Luis Carvalho Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Luis Carvalho: What leads to a break-up between a Scrum team and their Product Owner?

The Great Product Owner: The PO that protected the team, and focused on the product, not the process

A new PO came along to this team, and the contrast with the previous PO was huge. The new PO was a product-led person. Did not focus too much on the process, but relied on the team and Scrum Master to help with that. This PO focused on setting the direction and helping the team with decisions, and had a specific superpower that helped the team greatly: he kept the time pressure away from the team.

The Bad Product Owner: The break-up between team and PO

This Product Owner did not see himself as part of the team. This led to some anti-patterns, such as the PO treating the team as a “provider”, and focusing on writing and “sending” requirements to the team. This led to difficulties in communication, such as during refinement sessions and eventually led to a practical break-up between the PO and the team. From this story, Luis took a critical lesson.

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 Luis Carvalho

Luis is an enthusiast for all things related with organizations, teams, structures and ways of working. He has been working in large scale consumer products for most of his professional life, worked with people of many backgrounds, cultures and locations and made many friends in the process. He loves traveling, food and getting to know people.

You can link with Luis Carvalho on LinkedIn.

Luis Carvalho: Be the best at getting better, the Scrum Master mission!

“We want to be the best at getting better”, this is the key mission of the Scrum Master, as Luis puts it. As Scrum Masters, we should focus on more than “the deliverable” or “the process”, and build the team to be ready to continuously improve over time.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Mourning the end of a project

As so often happens, many Agile teams go from one project to another without a break. However, when we allow that to happen we skip a critical step in the human process of “letting go” of the previous project, teams, processes, and colleagues.

In this segment, we talk about the Mourning Retrospective, that helps teams, and team members accept that something ends, and a new story starts. A necessary process for psychological balance.

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About Luis Carvalho

You can link with Luis Carvalho on LinkedIn.

Luis Carvalho: Changing to survive a difficult product delivery project, an Agile story of change

Luis and his colleagues were working on a new product that they would introduce in the market. While preparing the team, they decided to start changing some things that would also affect the wider organization. In this episode, we explore how the change we bring to an organization is not necessarily “external”, but can be created by internal triggers and affect plans, teams and ultimately the business!

About Luis Carvalho

You can link with Luis Carvalho on LinkedIn.

Luis Carvalho: From hero to zero, how to not setup a new Scrum team

Luis was working with a consultant team that had been “sold” to the organization as a “superhero team”. However, the setup of that team had some major flaws. To start with the team was not clearly given a mission to deliver, but rather to “evaluate and help” the other teams working on the same product. This triggered an anti-pattern that would later create big problems for this and other teams. Listen in to learn about how “great teams” can sometimes become the source of “great problems”.

Featured Book of the Week: The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek

In The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek, Luis learned many lessons that are critical also for Scrum Masters. The book discusses the difference between the finite and infinite mindsets. Luis also learned about how important it is important to prepare our teams to outlast our own contribution, and in that way “survive their Scrum Master”.

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 Luis Carvalho

You can link with Luis Carvalho on LinkedIn.

Luis Carvalho: The spiraling Scrum team in a deadline-crunch

Luis was working with a new team, in a version 2.0 for an existing product. He started noticing that the sprint goals were not met, and the time pressure was mounting. The inevitable quality issues started to accumulate. Why do so many teams fall prey to these problems? We discuss the root causes that lead teams to start failing their sprints, and discuss how to prepare for these situations.

About Luis Carvalho

You can link with Luis Carvalho on LinkedIn.