Lucia Alarcon Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Lucia Alarcon: Great Product Owners consistently create conversations with stakeholders and Agile teams

The Great Product Owner: Consistently creating positive conversations with stakeholders and Agile teams

A great Product Owner is consistent in their approach. Lucia shares with us how this particular PO was able to be consistent in their communication and support for the team, but also in looking outside, getting ideas and inspiration from competitors and the market at large. As the PO consistently communicated with the team and stakeholders, they were creating regular and productive invitations for a conversation with stakeholders and team members.

The Bad Product Owner: How to help your PO shine even when they are super-busy!

When the Product Owner is overloaded, they lose focus, and are unable to serve the teams at the right time, and in the right amount. In this segment, we hear the story of the PO that was so busy that they could only be a scatter-shot PO. Randomly giving ideas and demands to the team, who was lost with the lack of support from the PO. In this segment, we talk about how important it is to help the PO focus, and work within the limited time they might have to help the team. As Scrum Master, this is one of our major tasks: help the PO shine, even when they are super busy!

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 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.

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.

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 Lucia Alarcon

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

Lucia Alarcon: Introducing the Kanban method to Agile teams in a complex project

This company was working with several vendors, which meant that for any deliverable there were a lot of parties involved. To manage their work, they were using Trello, a tool that helps teams manage tasks. However, the way they were using that tool was creating problems for the teams and team members. Lucia worked with them to change how they applied the tool to their work, and to learn more about Kanban. In the process, she implemented an effective, stepwise process for introducing change in any organization. Listen in to learn about the key steps she took in this process.

In this segment, we refer to the Kanban method, an Agile method that is used by many teams all over the world.

About Lucia Alarcon

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

Lucia Alarcon: The management antipattern that destroys Agile teams, and how to fix it

Lucia was part of a great team, with motivated and talented team members who were clearly committed to the work they had. But as time went by, Lucia started noting that the team was starting to develop some anti-patterns, with team members working in silos and not sharing with each other what was going on. As Lucia investigated the situation, she found that the manager of that team had started to develop a specific behavior that over time can destroy teams. Listen in to learn what that behavior was, and how to work around it with managers in the teams you work with.

Featured Book of the Week: Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes.

In Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Lucia found insights and the theory behind getting to a state of optimal experience, the state of Flow as described in the book.

In this segment, we also refer to the book Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins, a book we’ve covered several times 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 Lucia Alarcon

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

Lucia Alarcon: How to help a busy, and absent Product Owner, work better with their Agile team

Lucia started her career on the project management path, and she had success with it. However, unlike many project managers that find Scrum by chance, Lucia was on a deliberate quest to find a better way of delivering software projects. It was not by chance that she, after searching for a while, found Scrum, and the Scrum Master role.

This newfound career took her into a new company that was starting a new project, with a Product Owner that did not have time for the team. In this episode, we explore how Scrum Masters can develop their relationship with the PO, to be able to help the team.

In this episode, we also refer to the Coach Your PO course, a course by the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast to help Scrum Masters develop their PO skills, and be able to help the PO’s they work with. We also refer to the Product Owner Sprint Checklist, a tool we developed to help you have that important conversation about the PO’s availability to the team, because when they are not available, we know, the team suffers!

About Lucia Alarcon

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