that Timeline exercise can then be discussed in a Lean Coffee or Troika Consulting format in the second part of the retrospective.

About Jeremia Riedel

Jeremia is an Agile Coach that describes himself as an Explorer, Enthusiast and Challenger.

You can link with Jeremia Riedel on LinkedIn, and read Jeremia Riedel’s blog on Medium.

Lucia Alarcon: Lean Coffee, the swiss army knife of Agile Retrospectives

When it comes to assessing her own success as a Scrum Master, Lucia uses the “health” metaphor to identify and measure critical aspects of a healthy team. In this episode, we talk about The Squad Health Check. The Squad Health Check was also described in these episodes. We also mention Radical Candor, as a feedback framework as well as Clean Language.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Lean Coffee, the swiss army knife of Agile Retrospectives

Lucia likes to try many formats, but there’s one format she often comes back to thanks to its power to spark creative, and insightful conversations. That format is the Lean Coffee Retrospective format, which focuses the team’s conversations instead of trying to cover too many things in a retrospective. In this segment, we also refer to the game Cards Against Humanity, which you can learn more about (and download) by listening to this episode with Ellen Santamaria.

About Lucia Alarcon

Lucia is a Delivery Lead and a coach working in Wellington NZ, leading an amazing development squad to achieve the delivery of multiple digital initiatives using Agile, creating a culture of empowerment, collaboration and communication. With 15+ years of experience, her professional (and personal!) journey has taken her through a variety of organizations and halfway around the world from Argentina. Lucia loves all things Agile, facilitation and coaching.

You can link with Lucia Alarcon on LinkedIn and connect with Lucia Alarcon on Instagram.