Leonardo Bittencourt Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Leonardo Bittencourt on the command-and-control systemic problem

Where does the need to micro-manage and control come from? In a system there may be many causes for that pattern. In this episode Leonardo shares a story with us, where the system was stuck in this command-and-control anti-pattern. We discuss the reasons for that, as well as how that may look like in some companies.

About Leonardo Bittencourt

Currently Leonardo is a Scrum Master at Equifax Ireland. Focused on building high performance teams through Agile and/or Lean adoption, he is an enthusiastic about Lean and Agile mindset in the Software Development industry as the transformation agent to create great working environment as well as products that matters.

You can link with Leonardo Bittencourt on LinkedIn and connect with Leonardo Bittencourt on Twitter.

Leonardo Bittencourt: 3 questions, and many tips on how to be a successful Scrum Master

Leonardo shares with us 3 questions he asks himself when thinking about what defines success for him in his Scrum Master role. During this episode he also shares with us some of the tips he’s collected along the way, and help him tackle the challenges he sees in his work.

Featured Retrospective format for the week: PopcornFlow

PopcornFlow is a method by Claudio Perrone, that helps us be deliberate with our experimental approach. That method can also be used to structure our retrospectives. Read more about PopcornFlow.

Leonardo also shares with us some important resources: The Agile Retrospectives book by Diana Larsen and Esther Derby, and the always useful FunRetrospectives.com website.

About Leonardo Bittencourt

You can link with Leonardo Bittencourt on LinkedIn and connect with Leonardo Bittencourt on Twitter.

Leonardo Bittencourt on how to go from detailed plan to shared goal

Teams, and their stakeholders tend to think that the more they invest in planning, the easier the work will go. However, there’s a lot of problems a plan does not solve. For example, more time in planning does not ensure we know “why” we are working on a specific product or feature-set. How can we help the teams go from task-orientation to goal-orientation? If we are able to bring in that change, the team is more likely to feel satisfied, the product owner is more likely to get what they want, and ultimately we create the environment for self-organization to emerge.

Listen in to learn about Leonardo’s journey with that team, and how he helped the team and PO go from detailed plan, to a shared Sprint goal.

In this episode we discuss the template for defining a Sprint Goal, by Roman Pichler, whose blog you can find here. And we also talk about David Marquette’s work, whom we’ve interviewed on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast.

About Leonardo Bittencourt

You can link with Leonardo Bittencourt on LinkedIn and connect with Leonardo Bittencourt on Twitter.

Leonardo Bittencourt on building self-confidence in the teams you work with

Teams can be their own worst enemies some times. In this story, Leonardo shares the story of a team that slowly entered a negative self-defeating pattern: they didn’t believe any of the positive feedback they got, but felt destroyed by any of the negative comments that were coming their way. The team did not believe in their own goodness. How do you get out of such an anti-pattern? Listen in to learn how the team entered this pattern, and what Leonardo tried to do to get the team out of that self-defeating loop.

Featured book for the week: Coaching Agile Teams, by Lyssa Adkins

Leonardo shares what he learned from Coaching Agile Teams, by Lyssa Adkins, a book that explains the different aspects of the Scrum Master role and Agile Coach. And helps us define our own coaching approach for the teams we work with. Every team is different, and this book helps us reflect on those differences.

About Leonardo Bittencourt

You can link with Leonardo Bittencourt on LinkedIn and connect with Leonardo Bittencourt on Twitter.

Leonardo Bittencourt on what to consider when you are a beginner Scrum Master

When we start as Scrum Masters, there’s a lot of things we don’t know yet. Not only are we not able to see the anti-patterns, but we also don’t know how to react to the problems we face. Scrum has in itself a set of patterns that help us when we are starting out, but sometimes we need more than that. In this episode we explore the story of when Leonardo was just starting as a Scrum Master. The anti-patterns he saw, and the steps he took after he learned some hard lessons.

About Leonardo Bittencourt

You can link with Leonardo Bittencourt on LinkedIn and connect with Leonardo Bittencourt on Twitter.