Caterina Palmiotto: Autonomy and Accountability, Key Team Skills That Make You A Successful Scrum Master

In this segment, Caterina discusses how success for Scrum Masters depends on the team’s ability to be autonomous in defining and changing their working agreements. She suggests asking questions such as whether the team members are active when the Scrum Master isn’t there and if they are following the agreements they made together. She emphasizes the importance of the team being mature enough to trust themselves to make decisions and call out each other when they break the rules. Finally, she shares a tip on how keeping each other accountable to the work agreements is crucial to maintaining the desired team culture.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Metaphor, or simple format? Which one to use and when?

In this segment, Caterina discusses an agile retrospective format based on team maturity. For new or less mature teams, she suggests using a metaphor, such as a favorite movie or sport, to change perspective. However, for more mature teams, a simple format like MAD/SAD/GLAD works well as they want to jump into and quickly solve problems they already know about. In the end, we must always adapt the retrospective format to the level of the team, as well as the current situation they are facing.

Retrospectives, planning sessions, vision workshops, we are continuously helping teams learn about how to collaborate in practice! In this Actionable Agile Tools book, Jeff Campbell shares some of the tools he’s learned over a decade of coaching Agile Teams. The pragmatic coaching book you need, right now! Buy Actionable Agile Tools on Amazon, or directly from the author, and supercharge your facilitation toolbox!

About Caterina Palmiotto

Caterina started as a software developer but soon realized that she was passionate about team dynamics and communication, and embraced agility from the moment she saw it.

Caterina believes a team can be more than the sum of its parts and that growing the right culture is essential. When people are surrounded by good examples they will be motivated to do their best.  So the first step is doing your best to be a good example of the culture you want to nurture.

You can link with Caterina Palmiotto on LinkedIn.

Ali Asl: Simple Agile Retrospective formats to help drive conversations

Ali’s focus, as a Scrum Master, is to get the team to be autonomous, and run their own Sprints. In Ali’s opinion, a good team can self organize and self manage, and he uses that as his own success measure. In this segment, we refer to #NoEstimates.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Simple formats to help drive conversations

Although Ali uses many different retrospective formats, he likes the simpler formats like Mad/Sad/Glad or the Good/Bad/Ugly movie retrospective. He likes the simplicity of the 3 categories, which helps him focus on asking probing questions. In this segment, we refer to the Prime Directive of Agile Retrospectives. 

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 Ali Asl

Ali is an experienced and accomplished Independent Agile Coach, Trainer and Scrum Master focused on supporting organizations and teams in the application of Agile values and principles to deliver quality and value.

You can link with Ali Asl on LinkedIn.

Pedro Silva: Four questions to assess your impact as a Scrum Master or Agile Coach

When it comes to defining success, Pedro has some key questions he asks of himself to assess his impact as a Scrum Master. Listen in to learn about the four questions Pedro asks when assessing his own work, and the impact on the Scrum team.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Team Canvas, a tool to help build great teams

Pedro likes to use the Team Canvas as a way to help teams come together, and define their joint, group identity. He also uses some ice-breaker exercises like the MAD/SAD/GLAD or Lean Coffee formats, which we’ve discussed in previous episodes here on the podcast.

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 Pedro Silva

Pedro considers himself a Scrum Master supporting software development teams while keeping his focus on their growth towards the efficient delivery of value, while having a blast.

You can link with Pedro Silva on LinkedIn.

Shaun Bradshaw: Exploring emotions in our Scrum teams with the Mad/Sad/Glad Agile Retrospective format

When looking out for his own success in working with a Scrum team, Shaun pays special attention to how team members speak with each other, and the stance they take regarding collaboration as a team. In this segment, we also explore what we can do when our teams are remote, and the observations that we need to make are no longer that easy because team members are not right there, in front of us.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Exploring emotions with the Mad/Sad/Glad format

Emotions are very powerful influencers in a team. If we can’t talk about them, we miss what might be the key influencer in some patterns we notice in teams and between teams and stakeholders. Shaun invites us to explore emotions with the Mad/Sad/Glad retrospective format.

In this segment, we refer to the Core Protocols (of which Mad/Sad/Glad is part), which has been a topic in our podcast before.

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 Shaun Bradshaw

Shaun is a founder and principal of Zenergy Technologies, a modern software delivery solutions firm that specializes in Agile, DevOps, Quality, and Automation. Shaun’s background in QA, testing, and metrics has played an important role in his work as an Agile consultant since he joined the community in 2008.

You can link with Shaun Bradshaw on LinkedIn and connect with Shaun Bradshaw on Twitter. You can also follow Shaun Bradshaw’s blog at the Zenergy Technologies site.

Mher Nalbandyan: Reflecting on Scrum Master success with the team, and the Product Owner

Mher likes to focus on his presence in the team when evaluating and reflecting on his own success. As tools for that reflection, he uses the 1-on-1 meetings with the team members, and regularly collects feedback, and includes discussions with the PO in that process.

In this episode, we refer to Curling, a winter olympics discipline. 

Featured Retrospectives Format for the Week: The 4L’s retrospective

Mher suggests the 4L’s format as a way to enable discussion on a big spectrum of topics, and focusing on open ended questions. In this episode, we also refer to the Mad/Sad/Glad, Start/Stop/Continue and other related formats. In this episode, we refer to the website teleretro.com, a remote retrospective tool.

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 Mher Nalbandyan

Mher works at Mbition in Berlin, where they develop the next generation of information systems for Mercedes-Benz.

You can link with Mher Nalbandyan on LinkedIn and connect with Mher Nalbandyan on Twitter.

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