Mustafa Ergun Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Ryan Brook: Large scale Scrum adoption process

This organization wanted to adopt LeSS, the Large Scale Scrum Framework. However, the leadership team had first tried to “push” the change through. Unsurprisingly, that did not go as expected, so they took a different approach. They got all the teams together, explained their vision and worked with the Scrum Masters to facilitate the change they were looking for.

Listen in to learn how Ryan and his colleagues organized the new change process.

In this episode, we refer to Lean Change Management, and David Marquet’s work (David Marquet was a previous guest on the podcast).

About Ryan Brook

Ryan is a practicing Agile Coach and Scrum Master based in the UK. He is also the co-creator of Scrum Lake, a safe community of practice focused on story telling and deep exploration with Scrum Masters from around the World. He holds both the PSM III and PSPO III and is a candidate Professional Scrum Trainer for scrum.org.

You can link with Ryan Brook on LinkedIn. Or check Ryan’s website at optilearn.co.uk.

Mustafa Ergun: The growth mindset Product Owner

We discuss how the growth mindset can help Product Owners, and also how to work with PO’s that come from a technical background.

The Great Product Owner: The growth mindset Product Owner

Great Product Owners display the “growth mindset”, as Mustafa describes. They are easy to talk to and often discuss and accept ideas for experiments that the team can implement in the product. The PO focuses on representing the business goals and needs inside the team, and knows what tools to bring to create the right discussions and conversations with the team. Finally, the great PO links the team’s work to the goals and metrics that matter for the company.

The Bad Product Owner: Using Personal Agility Coaching Framework to help PO’s

Some PO’s that have a technical background tend to focus on the “how” part of the work and less on the “why”. This is an anti-pattern in the PO role. We discuss how to bring this topic up with the PRoduct Owner, and refer to the “Personal Agility Coaching Framework” as a way to help PO’s learn about their role.

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 Mustafa Ergun

Mustafa is an experienced Scrum Master. He has a passion for helping individuals and organizations see their potential and make things better. His current focus is on improving teams’ performance through insightful facilitation. Mustafa is always eager to learn, share his experience with others and enjoys seeing people succeed.

You can link with Mustafa Ergun on LinkedIn and connect with Mustafa Ergun on Twitter.

Mustafa Ergun: The Scrum Master’s success from 3 different perspectives

Mustafa looks at three different aspects of the Scrum Master work to define what success looks like. From these aspects he suggests we ask specific questions to evaluate the team’s situation and progress over time. Listen in to learn about these 3 different aspects, and how to incorporate these into your regular reflection as a Scrum Master.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Breaking Bad Retrospective

Mustafa focuses on formats that help the team be fully engaged in sharing insights, questions, and learnings. He suggests we focus on helping teams share via games, and suggests a TV series based retrospective: “The Breaking Bad Agile Retrospective”. Listen in to learn how Mustafa introduces and facilitates retrospectives based on TV series.

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 Mustafa Ergun

You can link with Mustafa Ergun on LinkedIn and connect with Mustafa Ergun on Twitter.

Mustafa Ergun: Implementing small enough increments with the MVI concept in Scrum

In this organization, Mustafa noticed that the prioritization process was not working very well, and was a topic of discussion. The organization tried to use the concept of the MVP (Minimum Viable Product), but the discussion around MVP’s still led to very large increments. Then Mustafa worked with the Product Owner to implement a different approach. They devised the idea of the Minimum Viable Increment (MVI), and helped the team adopt and implement that idea. Listen in to learn how Mustafa helped the team go from MVP to MVI and learn to release/deliver incrementally.

About Mustafa Ergun

You can link with Mustafa Ergun on LinkedIn and connect with Mustafa Ergun on Twitter.

Mustafa Ergun: The story points anti-pattern, and what Scrum Masters can do to help teams

In many organizations, and teams, there is a strong focus on metrics and measuring everything (e.g. velocity). When Mustafa joined this team, he found the same pattern of focusing very much on the “pointing” of stories, instead of understanding the goal/impact of the story. But this led to the team being “lost” as to how to implement their stories. At this point Mustafa suggested the team focus their attention on understanding the stories first. Listen in to learn how to facilitate a conversation around the stories the team will work on.

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!

Featured Book of the Week: Fixing your Scrum by Ripley and Miller

In Fixing your Scrum by Ripley and Miller, Mustafa found a book that helped him understand the many possible dysfunctions that organizations suffer from when adopting Scrum.

In this segment, we also refer to How Will You Measure Your Life? By Clayton Christensen, a book that helped Mustafa put his work in perspective, and reflect on how he wants his work to help him build the life he wants for himself.

About Mustafa Ergun

You can link with Mustafa Ergun on LinkedIn and connect with Mustafa Ergun on Twitter.