Lucas Smith Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Lucas Smith working harder as an Anti-Pattern and the importance of asking why

Nobody gets credit for solving problems that never happened is a paper that explores why the tools that are the reason for success in some companies are ineffective in other companies. And when that happens, people in those organizations have the tendency to work even harder. But is that enough?

In this episode we explore the idea that working harder may be an anti-pattern, and we explore the impact of a simple question: “why?” Go deeper, ask why.

About Lucas Smith

Lucas has been a developer, manager, and agile coach and trainer with Boeing. Currently works a Professional Scrum Trainer with Scrum.org and is the owner of LitheWorks. Lucas enjoys helping people and organizations improve the way they work to be more creative, effective, and efficient.

You can find Lucas Smith’s company at litheworks.com.

You can link with Lucas Smith on LinkedIn.

Lucas Smith shares his 5 Scrum Master success benchmarks

The questions we ask from ourselves, and the team asks from themselves are critical to influence our behaviour and decisions. In this episode we explore 5 different aspects for a successful Scrum Master, and what Lucas has learned about them.

Featured Retrospective format of the week: The Starfish Retrospective

The Starfish format is popular, and we have discussed it here on the podcast. But Lucas brings an interesting twist: add a personal question to the retrospective to create a safer environment. Listen in to learn how Lucas applies that idea.

About Lucas Smith

You can find Lucas Smith’s company at litheworks.com.

You can link with Lucas Smith on LinkedIn.

Lucas Smith a step-by-step change process to help you navigate organisational change

In this episode we discuss a step-by-step approach that Lucas took to help him navigate change in an organisation where he worked. We discuss each step, why it is important, and how it helped Lucas in his quest to help the organisation change.

In this episode we refer to the book Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows.

About Lucas Smith

You can find Lucas Smith’s company at litheworks.com.

You can link with Lucas Smith on LinkedIn.

Lucas Smith: practicing Scrum is not enough, the other critical Scrum team ingredient

Getting a team to learn and practice Scrum is not enough. There’s a critical aspect to a team’s own success and further development: feeling ownership over the product they are developing.

In this episode we discuss how the lack of ownership in the team led to bigger and bigger problems.

We also discuss how to work with manager, who sometimes are the biggest blocker for the team to evolve.

Featured Book of the week: Every good endeavour by Timothy Keller

Every Good Endeavor is about the theology of work. Timothy Keller explores the importance of vacation in work, and asks: why do we do the work we do. An important reflection for Scrum Masters, who are there to serve.

In this episode we also mention Extreme Programming explained by Kent Beck and Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows

About Lucas Smith

You can find Lucas Smith’s company at litheworks.com.

You can link with Lucas Smith on LinkedIn.

Lucas Smith on how being yelled at by users changes your perspective on customer value

It is common to claim that we must user-centric, or listen more to users, or even involve users more in the product development. But Lucas has an extreme case of that message for us. Listen in to learn how being yelled at by users can totally change your perspective on what is value, and make you want to change the product development process.

Click to learn more about how you can help your PO

About Lucas Smith

You can find Lucas Smith’s company at litheworks.com.

You can link with Lucas Smith on LinkedIn.