Lorna Mason Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Lorna Mason & Jon Lawrence: The company culture that destroyed a Product Owner’s chance for success

The Great Product Owner: The team player PO

Great Product Owners engage with the team, and take part in helping form the team. They take responsibility over helping teams succeed. They share their Vision with the team, and welcome feedback and questions. They are prepared for meetings and both respect and are respected by the team.

The Bad Product Owner: The company culture that destroyed a Product Owner’s chance for success

When the team feels cut-off from the Product Owner decisions, and work, they can either help or understand the PO’s decisions. If on top of this the PO skips ceremonies, we have the conditions for a conflict, and lack of collaboration. In this segment, we also talk about the type of company culture that drives Product Owners to disregard the team collaboration aspects of their work.

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 Lorna Mason & Jon Lawrence

Lorna Mason and Jon Lawrence are both agilists working in an insurance scale-up based in Brighton. Their journey to agile has walked a less ‘traditional’ path of Change Management and Continuous Improvement, to Scrum Master, Delivery Manager and Agile Coach; (proving not EVERY Scrum Master needs to code!). They hold the firm belief that you can be a successful Scrum Master as long as you genuinely care about people and value first; and hold a profound desire to always make things better!

You can link with Lorna Mason on LinkedIn.

You can link with Jon Lawrence on LinkedIn.

Lorna Mason & Jon Lawrence: Two Agile retrospective formats for two different times in the lifecycle of a team

When a team is performing, and they show up and are happy in their work, these are great signs that the Scrum Master has helped the team. All of these are signs that we can be sure to move on, and the team will likely pick-up and own their own process. We also about about how Scrum Masters can help to create an environment where teams can succeed.

In this segment, we talk about “bad jokes” and “dad jokes” as a great way to break the ice in teams or retrospectives.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: The Sailboat as a great new-team retrospective

When we start with a new team, it’s good to have a format that helps us understand the team, and their context. Jona and Lorna suggest we could start with the Sailboat Retrospective and use that to establish a baseline for the team. Then we talk about a retrospective format to use at the end of a cycle with the team, the Awards Ceremony retrospective. This format helps us get closure while learning from what happened during that period.

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About Lorna Mason & Jon Lawrence

You can link with Lorna Mason on LinkedIn.

You can link with Jon Lawrence on LinkedIn.

Lorna Mason & Jon Lawrence: Two stories about scaling Agile, two lessons for Scrum Masters in growing organizations

We share 2 stories of change in this episode. One about scaling Agile to a large organization, and the other about keeping Agile on track despite fast growth in another organization. In the first story we discuss the value (or lack thereof) of some scaling ceremonies, and talk about how we can tailor any framework to the reality of the organization and teams we work with. In the second story, we explore how building relationships between the key stakeholders and the teams helped to understand what was needed to keep the organization on the Agile path, despite the fast growth.

About Lorna Mason & Jon Lawrence

You can link with Lorna Mason on LinkedIn.

You can link with Jon Lawrence on LinkedIn.

Lorna Mason & Jon Lawrence: Unlearning old habits and dynamically re-teaming a Scrum team

This team had a strong “legacy debt”, lots of old code they needed to maintain and develop further. Having worked in a waterfall before did not help this team, as they looked at testing as “a separate task”. How to help this team adjust, and learn to be Agile? We discuss the many anti-patterns this team had to overcome, and how the idea of “unlearning” the old ways of working helped this team evolve.

Featured Book of the Week: Dynamic Re-teaming by Heidi Helfand, and Start with Why by Simon Sinek

In this tag-team episode, we hear about two books that Lorna and Jon find critical for any Scrum Master. First we learn about Start with Why by Simon Sinek, and we discuss his Ted Talk on the topic. Then we learn about the book Dynamic Re-teaming by Heidi Helfand, who’s been a guest 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 Lorna Mason & Jon Lawrence

You can link with Lorna Mason on LinkedIn.

You can link with Jon Lawrence on LinkedIn.

Lorna Mason & Jon Lawrence: Learning to adapt to a new Scrum team without pushing them

We explore 2 stories that have a key similarity: the Scrum Master directing the team. In one story we learn about how the team was able to step up and own the process, while the other story had a different ending. But both stories are about our stance as a Scrum Master when working with a new team. Listen in to learn about the tips Jon and Lorna have for Scrum Masters starting with a new team.

About Lorna Mason & Jon Lawrence

You can link with Lorna Mason on LinkedIn.

You can link with Jon Lawrence on LinkedIn.