Linda van Sinten Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Linda van Sinten: Navigating the product predictably, and inviting criticism enables great product conversations

The Great Product Owner: Navigating the product predictably, and inviting criticism enables great product conversations

Great PO’s are well organized, as that helps the team know what to expect, and when to expect it. Not only the features/work to do, but also the type of information they get as well as when they can interact with the PO. But the good organization of the PO goes beyond their relationship with the team, and also includes having a good understanding of what the stakeholders needs.

We also discuss how the PO invites, and welcomes criticism of the product and their work, and is not afraid of calling the team out when they are gold plating, and not focusing on the customer/user/stakeholder needs.

The Bad Product Owner: Stepping back so much that the team got lost

This PO had no say on what the team was doing. The PO acted almost as a secretary because someone else was defining and scheduling the stories for the team. Even if the PO role was not clear in this organization, the fact that the PO was stepping back so much let the team in limbo. We discuss how the PO role is critical in enabling the team to succeed!

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 Linda van Sinten

Linda van Sinten is an experienced Scrum Master and creator of the Liberating Structures Visual design cards. She combines her knowledge of Scrum with the powerful skill of creating visualizations and visual tools to drive teams forward. She has trained over 500 people in making powerful visuals out of ideas, structuring strategies and product visions in Tech, Healthcare and other industries.

You can link with Linda van Sinten on LinkedIn.

Linda van Sinten: Creative thinking formats to spice up your retrospectives

Linda describes her own success as a Scrum Masters through the behaviors she wants to see in the teams she works with. We discuss what we need to do as Scrum Masters to enable those behaviors as well as the importance of asking questions. The goal: to help teams feel enthusiastic about their work!

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Creative thinking formats to spice up your retrospectives

Linda prefers to use different formats in most retrospectives, and especially likes to use formats and exercises that encourage creative thinking by the team. These formats help the teams get out of “complaining” and focus on improvements. She describes some formats for us, and we refer to Story Cubes; The 4 L’s; Liberating Structures; 1-2-4-all and other formats you can use to spice up your retrospectives.

In this segment, we also refer to the Ecocycle planning workshop.

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 Linda van Sinten

You can link with Linda van Sinten on LinkedIn.

Linda van Sinten: How to help organizations kickstart change!

Working with change is a lot about helping the organizations “see” what is going on, and helping them decide what they already want to change. In this episode, we discuss a specific technique that Linda used to bring insights, and visibility into the teams and their challenges, and how that technique helped kick-start a change that was necessary.

About Linda van Sinten

You can link with Linda van Sinten on LinkedIn.

Linda van Sinten: How do teams engage, improve and own their own work?

In this organization, the teams found themselves dependent on their managers or group leads. The culture was that the group leads would know the answer to everything. Additionally, all improvements were given to “improvement teams”, leaving the Scrum teams out of the improvement discussions. Listen in to learn how Linda and the rest of the Agile Coaches and Scrum Masters were able to turn this story around, and help the teams take an active role in the definition of their work!

Featured Book of the Week: Dare to Lead by Brené Brown

In Dare to Lead by Brené Brown, Linda learned a different way to lead. She learned that it is ok to not know the answer to every question, and it is necessary to give space to the others, to the teams we work with. She learned about inviting others to share to be vulnerable.

As Linda puts it: “if you always talk, you hear only what you already know!”

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 Linda van Sinten

You can link with Linda van Sinten on LinkedIn.

Linda van Sinten: From Scrum dictator, to Scrum Master – a learning journey

As Linda worked with multiple teams, she saw a pattern emerge. When she brought all her experience, and advice to teams that were new to Agile, the teams would invariably run away from here, or even tell her to step back. This helped Linda learn a very important lesson for Scrum Masters: we are there to help the team, not to help the team “do what we want them to do”. Listen in to learn what Linda went through, and how she works with Scrum teams now.

About Linda van Sinten

You can link with Linda van Sinten on LinkedIn.